The best ecommerce websites have one thing in common: they center the user experience from first click to post-checkout. There are four components every ecommerce business should consider when designing a website.
4 elements of great ecommerce website design are:
- Building trust with customers
- Creating a visually compelling experience
- Focusing on responsive design across devices
- Designing clear site navigation
Top 4 Website Design Practices For Ecommerce SEO
Great design does more than make your store look good. It helps people stay longer, explore more, and trust your brand. Search engines notice that too. A well-designed website improves user experience and supports your ecommerce SEO strategy. It even helps you enjoy the long-term benefits of SEO through better rankings, traffic, and conversions.
1. Building Trust With Customers
When someone visits your store or website for the first time, they may not know anything about your brand, the quality of your products, or your commitment to making customers happy. Deals might earn their consideration, but they’ll need to trust you before they make a purchase.
Customer trust is hardest to earn when you don’t have any customers, so you’ll want to incorporate the following trust indicators as you build your website.
Contact information
Include an email and, if possible, a phone number and a mailing address on a contact page and in the footer of your site. This type of information, along with an about page, helps potential customers feel they’re buying from a real person.
A return policy
A return policy not only makes it easier for people to send back products that don’t satisfy them, it actually increases sales by lowering shopping cart abandonment and instilling the customer with a sense of confidence and trust that they can send back an item if they need to, without any transaction fees.
Not only does Supergoop have a comprehensive returns page and self-directed returns portal, it also boasts its free returns policy on every product page.
Payment security
By adding Shopify Payments to your ecommerce website, you’ll give customers access to a wide range of payment options with the latest security technology to protect customer information. Add graphics or badges to show your security compliance and all the payment methods you accept.
Customer reviews and testimonials
Many ecommerce solutions let you import reviews from across the web into your site. This includes customer photos, social media messages, and even reviews posted to other retailers. These are signals to potential customers that your brand is trustworthy.
2. Creating A Visually Compelling Experience
Perception is everything when selling your products online. People form their first impression of your ecommerce store in mere milliseconds. Making that impression count rests on high-quality images, consistent branding design, smart use of psychological design, and a clear visual hierarchy.
- Build an online store with AI: Create a website in minutes with the AI store builder. Describe your brand or products to generate a free custom theme that fits your idea. Here are some best practices for each of these elements:
- Photography: Product photography is like an ambassador, sharing the promise of your product online. Shoot product photos on a plain background and in many angles. Lifestyle photos are important to show your product in use and in context within an environment. They also reinforce a brand aesthetic.
- Color: Color is one of the most powerful tools you can use to spark interest and emotion on your ecommerce site. It can also be used to draw attention to specific sections of your website and lead the customer journey. Smart use of color can help with accessibility, too.
- Fonts: While the words you write on your ecommerce site share information, it’s the typography that communicates the emotion behind that information. It’s a good idea to stick to two fonts and create a hierarchy between them. Choose one font as your header or title font and another to be your body font.
- Psychological design and visual hierarchy: Using psychological design principles allows you to influence customers’ decisions and guide their eyes with strategically placed elements, colors, and text.
Outdoor Voices’ homepage features lifestyle images to communicate its brand aesthetic and an aspirational lifestyle. It focuses on limited fonts for a clean look and a clear visual hierarchy.
3. Focusing On Responsive Design Across Devices
The average American spends 5 hours and 16 minutes on a mobile phone each day. Luckily, if you’re building your business with Shopify, your store is already responsive. This means the site is user-friendly on different devices and screen sizes, whether customers view it on a desktop, smartphone, or tablet.
When choosing an ecommerce website design based on mobile optimization, it’s best to personally test it to see if you’re happy with the transactional flow. If you’re not, there’s a good chance your customers won’t be either.
4. Designing Clear Site Navigation
Your website navigation should help customers find your products quickly and easily. Good navigation also helps improve SEO on your site so you get found in search results.
Stick to only a few menu headers in your top-level navigation. Be clear and direct when labeling these headers, this is no time to be clever. Key headers to include in your top-level navigation could include:
- Shop
- About Us
- Bestsellers
- Contact Us
Additional navigation links can go in your footer, i.e., the section at the bottom of your website. Return Policy, Terms of Service, and Contact Us pages can be linked here.
Smart ecommerce design and strong SEO always work together. Clear navigation, mobile-friendly layouts, and trust-building elements create a better shopping experience for users and search engines alike. When your website is easy to use and easy to find, your ecommerce SEO services deliver stronger and more lasting results.