When designing an e-commerce website, you may feel that you’re starting from scratch, especially if you’ve never designed one before. Don’t fret – there are plenty of things to consider when designing an e-commerce website, but it all boils down to five main categories, listed below. Using these five categories as your guidepost, you’ll be able to design a successful e-commerce website in no time!

1) Your Target Audience

Your target audience is a critical consideration when designing your e-commerce website. Are you looking to attract millennials, or senior citizens? How will your products cater to male shoppers, or female shoppers? Defining your target market is key. For example, if you’re launching a T-shirt business targeting twenty-something males, you’ll likely want a more edgy and visually stimulating design than if you were aiming for middle-aged female grocery shoppers.

2) Do Keyword Research

Keywords are words or phrases that people use when searching for something online. Before you can design a website, it is important to find out what keywords will be used by your target audience. This will help you understand what kind of content and images your visitors are likely to expect from your site. By choosing relevant keywords, you also make it easier for search engines to rank your website. [See: Beginner’s Guide To Keyword Research]

3) Define your Brand Style

Before you even get into designing your website, it’s important to know what kind of style you’re aiming for. This can be anything from minimalism to over-the-top gaudiness. Do you want a simple layout that focuses on text, or do you want something full of graphics and popups? Do you have any brand guidelines in place already? These will shape how your ecommerce site looks, so make sure they all fit together nicely.

4) Create an Effective Category Page

The average e-commerce category page receives around 50 percent of its total traffic from search engines, which means having a solid SEO foundation. While there’s no one way to do SEO, there are a few best practices to keep in mind: first and foremost, be descriptive with your product titles and make use of relevant keywords. If you have time, it can also be helpful to optimize your images for SEO purposes. Otherwise, it’s important that all of your pages load quickly.

5) Use Visual Selling Points

One of the easiest ways to sell more products is through pictures. Online shoppers like looking at photos and having a visual representation of what they are purchasing (which is why most e-commerce sites include as many high-quality product images as possible). If you have any concerns about your product’s appearance, get a professional photographer to take some good shots before uploading them to your site. This will increase your sales even further.

6) Good Product Descriptions

No matter how great your product, if you have bad descriptions on your website, no one will buy it. People don’t like buying products they can’t touch or try out first—so make sure that you include clear, engaging and short product descriptions in a way that makes your customers excited about what they can get from you. This means thinking through everything from describing different colors and fabrics of clothing items, to making features of your product as exciting as possible.

7) Is it a one product store? Or many?

There are many choices in ecommerce website design, some of which include one product stores, but most have a variety of products for sale. If you’re going to sell a wide variety of products, then you’ll want more features on your site, including catalogues and advanced search options. Think about where your future is headed: If you see your business growing with time (and it will!), then be sure that your store can grow with it as well.

8) Consider How Products Are Filtered

Your e-commerce website is likely going to have a filtering system in place that allows visitors to sort through products based on various criteria. What factors do you want them to be able to filter by? Include options for sorting by color, size, price and more. Are there any attributes you want customers not be able to search or filter on? Remember that variety is important here—you don’t want all of your products filed into only two categories.

9) Highlight top products with Asos, curating collections

Asos is a great ecommerce company that uses curation very well. They include multiple products within their collections, allowing for a more curated experience for their customers. They also provide filters (as seen in picture 3), allowing people to search through items easily.

10) Choose specific product images instead of stock photos

For example, if you’re selling a dress, use professional photos of that particular dress, not stock photography. How can someone buy a dress online if they can’t tell which color or pattern they’re getting? Take your time choosing images for each product; it may seem time consuming at first, but customers will appreciate your attention to detail.

Conclusion

Some of these are obvious, but don’t underestimate their importance. As you move forward with your ecommerce store design, make sure you have a plan in place for each of these components and that you integrate them as seamlessly as possible. The more cohesive your online presence is, and the more aspects of it that work together smoothly and intuitively, the better your customers will respond.

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