Customers want to find what they want — quickly and easily. Whether you are building an eCommerce Website, or need to give an existing site a face-lift, every online store needs to be built with the customer in mind.
At Local View, our team develops websites to share your unique products and services, increase customer happiness, and help you boost your bottom line.
Use Intuitive Design for Easy Navigation
Keep in mind the advice from the classic book by Steve Krug on web usability. “Don’t Make Me Think!”
The title says it perfectly.
Don’t make your customer think.
In designing your eCommerce website, don’t make the journey difficult or more complex.
This comes down to simple principles such as:
- Reduce the number of navigation buttons
- Reduce the number of categories
- Reduce the number of items in categories
Check out Amazon as a great website that includes easy navigation. Shopping at Amazon doesn’t require an advanced degree or a course in statistical comparison.
Once you enjoy a positive shopping experience, look around.
What do you notice that makes shopping intuitive and easy to do? Think about how you can apply this intuitive design to your eCommerce site.
Keep your customer in mind when designing your eCommerce site. It isn’t always easy to keep things clean, clear, and simple.
That’s why it helps to have some expert designers work with you to get to the bare bones of pure elegance. It’s something we at Local View are passionate about.
Help Shoppers Find Items Quickly
Shoppers want to find answers and do it quickly.
An internal site search is the quickest way to help prospects and customers get to the parts of your eCommerce store that they want to go to.
If things are hard to find, disorganized, or always out of stock…they are free to leave your site and head straight for your competition.
Search bars are a kind of simple concept. They help you increase conversions. According to Neil Patel, on-site search increases conversions by 480%.
Think about the last time you had a minute to buy a gift, such as sunglasses for your friend who is passionate about paddle boarding. You read the reviews. You decided on the brand. You went searching.
When you found a cool-looking site, you used the internal site search to type in exactly what you wanted. Finding exactly what you wanted, you made the purchase.
This entire process took just a few minutes. Why? Because a web designer made it possible for your shopping experience to be easy, fast, and simple.
Do the same for your clients and prospects and start to enjoy the big promise of an eCommerce website: making money while you sleep.
Offer Options and Recommendations
What’s more frustrating than not having the product you want in stock? Not having an alternate recommendation.
To design a successful eCommerce Website, think like your customer. Consider how you feel when you take the time to go shopping, have your credit card handy, and are ready to buy.
You know the feeling when what you want is not available. It’s irritating. It’s frustrating. And, although it’s not the website’s fault, not having a product in stock — and not having a substitute can be reason enough to never come back.
Let’s take that shopping for sunglasses experience to the next level. While you were buying a gift, you saw a little reminder: “You might also like…” You picked up a pair for yourself too.
Help your customers make smart choices if a product is out of stock or if they might be interested in a related item.
Think in categories. For example, if you’re looking for protective sunglasses for kayaking, have a set of options available that will work if one is out of stock.
If you’re organizing something like sunglasses by sport, consider all the water sports such as paddleboarding, kayaking, sailing, and surfing. Some of the items on your site will work well across activities.
Provide Security Features for Your eCommerce Website
Help your customers feel safe and secure. According to Envato, multiple security features are essential for every eCommerce website.
To keep your website secure and protect your customer’s information install features such as:
- SSL Certificate
SSL stands for secure socket layer. This is a certificate that ensures the privacy of all data flowing between the web server and browser.
- Set Up Procedures for Passwords
Passwords can get compromised, which is why you’ll want to set up backup authentication to verify that all log-ins are valid. Change passwords frequently to increase security.
- Show Payment Safety
Help customers know that their payment is safe and secure. Prominently display certifications and measures for secure payment.
Boost The Shopping Experience with Photos and Videos
Customers love to get a real-life feeling with videos, photos, and seeing how things look in different colors.
Customers have gotten used to the standards shown on Amazon such as multiple product photos, seeing products in different colors, and magnification features. Use photos in your eCommerce site to simulate an in-store experience.
Videos are particularly convincing. One study, cited in Search Engine Watch found that shoppers seeing videos are 144% more likely to add a product to their cart.
According to Neil Patel, video appears in 70% of the top 100 listings of search results. After watching a product video, viewers are 64-85% more likely to buy.
How will your audience respond to short-form videos on your product page?
In Conclusion
Designing and organizing your website with the customer in mind has tremendous value for your business — today, and in the future.
When your eCommerce website has an intuitive design, efficient search, options and recommendations, security features, and visuals, you can expect a positive impact on your bottom line.
At Local View, we love designing beautiful and functional websites. Let’s talk about how we can help take your eCommerce website to the highest level of performance.