It sounds simple but an important role that we play when working with clients is talking through how the website should be structured. With an ecommerce site one of the most important areas is the products and so it’s critical that you consider how you will be listing your products, so that it is easy for your visitors to access them.
With most ecommerce content management systems there will be features to enhance browsing, for example advanced search filters, additional categories, multi-level categories or tagging products. First though it’s important to define a clear structure for your products.
TEST ON ALL SCREEN SIZES
These days it’s generally accepted that all reputable web design companies will build a website that works well on all different screen sizes and different devices. This approach to web design is known as “responsive design”.
It is important that you check your website on a variety of different devices; a phone, tablet and desktop will give you enough variety as particularly when we are talking about ecommerce websites the small things can make a very big difference.
Ensure that you follow the purchase journey on these different devices as whilst most web designers will test as they build and also before going live, we are all human and things can get overlooked. As the business owner you need to be happy that the experience is perfect from start to finish on every possible device.
DISCOUNT CODES
Offering a promotion is a good way of stimulating a transaction but of course you will then be eating into your margin. Most ecommerce content management systems will allow you to offer a discount code giving the user either a monetary or percentage saving. You can take this further and make it more effective by doing things such as:
- Adding an expiry date
- Only offering a discount on specific products or ranges
- Offering a discount code to only new visitors and perhaps putting it behind an email list form
EASE OF CHECKOUT
When discussing screen sizes earlier we said that small things can make a big difference and undoubtably this is truest when looking at the checkout. Let’s assume that a website has a 10% conversion rate and then we increase that to 15%. In real terms we will now be generating 50% more sales. Ease of checkout is critical to your success when selling products or services online.
HIGHLIGHT BEST SELLERS
A feature within our content management system that is simple, but also powerful, is the ability to pull out lists of products based on tags. The most used example is to pull out best sellers onto a homepage. However, with a little thought a feature like this can have powerful uses. Why not try using a feature like this to promote products alongside the basket, creating specific landing pages to then target via SEO or to promote related products alongside an individual product's full details?
IN SUMMARY
Ecommerce web design is a massive area so here we have looked at just 5 things that you can consider. If you are interested in getting any help on either your existing website or a new project, then please get in touch and one of our team will be happy to help.
