Focus on These 3 Areas to Optimize Your eCommerce Website Design
Once you’ve made the leap to ecommerce, you expect the sales to come rolling in. This online sales format promises a fast, efficient, actionable way for customers to buy.
However, what do you do when your sales seem slow? Who is to blame? If your website could put in their two cents, they’d say, “It’s not you, it’s me.”
Your business may deliver superior products and services, but if your website isn’t optimized, customers won’t follow the journey all the way through to the checkout screen.
But don’t go blaming your site completely. It’s up to you to take action, so you can reap the benefits of ecommerce and achieve the success you deserve.
Keep reading to learn about three areas you can improve to see better conversion rates. Our website design services team at iFocus Marketing uses these strategies and more to help our clients find success with ecommerce.
Design, Design, Design.
Website design is a big part of the reason why websites don’t convert. It is essential that you treat your website as a brick-and-mortar store. At a successful store on a busy street, customers should be able to take one look at the storefront and understand what’s inside. The storefront’s look and condition should also make them want to go inside.
Once they’ve entered, what they’re looking for should be displayed attractively. There should be salespeople who offer friendly banter and can help answer questions. It should be clear where customers are supposed to pay. No one would argue that this isn’t a highly effective way to run a shop.
When it comes to ecommerce website design, however, many businesses don’t think these same principles apply. But it’s still necessary to ensure your website design communicates who you are, what you offer, why it matters, and how to buy.
Consider focusing on these design principles to improve your online sales:
- Structure: Create a sitemap that provides opportunities for customers to learn, browse, seek help, or buy, so that you can meet their needs, no matter where they are in the marketing funnel. Pathways that satisfy various user intents are essential to delivering a comprehensive experience.
- Creative: Choose high-resolution imagery and colors that capture your audience’s attention, communicate your brand, and what you offer. Your design should feel current and be responsive depending on the screen your site visitors are using, such as smartphones, small laptops, or desktop computers. Our experts in website design services can create a new look for your business.
- Copy: Ensure your website’s copy hooks your audience by explaining that you understand their problem and you have goods and services that can solve it. Appeal to your customer’s logic, as well as their emotions. Clearly explain your products’ value proposition and provide useful information to help them make decisions. Adopt a tone that is trustworthy, authoritative, and appropriate for your brand and audience.
These principles and many others are critical to your website’s success.
Remember UX for Your eCommerce Website Design
Website design is all about how the look and structure of your website achieves its purpose. User experience (UX) considers whether your website is functional and easy to use, so you can ensure users get to the places you want them to go.
You may have an effective design in place: a smartly designed sitemap with great copy and imagery. However, if your webpage loads slowly, it’s not optimized for mobile, or each action you want customers to take requires extra steps and clicks, you haven’t considered UX.
Here are some of the most significant UX issues business owners face:
- The site’s navigation is confusing. Customers don’t know where to click to satisfy their intent.
- The design is too overwhelming. There’s too much text and imagery, leading the customer to feel overwhelmed or drawn to the wronginformation.
- The most essential information (including calls to action or CTAs) is not privileged over less important information.
- The website is slow to load.
- Certain buttons aren’t visible in mobile browsers, or the site isn’t responsive.
- Some pages are dead ends or lead to 404 errors with no way to get back to essential information or actions.
- Product pages and buttons don’t look uniform or organized, which distracts buyers from understanding your website’s “pattern.”
- You’re asking for way too much information and time from the user (for example, long mandatory form fills).
The process of designing an ecommerce website for UX takes a great deal of thought and consideration, but the return on investment is worth it. Not sure where to begin? Consult our team’s website design services. iFocus Marketing ensures your website is primed for UX, so customers can do what you want them to do: buy now.
Keep Them Coming Back with Retargeting
Although you may have met the needs of customers who are ready to buy, you want to recapture those customers who are just researching or shopping around. They may have had a successful experience on your website at the top and middle of the funnel, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re always going to come back to convert.
To get these visitors back, adopt a retargeting strategy that creates a sense of urgency for them to revisit your site:
- Use URL tracking to build an audience who has visited your site.
- Study your audience segments based on their behavior on your website and demographics.
- Create display ads that target these audience segments, using strategies that meet their specific needs.
- Design and develop a landing page as a destination for your ads, which includes persuasive copy and imagery, as well as clearactions to take, if your site doesn’t already have one.
- Consider email retargeting, which reaches your audience’s inbox and provides them with an incentive to return to your site.
Not everyone who visits your website is going to stay. If you aren’t able to keep them shopping with superior design and UX, you always have retargeting to learn more about your audience, tailor content that’s personalized to them, and bring them back for more.
Boost Your eCommerce Website Design with Help from iFocus
Although these three areas will help your website get better ecommerce results, there’s far more to website optimization and management. For example, ensuring your website’s coding is strong, as well as other technical aspects, like ensuring a safe connection for users, are just as essential.
Additionally, adopting an omnichannel approach to digital marketing that incorporates additional channels like paid media, social ads, and search engine optimization (SEO) can guide customers even more effectively toward a buying decision.
Many businesses find success by entrusting their ecommerce website optimization, and all their digital marketing needs, to our team at iFocus Marketing. By partnering with us, you can focus on running your business, while we ensure your website is attracting buyers.
Schedule a discovery call to learn more about our ecommerce website design services. Nothing should hold you back from growing your business online.
Peter Mishler, senior digital copywriter at iFocus Marketing, is dedicated to using language to help clients find their audiences. He is the author of two books: a Kathryn A. Morton Prize-winning collection of poetry, from Sarabande Books (2018) and a book of reflections for public school teachers from Andrews McMeel Publishing (2021). His poetry has appeared in many national publications, including The Paris Review, and he is a contributing editor for Literary Hub. New to marketing, Peter taught English for 15 years.
