The Elements of Designs that Enhance your Online Store:

Having an online store is the best way to multiply your business opportunities. In fact, it is arguably the most cost-efficient method to enhance your revenue. However, many businesses tend to “misuse” this cost-effective method of boosting the business and they end up making costly mistakes instead. One such mistake is using the unfriendly or complicated website design. Just like you cannot afford to neglect the interior design or architecture of your Supermarket, in the same way, you need to be extremely careful about the “digital interior decor” of your online supermarket.

 

Add a Search Bar and Place on the right Position

Adding a search bar to your eCommerce site allows the users to land directly at the information or the product they are looking for. That saves time and facilitates browsing- something that would certainly Wow your mobile audience on the go. It is a boon for the buyers who don’t waste time journeying through multiple WebPages/locations. They are most likely to type their desired product(s), hit the search button and pat land at the page containing the desired product or information! They get products and you get money…that’s the simple, quick equation! But take the search box out of this equation and you would lose a golden opportunity!

 

Best Practices

• Design the search box attractively and highlight it against the backdrop of your website to make it stand out.
• Avoid being loud though- screaming garish colors and shapes with sharp edges annoy the retina.
• A balanced combination of bright and pastel colors, smooth shapes and right proportions help a great way in inviting attention!
• Ideal and precise tags on different products assist in displaying accurate results and eliminate unnecessary sifting.
• Ease the client’s journey by placing auto-filtering functionality on top of the search results page.

 

Pro Tips

• Ensconce the Search box/button inside a soothing surrounding for a better impact.
• Position it in the center of the top pane of your web pages.
• The proportions of the box on the home page should be bigger in order to make it stand out!

 

Make your Exit Pages Friendly

The term Exit page is self-explanatory, and you should be careful while designing them to leave a good impression on the existing clients so that they should be encouraged to return back.

Log on to Google analytics and click on exit pages in the site content option that you would find in the behaviour menu. It will display the exit pages of your site.
 

Tips for Boosting your Exit Page Impact 

• Check for any old content that is past its relevance and replaces the outdated portions with updated content. Take this opportunity to introduce any additional content to improve the impact and present relevance.
• Encountering broken links or other page errors annoy the existing clients thus spoiling the last impression. Check for such errors and fix them quickly. Many errors can be fixed using automated functionality without any complicated manual processes.
• Use internal linking to the related content to elongate the visitors’ stay and encourage them to interact further.
• Give a straightforward idea to your client for further proceeding or continuing future interaction by adding email sign-up or other relevant CTA button.

 

Trust Building Ecosystem

 A high increase in online frauds has alerted any serious buyers who would not like to share their key details with any e-commerce site before vetting its authority. So, by making modest designing changes you can create an authoritative ecosystem to encourage the shoppers.
 

Tips to build an authoritative Ecosystem

• Having your contact info on the home page (and on every page, if possible) in legible fonts at appropriate position strengthens visitors’ trust and encourages them for proceeding further.
• Likewise having a live chat facility allows the persons to reaffirm your genuineness and more importantly assure them that they can directly ask for real-time human help to take care of any issues in the middle of shopping.
• The stats strongly prove the impact of live chat in enhancing the conversion rates.

 

Include a "Digital Play Area" for Every Age

The human mind likes some entertainment. So, entertaining your clients could be an ideal way to engage and convince them. Instead of loud ads touting the latest discounts and schemes you can actually expect a better impact by displaying the things in an “entertaining” interactive way.

 

Example 

For instance, instead of just displaying the minimum shopping amount to get a certain discount, you can design an attractive progress bar (maybe as a race-route) visually telling your clients how far they are from the goal of getting a specific discount (Client= Runner, total amount so far= present point in the racing route and Minimum amount for achieving discount= finishing line).

 

Tips

• The gamification encourages human brains to think in terms of “achieving rewards” and deliver them periodical “feel good” doses on each instance of milestone achievement by boosting their dopamine. It keeps the spirits high!
• Thus, it encourages the clients to keep proceeding on their journey (shopping) for achieving the reward (discount)!
• It could look like a childish idea but even such “childish” ideas are worth trying- especially when the stats prove that these childish ideas (read gamification!) can help in increasing conversions by 7 times!
• Progress bars, Badges, and stars with corresponding real rewards (discount on next purchases, a free shopper’s card etc), point-based rewards for reviews or social engagement (and fixing minimum points to get certain discounts etc.)

 

Conclusion

The website design and navigation architecture play a great role in determining the success of any online store. By offering an easy and attractive design flow and facilitating the navigation you can provide a great experience to the site visitors, encourage them to explore more and increase their stay period. It eventually helps in improving the conversion rate. In this blog, we have mentioned the best tips on how to design your online store strategically in order to offer a positive experience to your visitors.