The importance of a well-designed eCommerce site

There are many aspects when deciding to sell through an e-commerce site. But you cannot neglect the design of a site. It’s important to realise that design is more complicated than simply than how it looks. A well-designed e-commerce site will offer great customer experiences as well as making purchasing easy and straightforward.

Below are some points to consider when designing an e-commerce site:

Navigation

Navigation determines how customers find themselves around on your website. It is regarded by most to be the most vital part of any website, especially an online store. The goals are to present a clear path that will allow the customer to find exactly what they are looking. See image below to view a good navigation system.

Image:  This site Diamond Treats, features the navigation bar in a standard position (top of page). Here on the main menu access to the products can be found through the down drop menu. Which allow fast access to the desired product with a small thumbnail picture. The drop-down menu is split up into categories alongside the categories along the top of the page. This helps to deepen the customer’s search.

Consistency

A consistent and steady design that is in keeping with the company’s branding will help build trust in customers. Consumers first impressions are 94% design-related and are based on superficial elements such as imagery, fonts, and colour schemes. It is important to make sure all the pages use consistent fonts, font-sizes, colours etc…

Responsiveness

It is important to ensure that your website communicates well across various screen sizes. Mobile e-commerce will account for 30% of global e-commerce sales by 2018 (Source: Internet Retailer). Responsive web design will scale a site’s appearance to match the user’s screen size.

Loading Times

Media-rich sites can be slow to load and this will cause potential customers to leave your site. Page load times have also become a ranking factor by Google and can affect your SEO, so it is important to keep them as long as possible. There are some technical elements and optimisation to improve load times. Despite this, the amount and type of media going onto each page should be kept in mind when designing a site.