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Website design for ecommerce is completely different than design for informational websites. With design theories and designers abound, it is imperative to choose ecommerce web design specialists that specialize in ecommerce website design for the success of your online store.

The main components to successful ecommerce web design:

1. Creating the right design (layout, color scheme, navigation, etc.) for your industry or market.
2. Constructing the site with search engine friendly code & cross-browser compatibility.
3. Making sure the site contains the right information, usability, call-to-action areas, product layout, images, and is easy to navigate to generate sales.
4. Make sure to keep it fresh, up-to-date, and listen to customer feedback.

Now, let’s look at each of these areas in closer detail:

Creating the Right Design

Because our clients have such a wide array of needs when it comes to corporate image and interactive features, it’s best to have a custom website design created for your online storefront. This allows ecommerce web design specialists to create a design by incorporating special requirements that are unique to your business and online goals.

The layout should represent the company brand and image while keeping the graphics simple to minimize distractions. After all the goal of an ecommerce website is to generate sales not to wow customers with distracting graphics.

The ecommerce web design specialists should incorporate a primary navigation, a category navigation and a sub-navigation. The primary navigation should include links to a company introduction, contact info, customer service, and others. The category navigation should include links to main categories with all products belonging to a main category group or a subcategory within a category. The sub-navigation should include links to a privacy policy, return policy, term of use, and other minor areas. All navigation links should be simple and easy to read allowing the user to quickly find their areas of interest.

Search Engine Friendly Coding

In terms of effectiveness and search engine guidelines, there is a right and a wrong way to develop an ecommerce website. Websites have a unique code structure which defines how the user will view the page and interact with the page features. The web page can be designed with sloppy, excessive code or with clean code written in a format that favors search engines. Honest and well experienced ecommerce web design specialists are likely to design web pages using clean code. This allows the page to load faster and rank well in the search engines which in turn typically results in more visitors and increased sales.

You should know there are many levels of what different developers consider clean code. Some developers are absolutely overexcited about it while others could care less. For the most part when we talk about “clean code” we mean most of the “decoration” code is off the page. The code is included in an external file such as a cascading style sheets or CSS. The same applies to some of the functionality code such as mouse over effects and form functions as this code should be in an external JavaScript file.

The Right Information

When choosing an ecommerce web design specialist, know what to look for. Your website must contain the right information (text and images) to educate and sell to your customers. Locating categories and products easily is primarily based on comprehensive and easy-to-use site navigation. The harder it is to locate products or information the greater chance you have of losing that sale. Your website should also include a call-to-action (i.e., Buy Now, Call Today, Order While Supplies Last) and it should be consistent throughout the website. This is an advertising and marketing concept, a request/direction to ‘do something’ – often the next step that a consumer could take toward the purchase of a product or service.

Be aware that very few online development professionals are really good in all areas of development. Many developers are not ecommerce web design specialists and only specialize in one area of website development, such as a surgeon (you wouldn’t hire an optometrist to perform heart surgery, would you?). Some designers are outstanding at designing logos and artwork, but may struggle with programming interactive features. Other developers may excel in database programming, but be completely unfamiliar with the essential elements of creating a website that appeals to consumers. Learn beforehand that you are likely going to need an experienced team of ecommerce web design specialists to make your site successful, and above all, don’t hire your developer(s) based on cost. When choosing a designer, programmer, SEO or other online development professional, check their references and review their portfolio.

Many believe it’s cost-effective to hire an inexpensive developer to create an online storefront. However, many of these low-cost developers lack the knowledge needed to get the job done and with elements needed for success. It is simply much more expensive to pay a cheap developer and then have to hire others to fix that person’s work after you’ve lost sales and visitors.

Connecting With Your Consumers

Lastly, make SURE your consumers like what you’ve done with your storefront. A great way to do this is to employ feedback questionnaires or polls on the site. Your customers’ feedback can be valuable to the growth of your business so gather their information and consider changing or trying new things.

Dynamic Changes for a Dynamic Market Place

Lastly, updates are king. Make sure your developer can offer website maintenance services or can provide a content management system (CMS) that will allow you to make changes to your website. Fresh material added regularly to your site keeps visitors coming back to see what’s new. Consider updated the site regularly with information concerning the natural activity of your business such as news and events, promotional offers, sales and new product announcements.

Websites must continually evolve and be refined to meet the increasing demands of your audience or client base, as well as reflect the progressing technologies and new browser versions. When updates are made often, by you or ecommerce web design specialists, it can make the difference on whether people can find your site from a search engine or link index. Search engines love fresh content.

If you would like more information on anything discussed here or if you are ready to discuss your project, give us a call or send us an email.