In today’s increasingly competitive e-commerce market it is often quite difficult to gain a visitors trust, even more so on a newly designed e-commerce website. With more and more scam websites popping up everyday and visitors constantly on high alert it is important for your website’s success that you take an active approach to convincing potential customers that your e-commerce website is legitimate and remove all doubt by including some key design features and information to put their minds at ease.
We have put together some pointers that will help build your e-commerce website’s credibility and trustworthiness.
- Limit the amount of colour used in the website’s design
- Add images that add value and meaning
2. Use a secure connection
3. Well-written product details
4. Customer reviews
5. Clear, well designed and easy-to-use checkout process
6. Conclusion
1. Professional Design
A profession website indicates a professional company! First impressions are extremely important online, if your e-commerce website looks unprofessional, cheap, or somewhat disorganised it will scare off potential customers. It is a known fact that it takes less than 3 seconds for a visitor to decide whether they are comfortable using a particular e-commerce website and the truth is people do judge based on looks.
Here are a few good tips on how to improve your look
Limit the amount of advertising you may have on your e-commerce website
People visit your site for information or for a certain product. Don’t overwhelm them with advertising that may just distract them.
Limit the amount of colours used in the website’s design
Try and use a colour scheme with less than 5 colours, using colour to guide the user through the shopping process and to highlight key information.
Add images that add value and meaning
A picture truly does speak a thousand words! Using images that clearly show a product and also how the visitor could imagine using the product not only helps convince them that this is the product for them but also reassures them that your business is legit.
2. Use a Secure Connection
Use Secure Sockets Layer encryption (SSL) on pages that request personal information from a user. This has become the norm on most, if not all of the established e-commerce websites and this also makes visitors feel more comfortable that their information is being transmitted securely.
3. Well-Written Product Details
The product details page is where potential customers will spend most of their time viewing the product and deciding whether or not to buy and also whether or not the e-commerce website is trustworthy. The content on this page should be well designed, presented in an easy to follow and understand format and most importantly provide details that the customer needs to know. It is extremely important that this page contains no typos, grammatical errors and otherwise poorly written product descriptions as this will put potential customers off completely.
4. Customer reviews
Recent studies show that amongst the most important elements on an e-commerce website design, product and company reviews rank the highest in the eyes of potential customers. Reviews are critical to any e-commerce website’s trustworthiness as it provides open communication and conversations between both the company and customers and it also demonstrates that other customers have successfully purchased items from your website.
5. Clear, well designed and Easy-to-Use Checkout
This is one of the most important areas of an e-commerce website design, but often ignored by companies, designers and developers. On average 65% of shopping carts are abandoned by potential customers due to several factors such as – hidden postage fees, complicated and long-winded checkout, poorly implemented and designed navigation system, too much personal information required, poor security status and not providing alternative payment options (PayPal, Google Checkout etc.) The easier and more comfortable you make the checkout process the more people will trust that they are making the right decision purchasing from your e-commerce website.
Asos’s e-commerce website utilises an easy-to-use and well designed cart that provides customers with a quick over view of the products they have selected and also show up-front the postage costs, in this case “free with no minimum spend”. They have also placed a strong call to action button providing a nice and easy to use navigation to the payment page.
Alternatively if a customer views their cart they are provided with a full summary of products they have selected with the option of changing or removing the product. Also contained on the cart page are reminders of the free postage, secure shopping and the free returns policy.
Conclusion
As you can see there are a few things to consider when you commission your e-commerce website design or when you look at why you don’t get any sales. They are probably pretty obvious things but it never ceases to amaze us how many shopping websites fail to follow these simple rules.
If you have an existing e-commerce website that needs updating or if you thinking of commissioning a new e-commerce website design – why not get in touch with us for a chat?
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7127 5121
Email: contact@decho.co.uk
This post is in: Graphic Design, Web Design
