Great Tips for Designing an Ecommerce Site

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Nowadays, many people are using ecommerce sites to promote different kinds of products. To succeed in this increasingly competitive market, you need to create an attractive website with a user-friendly interface. This will ensure that your visitors enjoy a unique online shopping experience on your site. Here are some tips for an effective ecommerce site design.

1. Instant field validation

The aim of your ecommerce web design should be to provide a pleasant user experience. You need to consider the user’s satisfaction when designing the functionalities for your site. Field validation is one of the most important features of any ecommerce site and should be designed in way which is user-friendly. If someone enters a value which is not correct, the interface should give an error message immediately before the user proceeds to the next field. This makes it easy for the user to correct their mistake right away.

It would be a big mistake to have a design where the error message appears only after the user has completed all the fields and clicked the checkout button. In such a case, the data that had already been entered is likely to be lost. This will end up frustrating users and result in a high bounce rate.

2. Suggested search feature

The search option is a very important element of an ecommerce site. In most cases, the homepage can only display a limited number of products or links to product categories. Therefore, the search option can come in very handy in helping visitors find what they are looking for on your site. Better still, you could have the suggested search feature which offers several suggestions as users type in their query. To enhance your chances of success, design your search result page to show details such as the product price, photo and the number of units available.

3. Interactive shopping cart

When someone buys a product, don’t take them immediately to the checkout page. Instead, give them a few more shopping options. Though some buyers will opt to go straight to the checkout page, others will be willing to explore your site further to check out other related products. For instance, people purchasing laptops can be directed to the laptop accessories page. This is likely to result in more sales.

4. Rich product demo

In addition to text content and photos, demo videos can also be very useful for promoting your products. Such demos provide an effective way of showing how your product actually looks and how they work. This makes it easier for visitors to make a decision and is likely to enhance the conversion rate.

5. Instant inventory check

This is an absolutely essential requirement for any ecommerce site. When customers choose the color, size or other feature of a product, they should know instantly if what they are looking for is in stock. If not, your interface should immediately display a message offering the customer other versions. When buyers discover that what they are looking for is not available at the end of the checkout process, they will get frustrated and might leave without making a purchase.

Charles Mburugu is a professional blogger who likes sharing tips for internet marketers and bloggers. Currently, he is writing for Moto CMS HTML templates