5 Factors of an Effective Ecommerce Website Design

An eCommerce website provides a secure Internet-based facility for transactions between a business and a customer. You can use rich media presentations to help customers with their purchasing decisions, provide live support for customer inquiries, take and fulfill orders, and even provide real-time tracking of physical product deliveries. Regardless of what feature these eCommerce websites may have, they have one main purpose and that is to generate sales for the business 24 hours a day.

Although setting up an eCommerce website has never been easier, the biggest challenge for most businesses is setting up an effective website that tirelessly drives sales for the business day in and day out.

The crucial element is in the design and structure of your eCommerce website. This will make or break your online business. It’s like having a 200 horsepower engine but without the right chassis, you’re not going to end up anywhere.

So, to ensure a good return on your time, money, and skill, be sure to keep these factors in mind.

1. Answer the #1 question on your customer’s mind

All successful eCommerce websites know how to answer a critical customer question: “What’s in it for me?” Let’s face it, all customers are “me-oriented”. You are a customer yourself and you can attest that before paying attention to a product or service, you must first answer “what’s in it for you?”

So if you don’t give site visitors a reason to care about your products or services, no amount of sophistication on your eCommerce site can make the sale.

2. Organized content

Have you ever been to a market where all the vendors yell at you about what they have to offer? Not only is he confusing, he’s irritating. This would also be the case if you are trying to present all your product benefits, features, prices, and promotions on one page.

So structure your content wisely. Categorize your products or services based on functionality, benefit, feature, color, or size. Be that as it may, always put yourself in the place of your client. Organize your products/services in the way you think your customer can best find them and decide what they are looking for.

3. Use color and images to your advantage

Colors and images inspire feelings. It’s no coincidence that coffee shops like Starbucks and Coffee Bean use almost the same color tones and images. Upon entering them, you instantly feel relaxed by the atmosphere and the comfortable chairs invite you to sit back, relax, forget about the world while enjoying the warmth, aroma and taste of the coffee.

In much the same way, the proper use of color and images on your eCommerce website will set the mood for your customers to linger, read, listen, or see what your product can do for them.

4. Do not sell or promise too much

Nothing will make a customer grab their wallet and run faster than a sales pitch that sounds like an infomercial. No matter how effective other marketers claim it to be, don’t cheapen your website by sounding like a used car salesman.

Your website must convey a lot of credibility and prestige to earn the trust of your customers.

And finally…

5. High-touch vs. high technology

There is no doubt that an e-commerce website has a lot of complexities attached to quickly process multiple online transactions at any given time. It is much more efficient compared to hiring many salespeople to handle each customer individually. However, you should never go ‘high tech’ on your website to impress your customers. Gone are the days when people were in awe of technology. In fact, some are already nauseated.

Instead, your eCommerce website should engage with customers the way a real person would. It should be intuitive for the user where only information and features relevant to the customer are presented.

Since people want information and they want it now, your eCommerce website must create the impression that you can quickly meet their needs.