How to give your ecommerce store a much-needed facelift

If it’s already been about a year or two since you last updated your site, then you’re due to some “renovation”.

Shoppers get easily bored with same-old, same-old design, so it’s a good practice to introduce periodical improvements to your site to keep them engaged.

There’s no better time than right now to pull up your notes (digital and paper) and take a look at the ideas you have accumulated about the things you’d like to fix, refresh or try on your ecommerce site.

You don’t need to plan a major overhaul. Sometimes a few tweaks here and there could translate into significant improvement in your engagement and conversion rates.

Here are a few easy tips on how to give your ecommerce store a quick and painless facelift.

1. Analyze visitor behavior on your ecommerce store

You might have seen a cool landing page design on a competitor’s site or just have an itch to try something new on your ecommerce store. But before you dive head-first into some serious work, check what is it on your site that really demands attention.

Start by having a deep and thorough look at your analytics. What is the average dwell time on your site? How many pages do customers typically visit? Is your bounce rate higher than the average in your category? Is it related in any way with your page load time? According to Kissmetrics, 40% of visitors will abandon a site if the pages take longer than 3 seconds to load. Are your visuals (e.g. image sizes) or code contributing to this?

Use heatmaps to observe which areas of your site draw the most attention and which ones are ignored by visitors altogether. Look into your conversion rates. Are you meeting your conversion goals? How many browsing sessions end up with purchases from your site? Do you give visitors enough opportunities to convert with conveniently placed calls-to-action?

You need to have a 360-degree view of your site and develop an in-depth understanding into how user-friendly the experience of your online store is. Put yourself in the shoes of a typical visitor and go through the entire shopping journey on your site, from the homepage and landing pages, to the check-out process. Are there any frictions on the way? Is the whole experience intuitive or are there any points on which a first-time shopper would stumble?

Answers to these questions will let you know whether your site resonates with the visitors. This will give you clues as to whether your store requires changes that are fundamental (e.g. product assortment, checkout process etc) or just cosmetic (e.g. product description copy, product visuals etc) in order to grow.

2. Keep everything organized

Now that you know what causes the friction in the visitor’s browsing experience, you can think of the better ways to organize your ecommerce store.

Here are a few things to have in mind when you’re tidying up your virtual storefront:

• Keep it simple. Your shoppers spend a better portion of their time online on social media and various mobile apps. These typically have a simple design that is easy on the eye and uncomplicated to navigate. They expect the same from ecommerce. Remember this when you’re organizing the layout of your pages. Your ecommerce store should strive to be just as easy and pleasant to browse.

Fitbit’s homepage is sleek and easy to navigate.

• Be logical. When visitors land on your homepage it should be pretty straightforward for them to find their way around content and categories. It might seem redundant to even mention this, but there should be a logic to the way navigation is structured on your store, and this logic should reflect the customer’s habits first and foremost, and not just designer’s whim. Shoppers should not ponder over how they’re going to find a product and end up at the checkout. For instance, most shoppers are used to having the search bar on the top right corner of the site, so don’t bury the search field somewhere else on your pages just for the sake of introducing novelty. Stick to what works.

Asos’ filtering options are easy to navigate and group products based on customer’s intent.

• Clear the clutter. Do you have lengthy product descriptions, social sharing buttons, returns and delivery policies and user-generated content all crammed above the page fold? How’s that working out for your conversion rate? Don’t be afraid of the page scroll - it’s there for a reason. Keep only the essentials at the top (e.g. product name, description, photos and videos, stock availability and CTA button), and use the rest of the page for more detailed information, such as manuals, social media buttons, customer reviews, return policies etc. Use drop-down menus for features such as sizes, color, and material options, in order to keep the pages clean. Let your pages breathe, while giving shoppers the opportunity to explore and engage with the content.

Raen uses minimalist product page design to keep distractions at bay.

• Fix what’s broken. Never had the time to address those broken links or redirect pages? Well, now’s the chance. Check every nook and cranny on your site to make sure that every page, button, and link works as it should. Make sure all product images and videos display properly on different devices, so there are no surprises for shoppers who want to visit your store while browsing from their smartphone or tablet!

3. Experiment with product videos, photos, and other visuals

Shoppers form an opinion about your site in less than a blink of an eye (or 50 milliseconds to be more precise). Looks matter, and this is even more pronounced in ecommerce, where visuals can make or break a sale. 41% of shoppers judge a website based on its design, and 52% don’t return if they dislike the overall aesthetics.

Good visuals, from a harmonious color palette to appealing photos and videos can affect how trustworthy the customers perceive your ecommerce store to be. 75% of consumers judge a company’s credibility based on the website design.

Make sure your product photos are high-quality, high-resolution and they look sharp when zoomed in. They should also be fast-loading, so make sure you keep image files are small while still high-quality. This is a good guide on how to handle that.

Topshop photo zoom allows shoppers to see better not just the colors, but also the texture of the fabric.

Don’t forget that online shoppers can’t really hold the product in their hands, so their decision to buy will largely depend on how well they can examine the product from the image gallery. If a product comes in various colors, make sure to feature good-quality pictures that showcase each option, so that shoppers don’t have to resort to their imagination.

If you don’t use product videos already, then add them to your product pages. Product videos can considerably improve the conversion rate. 52% of shoppers say that watching product videos makes them more confident to buy. If you don’t want to invest into video production of your own, try adding product videos made by brands and consumers from social media. YouTube and similar online video sharing platforms offer an infinite pool of content, most of which can be freely embedded on product pages. Follow these 12 tips on the do’s and don’t’s about product videos for ecommerce to get optimal results.

Don’t forget about user-generated content too! This includes not only customer reviews but also customer photos and videos from social media. It’s the ultimate social proof that the products you’re selling are enjoyed by others. It’s also a great way to engage visitors and play with their curiosity. Featuring user-generated content can contribute to 20% increase in repeat visits and up to 90% increase in the time spent on the site. Just don’t forget that curation is essential, so as to deliver the most relevant and useful content to shoppers that truly adds value to the shopping experience.

4. Spend some time perfecting the SEO

We all know how frustrating it can get to keep up with the ever-changing search engines algorithms. Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, the tables turn and you feel like you need to start from the beginning.

The rule of thumb that never fails is — approach your content the human way. Invest in good quality, original, and most importantly, unique content.

What does this mean in practice? Work on your product pages. Don’t just copy-paste product information provided by the manufacturers, because chances are other stores selling the same products are already using the same descriptions. Describe your products in the words that an average consumer would use when researching their next purchases. Don’t forget that videos and user-generated content help with SEO efforts too.

You can also use the downtime to start working on the landing pages for the upcoming seasonal sales or special online shopping events. Start researching those search terms and think of the ways you could create content to capture the traffic. Keep in mind that you need to be prepared to publish this new content well in advance, so as to give search engines enough time to crawl your site, index your pages and position them in the search results. This is also tied to any advertising campaigns you’re planning to launch that require landing page groundwork.

5. Take care of your mobile shopping experience

By now you’ve already heard that 42% of online shoppers place orders while in bed, 20% while in the bathroom and 20% while on the road. Convenience is the name of the game, after all!

Kooky data aside, chances are your customers are accessing your site on their mobile devices more than you expect. Even though mobile add-to-cart conversion rates are still comparatively much lower than desktop, shoppers are still reaching out for their smartphones and tablets to research their future purchases.

Check out how the whole shopping journey on your site looks on a mobile device. Are the images and videos displayed correctly? Is scrolling down the product category grid giving you a headache? Are the buttons properly visible on the small screen? Is the font readable?

These seemingly small details can make or break the mobile experience. Remember, if visitors are not happy browsing your store via mobile, they’re less likely to re-visit later from desktop to buy. 62% of websites designed with mobile commerce in mind see increased sales, so this is another firm reason to invest your time into improving your mobile experience.

Got more ideas? Share them in the comments below!

This post was originally published on Goodvidio Blog.