E-Commerce Website Design Tips: Laying a Perfect Path From Storefront to Checkout

E-commerce Website Design Tips

Online sales go well beyond SEO. If you’re new to this aspect of sales and credit card transactions, here’s what you need to know about usability, site visitor flow, and conversion.

Design Proper Hierarchy Based On Relevancy

Your navigation menu should make sense, meaning that it should be designed hierarchically. Group subcategories in drop menus and other areas in such a way so as to make your menu tree scan-able. If users have to “fish” for what they’re looking for, then you’re making it too difficult to find anything.

Users will end up navigating through various parts of your site that they either don’t need to be in or don’t want to be in, and they will waste a lot of time. Not good.

Tell Users What You’re About On The Homepage

You should always cut to the chase with your users. As soon as they land on your homepage, they should be able to figure out what you do, what your business is about. If they can’t, you’re creating friction that will drive users away. Users like things to be simple. And, the harder you make it, the more likely they are to bounce and do business with someone else.

Unbounce did an amazing analysis of winning headline formulas that successful businesses use on their landing pages. You can read about it here.

One thing you’ll notice in every instance is that the better headlines tend to be short, snappy, and get to the point. All of the headlines analyzed to tell you exactly what the business does, and what the customer gets out of the business relationship.

They are either action-oriented statements or very descriptive and benefit-driven.

Focus on being specific, succinct, focus on the one thing you do best that no one else can do (or that no one can do as well as you). You also need to set expectations for the user – what they can expect from you as a business and from your products or services.

Make Your Navigation Intuitive

This is somewhat subjective, but the big picture is that you should be designing your navigation in a way that makes it easy to find your contact information and your sales page. If you use your blog to generate leads, it should be easy to find that too. Users generally want to be able to search a website for their interests, so make the search box prominent.

Make The Checkout Process Easy

If you make it hard to do business with you, you will lose sales. Read this PayPal virtual terminal review. PayPal is one of the easiest third-party payment processors to set up. It’s also one of the most widely used service providers.

There’s a reason for that. The company is big. It’s not without its faults, but most users are happy with the service and they process most transactions without any problems. Users know what to expect, and they trust PayPal.

Georgia Miles is a freelance web designer with plenty of retail storefront experience. She enjoys the challenge of creating an online store and shares her insights on all that involves an online audience. Georgia writes frequently for several B2B websites.

Image source: BigStock

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