eCommerce website design, unlike other designs, has one main character, and that is to lead a visitor to make an online purchase. This is the sole objective of eCommerce sites and any design that is undertaken should have this goal in mind from the beginning of the design process to the end. In order to do this, a designer as well as the website owner needs to have certain design aspects in mind. Let us take a look at some of these aspects and see how they can be applied to such a site to achieve the sites objective.
Generally, a website needs to look attractive with the right colors and well organized. A successful eCommerce website design however goes beyond these basic details evident in many non-ecommerce websites. A successful eCommerce site needs to give a user a pleasant online shopping experience. Such as site also needs to provide sufficient information on the owner of the site and why they can be trusted to transact online. And of course, such as site should be easy to use, otherwise a visitor might prefer a competitors website. These are the main selling principles of a successful eCommerce website design.
A designer needs to translate the conventional marketing techniques of the day to day experiences in the mall and the market place to the virtual world of the internet. A strategy common to conventional supermarkets is to position the bread stand at the far end of the building and then deliberately carry the tempting smell of the bread via air ducts to the stores entrance. As you can imagine, you will go all the way to the far of the end of the store while you pick other items along the way. The marketers draw you through your sense of smell. Smells of course do not work when it comes to eCommerce website design. However, a website can be designed to order products in a way that will best expose the visitor to them. Website designers also create the air duct by product positioning. For example, it has been shown that the middle left area will attract most attention followed by the center of the page. An experienced web designer will know how to create designs that take advantage of this. Another technique common on online shops is to try to predict what to offer a first-time visitor, as is the case with Amazon.com.
eCommerce website design, when done right, will have as much success as a convectional store. It is just a matter of using the same principles but on a different platform.