How to empower an e-commerce website
Key elements that are vital when it comes to designing a website.
E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. Electronic commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. E-commerce is in turn driven by the technological advances of the semiconductor industry, and is the largest sector of the electronics industry. Copied — Wikipedia
When it comes to designing a website, the number of challenges that we face are uncountable. As a designer, it’s a challenge to cherry-pick the options that come to our mind and evaluate the most suitable designing element that would look good on the website. Following a design process will help to understand the basics. At the end of the day, it’s all about the customer’s experience and the journey, that they will remember.
The two key elements that are vital when it comes to designing a website or any application design would be,
- Know who will use your website.
- Know why they will use your website.
Know your target market segment
Getting to know about the audience is really important because it will make the designer understand user requirements and the best way to approach them. When your audience is specific it helps a lot in the market research to identify and determine who your audience really is. As designers, we should always design with your audience in mind.
There are an endless number of elements of design that determine our ability to sell to our audience. First from that lineup would be,
Balance
In symmetrical balance, the visual weight is distributed evenly and it’s very pleasing to the eye as well. A balanced design feels right, stable, and aesthetically pleasing. Balancing a formation comes with both positive elements and negative space usage. Handling positive and negative space equally makes the design balance perfectly.
Colour
Colours reflect emotions. It transmits a message psychologically to the users. User experience and psychology are bound to each other. Selecting the proper colour for your website is vital because of this connection. Colours do drive an emotional reaction and that reaction directly impacts the product or the service that you are going to sell.
As an example,
- Orange — Is an energetic and warm colour bringing feelings of excitement.
- Green — It’s often called the colour of nature, balance, and harmony. Green brings calming and renewing feelings.
- Blue — Is the colour of trust. It usually shows reliability, may give users calming feelings.
Selecting the appropriate colour for your site will speak a lot about what you offer.
Motion
Users do like to see some kind of interactiveness with in the website that they engage. That doesn’t mean we have to incorporate sliders and carousels here and there. It’s about simple interactions that the user can get involved with. Simple things goes a long way.
Pricing
Customers do value straight forward pricing structures. Hidden shipping, wrapping, handling, and tax charges will make the customers drive insane. Just imagine once you are re-directed to the checkout page and you see a list of extra charges been added up to the product where it sums up to a value for that product out of nowhere. So informing the users directly about the additional charges does impact the product sale directly. Customers love honesty and are happy to pay a premium for it.
Information
If the user has to navigate more than 3 clicks away from the landing page or the home page to see the relevant product information it’s highly unlikely that the user will never see it. The other interesting fact is that users love to see a comparison of similar products. The best example would be the apple website where you can easily compare other apple models and products and find the best product that suits your need.
Another fact to keep in mind is that showcasing quality and clean images on your website helps to sell the product very easily.
Personalise
We all love customer-oriented personalised elements. So well as the customers. Capturing customer’s details and use them to welcome them back to your website will make them fall for your website unintentionally. Small thing just goes a long way. These kinds of personalising elements make the customer overwhelmed. The E-commerce experience is all about making sure that the customer will revisit the website again and again.
Conclusion
In my personal opinion, I believe that the correct portion of balance, colour, motion, pricing, information, and personalisation will enhance the overall user experience. Using market research and customer segmentation helps us to narrow down the users and their preferences. It helps us to create an accurate user journey that aligns all these with the website where the customers will start to fall in love with.
