Building an e-Commerce Site: Tips for Web Developers
Every site owner would like to have great audiences of devoted visitors, but it is especially important for e-commerce site owners. The key task of such sites is to serve clients by providing the information and products they need. Online shopping sites require professional design, smart navigation and many more preconditions to guarantee high conversions rate and, as a result, stable profit for site owners.
Let’s find out what should web developers know before they start creating an e-Commerce site.
• Identify your target audiences.
Knowing who your target audience is implies knowing their design preferences, shopping behavior, and emotions that could trigger their buying decision. This will help you know what information visitors to the site need and get their positive response resulting in a purchase. As for e-commerce sites their design should be simple and easy-to-perceive. To many design elements, no matter how artistic they are, will only distract users from the main aim of visiting your site.
• Simple navigation and advanced site search.
Visitors to e-commerce sites expect to find what they need in no time. So, it is of paramount importance to provide intuitive navigation and easy-to-use site search. The latter is essential to a successful shopping site too. Try using different filtering methods to enable users sort products according to different criteria. For instance, this Magento extension allows filtering products according to color, size and price parameters.
As for one more business sites element – the shopping cart – it should be 100% visible and accessible. Be sure to place it in a visible place, enable preview mode for the customers to see the number of items and total price anytime they want.
• High resolution images
Product images are the core of any e-commerce site. These should be high resolution photos presenting images from different angles. Having a detailed picture of the item they are looking for can be a considerable conversions factor for many people. Note, it is advisable to provide product info next to the very image too. This is very likely to persuade prospect buyers.
• Using videos for product promotion.
Having product videos is a great way to increase the interactivity of a website. This is where you can show all the benefits of the products you have to offer and establish the climate of trust with your customers. However, video should not be too long. Opt for its convincing and informative aspects instead.
• Avoid distracting elements
Most of the people get irritated when too many ads, banners and pop-up windows appear as they search your site. So, try to make your customers shopping environment as smooth as possible if you don’t want them to switch to other sites.
• Transaction mode: multiples options
Taking into account the lever of cybercrime, asking for credit card information from every customer is definitely a bad idea. Many people will hesitate to give it, which will result in losing a customer for you. So, be sure to provide multiple payment options at your online store. This will help your new clients feel confident about their purchase process.
Finally, remember that building an e-commerce site is a never-ending process. New trends and techniques appear every day. So, be ready to constantly customize and improve your site.
