How eCommerce Web Design Affects Customer Experience When Shopping Online

If you are a click-and-mortar owner, one of the important touchpoints you have with your customers is through your online store. Thus, you should prioritize your eCommerce web design as it is among the most influential factors that can make you win or lose customers. Scroll down to uncover what you can benefit from your website design, helpful tips, and best practices for your references.

4 Benefits of web design on customers’ experience

Strong brand impressions

The digital era puts eCommerce website design in the limelight, especially in terms of branding, whether your business is either online, offline, or click-and-mortar. Everyone will look up your store online before making decisions. Hence, your website design with characteristic colors and themes matching your brand concept, along with clear layouts, can create a positive impression of the professionalism and commitment of your business.

Enhanced customers’ retention rates

Retention rates refer to how long website visitors stay on your eCommerce site. A good web design with a clear structure, search functionality, and mobile responsiveness can decrease bounce rates and increase the possibilities of customers’ purchases. Otherwise, an unprofitable business can be a predictable consequence. Poor functionality is the main reason for customers leaving a website when it accounts for 42% of surveyees in the research by Top Design Firms.

Some areas of your website that can influence customers’ retention rates are:

Usability and navigation: A user-friendly interface with a clear and intuitive design helps your website visitors easily discover products, add products to carts, check promotions or vouchers, process payments, etc.
Information architecture and content: Your potential leads gain sufficient information about your product’s features, benefits, and uniqueness through clear and concise product descriptions and specifications. If you add customer testimonials, product reviews on your website can get more objective. It can consequently build and strengthen your customers’ trust.
Performance and speed: If a website loads forever or encounters errors with every click or on different devices, it will lose leads and customers. Therefore, optimal loading speed and functionality across multiple devices, especially on mobiles, can contribute to the extension of your customers’ browsing time on your website.

Fast purchase decision-making

If you provide them with a sufficient amount of product information through smooth operation on your website across devices, your website can become a powerful sales tool. In other words, it can help you convince your leads to click on the ‘Buy Now’ button.

Benefiting from favorable impressions and credibility from a satisfactory online experience on your site, you can increase your website’s conversion rates by 200%. The effortless online purchase process also increases the possibility of your customers buying more products by 14.4%.

Customer satisfaction & loyalty

There are multiple factors influencing customer satisfaction and loyalty for your brand, yet user experience has significant contributions. 62% of customers will feel less likely to purchase from this brand in the future after one negative brand experience on mobile devices. Besides, nearly 90% of companies realize that traditional website functions no longer satisfy customers.

That’s why an excellent online shopping experience on your website or online store can make the chances of customers coming back to your brand higher. Creating an optimal and personalized journey of online shopping is one of the keys to building and maintaining your customer satisfaction and loyalty.

If you manage a click-and-mortar business that combines an online and offline store, the seamless data sync between two sales channels plays a fundamental role. If you have some business management software, you need to integrate systems such as POS for ERP, accounting, etc, to ensure synced data across systems and manage the whole workflow easily.

6 tips for eCommerce web design

Build a mobile-responsive website: 52% of website traffic comes from mobile users, and 73.1% of web designers believe that the lack of mobile responsiveness is the top reason for the high bounce rate. Thus, you should make sure your mobile website version is as good as the desktop one.
Write concise content: People prefer getting the most information in the quickest time, so remember to keep your content short while serving enough insights into your products’ features, usage guides, and testimonials.
High-quality images and readable fonts: Product images, illustrative graphics, and your content are the main areas where visitors get crucial information for their shopping decisions. Hence, you should make sure every image and graphic has high resolution while showing your content in an easy-to-read font.
Transparent in pricing and discounts: Honesty in pricing and promotion programs can help you earn more customers’ trust. Therefore, the pricing information displayed on your website should show consistency and transparency in any changes when you run discount or promotion campaigns.
Simplify your checkout process: The complicated checkout process is the top 5 reasons for cart abandonment. Hence, you should cut down the steps to three steps maximum and show or automatically apply all valid coupons and vouchers to customers’ orders to make it more convenient. The simpler the checkout process becomes, the higher sales conversion rates your business can gain.
Use impressive colors and an intuitive layout: Colors can evoke specific emotions and influence your customers’ behavior, while easy-to-follow layouts help your website improve its usability and navigation. Hence, the striking color choices and clear layouts of your website can help your brand identity stand out.

5 eCommerce web design examples

Bon Bon Bon

Who says chocolate is brown? Bon Bon Bon shows a completely different concept when pink is the dominant color on this artisan chocolate eCommerce website. The unforgettable design does not stop there, as it continues to serve you communicative content in a playful but easy-to-follow layout. It also uses forms and pop-ups to connect more with its potential customers through personalized experience. Bon Bon Bon is a great example of leveraging creativity to make the experience with your eCommerce website transcend the shopping itself.

Fred Jourdain

Fred Jourdain opens an aesthetically simple space online for those who love to own his art, which shows the visual power of the work. Besides, the content of the website uncovers the inner workings and the artistic process of creating his breathtaking paintings. Easy navigation, high-quality images, and concise content are the biggest plus of this website.

Verve Coffee Roasters

Verve Coffee Roasters makes a strong first impression with its cozy vibe with beautiful product images at high resolutions. Detailed information on each product levels up visitors’ experience, especially those who have passion and knowledge about coffee. Yet, the most contributing factor to its sales conversion rates is the testimonial section which shows various and multifaceted reviews by previous customers. It shows how good the products are and how the brand deals with negative feedback.

Magic Spoon

Magic Spoon makes a so-called boring website of breakfast products more exciting than ever. It has vibrant colors and great images illustrating its products, along with succinct content. Besides its remarkable design, Magic Spoon doesn’t forget to optimize its navigation and loading performance when showing detectable details behind every click and scroll.

Hebe

Hebe is an online female clothing website, so the quality of photography plays an important role in its customers’ shopping journey. It shows multiple pictures in which models wear the brand's clothes so that you can easily imagine how it looks in person. In addition, the brand eases your decision-making when providing all crucial information, such as the clothes’ size, materials, prices, shipping costs, and return policies.

Conclusion

It is an undeniable fact that an eCommerce web design considerably influences your business, especially in the digital time when every business goes online. Learning the web design’s effects on customer experience provides you with helpful insights into why you should focus on your web content, its responsiveness, and navigation. This article walks you through the main areas of your eCommerce website that you should work on and some great examples. Yet, every business has its distinct points, hence, contact us for tailored solutions for your website design.