E-Commerce Website Design vs Web Design
Ecommerce websites are different in the way they behave and function on the internet. While ecommerce websites are illustrated to sell products, regular websites offer a range of services and insight into the businesses. This is the main reason why the design and integration of both types of websites occurs in a varied and definitive manner. They differ from the way the sites are hosted to the way they function.
1. Hosting vs Self Hosting
Most of the ecommerce design solutions available in the market are self hosted. This simply means you don’t need to worry about finding the right host. With a regular web design, you will need to find a good host which can handle the website you have created. The hosting for a regular web design has to perform as a sales and marketing tool. On the other hand, the ecommerce host has to handle both buying and selling interfaces along with payment gateways.
2. Visibility vs Sales
In case of an ecommerce website, most owners are concerned with generating sales, improving conversions and maximizing profits. The whole purpose of the ecommerce website is to sell the product listed. In case of a regular website, the design has to generate leads and produce traffic. This core difference leads to differing styles in designing the website too.
3. Intuitive vs Informative
The design for a regular website should be intuitive. If there are a lot of complications involved in the design of the website, the customer would not be willing to browse through the website. Navigation and interface are very important to a regular web design. Lead generation being the prominent necessity of a regular website, it is important to tweak the contact forms for the regular web design.
On the other hand, ecommerce websites need to provide a bit of information and reviews of the products enlisted. Without compromising on the speed of the website, the ecommerce site should provide the necessary information about the product in question. The design should be intuitive plus informative to offer an excellent user experience.
4.Secured Transactions
While designing an ecommerce website you will need to take into consideration security related to transactions. This is a very important parameter for the ecommerce site. Every e-store has a payment gateway that is necessarily secured and needs to be integrated into the website. Most payment gateways are third party services.
In case of regular web designs, the business does not need to consider payment gateways. They need to provide security in order to protect the privacy of the user, and protect the information they provide using contact forms.
5. Content
Both regular web design and ecommerce websites differ in the content they carry. A regular business website has information about the business, its services etc. as part of the content. An ecommerce website, on the other hand, has only products and the pricing of these products as the content. Images are more often used in an ecommerce website as against a regular website. The whole website is designed keeping in mind the core proposition offered by the website or business in question.
6. B2B & B2C
The design of the website depends heavily on the end consumer in question. A B2B or B2C regular web design has to be intuitive, and well interfaced. But, the whole scenario changes for an ecommerce website. The way the products are listed in case of B2C is different from that of a B2B website. Also the design of a customer to customer ecommerce website is different. An ecommerce site has to be necessarily responsive as they are often accessed from a mobile. In case a regular website is not responsive, it won’t matter much as the purpose is to generate visibility and leads.
