eCommerce
Design

Designing an eCommerce site is a science and art within itself. Nothing can be more important than getting a user to enter a website and stay long enough to purchase.  As both a business and web developer, I understand the amount of effort it takes to build a site that builds confidence for the brand to the end-user.

Branding Is Key:

Branding is key when it comes to an eCommerce design. Branding starts with the logo. A good logo will resonate confidence to your users. The logo color scheme should closely match the rest of the site. The branding can be used in all areas of marketing.

Branding is something that you can’t easily quantify when you are seriously working on it for the first time. The logo, color scheme on the page, and all the other visual elements come together to make your site interesting, appealing, and memorable to your wider audience. Branding is what makes people excited to buy new clothes, shoes, and every other commodity out there.

Branding also makes people associate a business with a specific feeling – one that hopefully makes them want to buy. Proper branding also makes people want to engage with businesses more on social media. It is color, image, text, site design, and more. It’s so big of an effort that it covers all aspects of marketing.

The benefits of great branding include:

• Your site serves your customers better. Proper branding reduces abandoned cart syndrome, too.
• You can share your business’ vision and story better, and newer customers will warm up to your story more quickly because the right environment has been created for them.
• Having a space for your advocacy. Every business should advocate something positive.
• Set expectations about what your eCommerce site is about, to boost customer experience (CX).

Page Design Considerations:

An e-commerce site is more complicated due to the number of individual page designs. While most corporate sites will require a home page and an inner page design, an e-commerce site requires all pages related to the products and the checkout process. The pages in an eCommerce site have different functions, depending on the type of information or process the site wants to present.

The following page designs are required for a properly designed website:

Category Page:

The category page is where all your cart product categories are listed. This should have a thumbnail that represents that product category.  This can include a brief description of the category. In some cases, there are sub-categories within the product category page. Category pages can be both image-focused and crafted with sufficient text to still be used to target relevant keywords. Some of the top strategies for optimizing category pages are:

– Optimizing the internal linking strategy of the ecommerce site

– Removing all keyword bloat or stuffing in the category pages.

– Creating external links that lead to the category pages.

– Make it easier for customers to navigate to category pages from individual product pages.

Product Page:

Directly under the category page should be the product page. This page will contain products that are associated with those under a specific category. This can include a brief description, the price of the product, and the quantity available.   Because this page will contain abbreviated information, there is a need for a single page that contains the high-level detail for the specific product. The goal is to have an optimized product page that will be optimized for search engines and provide a positive page experience to customers. A positive page experience produces a better customer experience and also converts customers better. Higher conversions will, of course, lead to better sales and higher ROI.

What does an optimized page look like?

– It uses more than one high-quality image to sell products to customers directly.

– It contains relevant keywords to make it easier for customers to find products.

– It shares genuine reviews and customer testimonials.

It makes proper use of white space, and the page’s visual balance is just right.

– Logos and other important branding elements are placed consistently throughout the product page.

Product Detail Page:

The product detail page contains all the information related to that product. This might include packaging, SKU, product ID, and price. In many cases, this page contains pages related to the individual product set as “suggested products.” In most cases, these are located directly after the product information section. This is the area of the cart where the user adds products that can be purchased.

Checkout Page:

The checkout page is where the user can view the items that have been added to the cart. This is normally accessed by clicking on a “view cart” button or link. This is the page where the user can see an itemized list of products and the total amount due at checkout.

The biggest problem related to the checkout page is probably cart abandonment. Cart abandonment stems from so many possible reasons:

– Lack of clarity in fees

– The customer can’t work out or see the total of their purchases immediately

– The checkout process is too complex

– The customers don’t trust the site

Payment Page:

The payment page is where the user enters payment information into the cart. User information is collected at this point. This includes name and billing address as well as the shipping address.

Payment Confirmation Page:

After the user successfully checks out, they are redirected to the payment confirmation page. This page lets the users know that they have purchased their products, and most likely, it will come with a thank you message. This page should have a link going to the cart’s main page if the user wants to continue to browse the site and do more shopping.

Web Development

SEO, PPC, Email & Business Marketing

Ecommerce Solutions & Development