The E-commerce industry is supposed to generate $3.9 trillion dollar sales in the year 2020. Starting an e-commerce business in this decade is very profitable, as the users are already being habitual of buying things online. The online store or the eCommerce website is the backbone of your business. It is very important to carefully spend your time on research the new design trends and plan your e-commerce business accordingly. There are some very essential elements of successful eCommerce website design:

Call-to-action

Call-to-action buttons are visual elements placed on a website to guide the customer for the next step. Like ‘Add-to-cart’, ‘Buy now’,’check out’ etc. Carefully place and creatively designed CTA can boost the conversion rates on your website dramatically. The CTAs should:

• Be Clearly visible
• Have a clear message
• Be attractive
• Be always working

Product Images

Your product is the reason the customer landed on your website. This is the only thing that the customer cares about the most. So your product images should be very clear and high resolution. Always prefer professional product photographers. For fashion products like apparel, provide a complete view and size description. Product images with human models get more sales. For Food and technology products, the clear and concise description of the product is actually more effective than the product image. Product Images should:

• Be in high resolution
• Have a complete view of the product
• Have zoon in feature
• Be responsive

Relevant Product Recommendations

No customer buys the first thing they looked at even at the physical store. So the salesman shows them more varieties to make them come to a buying decision. The same goes for the online store. It always helps to show recommended products to the customer below the desired product. These recommendations can be based on:

• Items added in cart
• Items added in the wish list
• Item recently visited
• Item related to a recent purchase
• A complimentary item for the current purchase

Note: Don’t show recommendations on check out page before payments, this leads to the user changing his mind and might abandon the cart.

Simplified Checkout Process

A very simple check out process is the most essential strategy in the success of an eCommerce store. The user experience might keep your customers navigating through the site. But she finally chooses to buy a product from your store, keep the transaction as simple as possible. Give your user a customized experience. A simplified check out process has:

• Fewer steps
• More payments options
• Strong security features
• Multiple shipping options

Intuitive Site Navigation

The user should be able to navigate through your online stores without any hurdles. Placing breadcrumbs intelligently, which leads the customer to navigate through your website, through different categories, can actually be very important for website success. It is also helpful in terms of search engine optimization, as crawlers will determine if your store can provide a better user experience than others. Intuitive Site navigation plan:

• Is User-friendly
• Has multiple access point
• Has direct access to Shopping cart, order tracking, and profile
• Has carefully placed bread crumbs

Omnichannel Shopping Experience

A successful eCommerce website provides an omnichannel shopping experience to its customers. As 68% of internet users are accessing your website through their mobile devices, it is important to make the user experience an omnichannel practice. The user who added the product in the cart from a mobile device should be able to make payment and check out from his desktop.

Live Chat or Chatbot

Live chat is more preferred than a chatbot. But Chatbot has its own advantages, like 24 hours support. Live chat is a part of customer service. The better you serve your customers, the more loyal they become to your brand.

Effective On-site Search

If you have multiple categories of products that are diverse, then having a powerful on-site search mechanism can be great. It is very user-friendly because it saves users time. By providing them with a search tool they can easily bypass the need to navigate your site in order to make a quick purchase.

Speed Optimization

It all comes to the performance of an online store. The better the performance the better the results. The website’s speed can be calculated with different parameters like page load time, page response time, and first response time. The ideal page load time for an eCommerce website is 3-6 secs. Product pages should have even lesser load time. The first response time for a user query should be between 1 to 3 secs.

Web hosting plays a huge role in a website’s speed optimization, so it becomes very crucial to select a reliable hosting service provider for your eCommerce website. This list of Top 20 hosting services providers gives you a comparative analysis, which will enable you to make better decisions.

SEO Optimization

There is no point in working on website design if it is not optimized for search engines. Search engines like Google use different parameters like keyword density, page layout, site map, mobile responsiveness to rank your website.
An SEO optimized website:

• Will load faster
• Has better user experience
• Is easy to navigate
• Has optimized content

Have a great idea for eCommerce on your mind? Consult with us. We will provide you step-by-step guidance on how to set up an e-commerce store from scratch. Contact our team and schedule an appointment to discuss your idea. How helpful was this article about essential elements of eCommerce websites design? Let us know in the comment.