(because sometimes there are just more than ten)
There will officially be more than three billion people online in one form or another by the end of the year, and success as an e-tailer means getting attention (and money) from as many of them as possible. The journey these hordes of potential customers take from discovering you to either checkout or to your competitors is largely defined by your website. More than 60% of all purchase decisions are made online now, so having a website that is responsive, engaging and easy to use is vital to your place in the new market.
An effective website moves the customer along quickly, and makes the buying experience as easy for the customer as possible. Great design is still important to get their attention and hold it, but any failure in functionality will cause customers to abandon their virtual carts and leave your shop.
When we build an e-commerce site for a client here at the Little Design Studio, we make sure to address each of the following points with them. Take a look – your website will be all the better (and more profitable) for it.
A website that navigates easily and intuitively lets visitors find the content they need and then achieve what they need to with it (in the case of e-commerce, finding and purchasing a particular product) before they hit their frustration threshold and try the next website. Keep in mind, this may be as little as 30 seconds for some customers.
Clear navigation also helps with SEO, as it makes it easier for search engines to understand what your page does.
So how do you ensure navigability? To catch a fish, you have to think like a fish.
Get into your typical customer’s head. How did they find your site? Where did they enter it? What will they try first to find the content they are after? What will happen once they do? Make sure the first way a typical customer tries to navigate your site actually works.
This is really an example of easy navigation, but it deserves its own place on the list. Take www.johnlewis.com for example. It features a prominent, almost aggressively dominating search bar. Never underestimate how useful this is for e-commerce. If a visitor doesn’t see exactly what they came for at the top of the home page, they will generally search for it even before scrolling down.
Consider keeping the search bar at the top of every page, becoming the touchstone of your page’s navigation. It also helps keep users on the site longer, encouraging them to look around a bit, as they can easily find their way back.
Far too many people in e-commerce underestimate or fail to understand SEO, and it costs them (collectively) billions every year. Without proper SEO, a site becomes almost totally dependent on pay-per-click for visitors, and that is just no way to make money.
Get to know the difference between on-site and off-site SEO, or hire a designer or content creator who already does. It will make a world of difference.
I don’t just mean your branding. A site’s personality should inform all aspects of the user experience, making your site memorable amongst the thousand or so some people see every day.
For example, take www.bighugsfrom.co.uk/. It is clean, simple and easy to navigate, which is vital. Nonetheless, it isn’t stark or utilitarian. It’s actually quite charming. The layout and colour theme are clean and simple, but everything has been tweaked just enough to be unique. It’s that little bit of personality shining through that makes visitors remember your site and want to return.
Building a strong and effective email list is a very long process, but if you put the work in it will be an incredibly valuable marketing tool, especially when the holidays roll around.
Almost every e-commerce site has an email sign-up form now, and most are ignored. Make yours interesting, appealing and noticeable without being pushy.
Real, well-worded testimonials are pure gold. Customers want a reason to believe your website’s claims, and have reason to doubt if they haven’t shopped with you before. If you’ve had an email complimenting your products or services, publish it on your site.
Most customers who actually intend to spend money today already know exactly what they want. Let them filter out the irrelevant options and categories as early as possible, and get to what they want.
If you sell clothing, let them choose to ONLY see the items you have in that size. If you sell video games, let them select their system right away. Nothing is more frustrating (or a bigger waste of time) than finding exactly what you want and then discovering that it won’t work for you.
Once they do narrow their navigation as in #7, let them change it easily, without having to go all the way back to the beginning and start over. Many won’t bother hitting their browser’s back button half a dozen times. They’ll just try another website
Just as in #7 above, customers will become frustrated if they have already chosen an item, and only discover it is out of stock once they go to the shopping cart. They will, more often than not, abandon the cart and move on to another seller rather than search for another, similar item on your site. If the item they searched for was marked clearly as out of stock in the search results (and before wasting their time) they would be more likely to search for something else on your site.
E-commerce is a heavily visual process. Online customers buy with their eyes, not their fingers. High quality, attractive pictures will attract business. Plan out your product pages around a set of high resolution, well-staged photos. Maybe a slide show, or tiled thumbnails. Blurry or pixelated pics will put off your customers, and make the entire site look bad.
Many shoppers resent being sent to the cart or basket every time they add an item. Still, you have to make it possible for them to start checking out at any time. The solution is to keep the cart accessible or even visible at all times, and let them pay for it all just as soon as they decide to. Even one extra click can lead to an abandoned cart.
