Success of an online store depends on many factors: the product itself, number of potential customers, initial budget, effectiveness of marketing, customer service and of course SEO. Nevertheless, it is the design that plays major role. Consumers just after 3 seconds on your website know whether they will buy your product or not. That is why you should take care of the store’s aesthetics – to improve the attachment of your clients and to increase sales.
1. Store front
How should the store look like to attract customers? There is no fixed answer to this question. Depending on what you sell, you should pay attention to different aspects. However, there is a set of features that refer to all e-businesses. These are:
- readability and clarity: all the elements on your site need to be clear. Most of all, you ought to focus on the exposition of the same products
- simplicity: user has to find himself easily on your website – high level of complexity will make him abandon your store
- attractive display of products: Internet users just love images – therefore, make sure that all pictures of your products are professional and eye-catching.
Don’t forget about the layout of your site too – this has to be beautiful and polished as well. Remember that the design of your store influences your brand’s perception and image. If your site is professional, customers think that you treat them seriously and consider you reliable.
2. Good navigation
Beautiful theme and graphics are essential, but not enough to attract many customers. Besides them, you need to concentrate on clear and intuitive navigation. Researches reveal that 74% of online entrepreneurs think that user experience is crucial for improvement of sales and conversion. Thereby, if you want a user to make a purchase and come back to your store, make surfing on your site easy and comfortable.
Carefully divide your products into categories and arrange them accurately on the site. Try to adopt the perspective of the surfer, predicting how would he search for the products and what distribution will be natural for him. Among all the categories, legibly identify specific items and subcategories. Furthermore, do not forget that a good navigation is also easy return to previous searches.
Summing up, you should always enable a user to find a desirable product on your website quickly and easily. If you do not manage to meet this demand, he will probably abandon your store (and won’t come back). Your aim ought to be to make his experience entirely positive.
3. Exposition of headlines
All the eye-tracking researches confirm that headline is the most visible part of the site – surpassing even flash elements. Users, visiting your online store, quickly scan first words in headline and decide, whether they will stay on the site or leave it. Usually, it doesn’t last more than one second, so the content of a headline has to draw customer’s attention very quickly.
Make sure your headlines stand out and communicate your core activity in a clear and simple way. User at a glance needs to know what your business is all about. It is especially important in terms of your homepage.
4. Mobile version
Mcommerce (mobile commerce), is growing very dynamically – in United States its sales are expected to pass $25 billion by the end of the year. Even though more and more people buy via smartphones and tablets, many stores are still not adapted to mobile devices. More than half of the users state that they have experienced problems shopping on their smartphones. Lack of a mobile version of a site is considered by customers ignorance and leads to negative perception of the brand. What is more, 57% users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site and 41% that they have turned to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience. Do not let this happen to you – adjust your website for smartphones and tablets and you will show clients that you think about them. In addition, you will increase sales and traffic. Statistics of Shoplo.com indicate that after releasing a mobile version, stores generated 12 times more page views than before.
