E-Commerce Website Designing for Startup Businesses

The CEO of L’Oreal, Jean Paul Agon has rightly said, “Ecommerce isn’t the cherry on the cake, it’s the new cake.”  Are your customers having a tough time  browsing your e-com site? If yes, there are certainly some issues in your site’s designs and it’s very likely costing your business A LOT of lost revenue.  It goes without saying that, if we want to maximize revenue in today’s work-from-home era, quality  design and implementation of e-commerce websites absolutely must be a top priority in order to to generate traffic and improve conversion.  Get feedback from your customers on your e-commerce site’s User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) so you have the information necessary to create a frictionless and intuitive experience; helping them find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. , Want to know how to avoid common mistakes in e-commerce website design? Awesome. Let’s dig a little deeper..  

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Aesthetic is Important 

Creating something stylish that aligns with  your business’s brand identity is one of the main website design principles for e-commerce websites. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see how a stylish landing page can add value to your small business or startup e-commerce site. To put it simply, a customized and stylized landing page allows potential customers (and investors) to easily get to know you through your brand’s identity. Think about the last time you visited a website that was tough to find what you’re looking for. Remember how frustrating it felt? Most people subconsciously judge the quality of the business SOLELY by the look and feel of their website. Remember, you never get a second chance at making a first impression. . 

Smooth Checkout Process is a Must

Make it easy for people to give you money. 👈  Read that again.

Are your customers finding it difficult to check out and process their order? r Let’s face it, nobody loves waiting for things. People can be impatient.  You need to make the journey from the shopping cart to payment processing quick and easy for them. Otherwise, you are missing out on a lot of revenue.. Here’s are some ideas for a quick and easy  checkout process:

1. Ask for  the minimum amount of information from the customers. The less they have to type and fill in boxes, the less friction there is in your checkout process.
2. Keep thing easy, and don’t try to overwhelm  them with instructions. If there are ever any steps you can do for them or if your store requires custom measurements (for example), make sure that your customer knows exactly when and where to enter in that custom information.
3. If you can keep the checkout process to one page, keep it to one page.
   

The more steps involved in the checkout process, the more time they have to change their mind and move to any other site. Ideally, the checkout process should be as simple as adding the products, entering payment and shipping info, and finally clicking on the submit button. This may seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised to see how many sites do this step wrong.

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Responsive Design for multiple devices: 

One of the common mistakes in e-commerce website design is not designing your site to be responsive so that your site’s layout scales and reformats depending on which device your customer is using to view it  (laptop, iPhone, iPad, etc.). 

“Mobile accounts for approximately half of web traffic worldwide. In the third quarter of 2020, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 50.81 percent of global website traffic, consistently hovering around the 50 percent mark since the beginning of 2017.” (Source: Statista)

Make sure that your website is  designed to offer a seamless browsing experience on any device. 

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Include a search bar and filters: 

People are pretty specific about what they want. The design and implementation of e-commerce websites should allow them to refine their search results. The last thing customers want to spend their valuable time doing is sifting through endless lists of uncategorized products. What’s the solution? Make sure that your website has a search functionality. It helps users search by keyword and refine results based on the categories that are relevant to them. For example,  being able to sort by price: highest or lowest, the newest items, or the most popular items. 

There are an endless number of distractions on our phones and computers. And once you have a potential customer’s attention, you want to hold onto it for as long as possible. Aside from providing a product or service of value for your customers, one of the most effective ways to keep their attention (and their business) is by making it very easy for them to buy from and support your business.

Remember, always always always lead with empathy and put yourself in your customer’s shoes.