You might have the best-looking eCommerce website in the world, but if it doesn’t produce a high conversion rate, then you have wasted your time and money getting it built. Remember that to produce sales, you need to give priority attention to the user journey, from landing page to checkout.

If you are working with a reputable eCommerce web designer or eCommerce agency, then they should take care of this automatically. However, if you are building your site, creating a productive user path is not as easy as it may sound. There are also a great many other elements of your eCommerce website that you need to get right.

To get you on the right track with your eCommerce development, here are our tips on how to make sure your eCommerce design website hits the heights when it comes to a powerful and productive UX and a high amount of conversions:

Don’t forget the CTAs

Clear call-to-actions are essential. Your eCommerce website should have something similar to ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Add to Basket’. As well as clear and precise wording, the buttons should stand out so that visitors don’t miss them. Contrasting colours work well. Keep the text the same on each button for uniformity.

Make things seem urgent

By creating this sense of urgency, conversion rates should automatically increase. Changing the text on the CTA buttons may work or try ’Limited Stock’ or ‘Special Price’.

Make your checkout a one-click process

Buying online is often spur of the moment. You need to get your buyer while they are hot. Forget about the ‘add to cart’ step and go straight to checkout from the product listing page. This will dramatically shorten the buying process which is precisely what you want, reducing the number of abandoned shopping carts.

Show the green bar SSL certificate

This tells shoppers your website is honest, safe and secure. Tests have shown that adding this certificate impacts dramatically upon customer actions, increasing sales.

Give a choice of popular payment methods

Look at the market you are supplying and include the methods they should prefer for the payment gateway. Include credit and debit card payments and the big ones like PayPal. If your goods cost more, you may even want to add financing options.

Include customer reviews

if your buyer is hesitant, a positive customer review can make a world of difference, resulting in them clicking on the ‘Buy Now’ button. Never under-estimate the power of reviews. Place them alongside the products to show clarity and trustworthiness. Amazon does a great job of this.

Use appropriate and high-quality images

Whilst product descriptions need to be good, so do the images. Add more than one, showing the item from a variety of angles. You need to show detail so that customers know what they will receive. Images need to be of professional quality, even if you did them yourself. Some buyers will make a decision based upon image alone, not even reading the text.

Make sure your website is responsive and mobile-ready

Mobile use accounts for half of the web traffic globally. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you will miss out big time. Load times should be fast and pages adaptable to show on smaller screens.

Provide effective product descriptions

If they are poor quality or don’t offer sufficient detail, you will lose purchasers. Think of your perfect customer persona and target them. Customers will feel that you understand them, making them more confident about purchasing. Don’t make them too long though as many buyers ‘skim read’. Bullet points work well.

Make your site layout flow well

When customers are journeying through your eCommerce website, flow is important, as is the route from the homepage to checkout. Get this right and you will reduce bounce and improve conversions. Websites with an attractive and clean look also have higher engagement rates than those that don’t. When creating your layout, go for lots of white space, large clear images and less heavy text. Whilst the minimalistic website design may not be your thing, it is not that difficult to do. If working with a web designer in Birmingham, discuss this with them, as they are experts in the field of design. They will know precisely what to do to get the look and flow of your site spot on. Here are some pointers to get you going in the right direction:

i. Concentrate on images of products. Don’t have too many distractions on a page or users will get lost, confused and forget what they came for.

ii. Lead your customers discreetly towards your CTA buttons. These must stand out and be easy to find with clear wording on the buttons.

iii. Test your eCommerce website on different devices – try using it on a laptop, tablet and mobile. All should give the same quality experience. Shopping and checkout should remain easy to navigate and pages easy to read without the need to zoom in and out.
Just keep in mind that less is more. If you are unsure whether or not to add something to the site, don’t. If it works without it, then you don’t need it.

Select the right platform

We recommend Woocommerce and Magento for your eCommerce web development:

Woocommerce – this makes it easy to build a great eCommerce website. Not only is it fully customisable and open-source (freely available and modifiable by anyone), but built upon WordPress. WordPress’s popularity speaks for itself, and the fact that WooCommerce is based upon it has to make this a top choice. The software provides you with all that you need to build a great eCommerce site. If you plan to sell online, you can get started with the build quickly. If you already have a WordPress site, simply add in the WooCommerce plugin. Your new store will soon be open for business. Payments are secure and there are plenty of shipping options to choose from.

Magento – also an open-source eCommerce platform, this is written using PHP. Loved by many due to its tremendous flexibility and scalability, it’s a good choice for online businesses looking to move up a grade after reaching their limit with previous eCommerce platforms. Able to cope with high levels of traffic, no matter how big your online business grows, Magento will move with you. Forget the hassle of having to swop websites as you gain more customers. Magento is in it for the long-term.