People like to shop online. Globally, about 40% of all internet users have bought goods or services online from computers, tablets, phones and other devices. This translates into more than one billion online consumers. This number is only expected to increase. In 2013, global e commerce sales to consumers were estimated to be worth more than $1.3 trillion. In the United States during that same year, e commerce sales were worth more than $38 million. If you sell goods or services online, the right web design can make a big difference for your bottom line.
- Make it easy to register for your site. You want to get information from the people who visit your site and buy your products or services but you also want to make the process to sign up for your site to be as simple as possible. You may think you need everything from their profession to their contact phone number and address but you really only need their email address. The easier it is to sign up for your site, the more likely it that people will do it. The only things you should require people to tell you are their email address and they need to set a password for their account on your e commerce site.
- Include buttons with calls to action. Make any buttons you design for calls to action stand out. This will require you to pick colors that work with but stand out from your background. You need to have a short and simple message. Use the IP address to determine what language your buttons with your calls to action appear in. This can help make your campaigns be more successful.
- Let guests buy from you. You probably want everyone to register for your site but not everyone who wants to buy something that you are selling will want to do that. Let people buy your items without registering for your site. If they get good customer service from your company and like the products they buy, they may come back and register later or the next time they want to buy something from you. By allowing people to buy as a guest will increase your e commerce sales. When you are looking at e-commerce web design, you should keep in mind that companies that let people buy without registering for their sites have increased global sales by about $300 million.
- Let people search for what they want. Having a search function be a part of e-commerce websites is a very popular thing to do. It can be very frustrating for people to have to scroll through hundreds or thousands of products when they know what they are looking for. If a web page takes more than three seconds to load, at least 40% of all internet users give up and look elsewhere. Given how little time you have to make the visitors to your site happy, you can see how having a search function can get your customers to the products they are looking for and increase the likelihood that you will make a sale.
- Incorporate breadcrumb navigation in your web design. Breadcrumb navigation is a secondary navigation that shows people where they are in the shopping process. It lets them see how many steps they need to complete to make a purchase and how many they have done and how many they have left. This is a useful tool for e commerce sites that prevents customers from feeling lost in the process and giving up before they have completed it. This can let consumers correct any mistakes they made along the way.
- Make your shopping cart system secure and easy to use. You need to have a good system to manage and store personal data. You need the people who buy from you to feel safe giving you their personal and billing information. They need to know that no one can get the personal information they share with your e commerce site. You need your site to have a current SSL certificate.
People love the convenience of buying products online. Your e commerce site can be a success if you make it as easy and safe to use as possible.