Five Qualities of a Highly Successful Ecommerce Website

The following is a guest post…

Your ecommerce website is an extension of your brand and operates as your 24-hour storefront. The way you design your ecommerce website can go a long way — if it’s done right.

You want your visitors to stay long enough that you achieve a high conversion rate and your ecommerce business is successful. It’s all about getting an online shopper into the buying mood and often that comes from a well-designed virtual storefront.

Be Consistent Throughout Your Ecommerce Store

The look and feel of your online store needs to appeal to those shopping for your brand or style of products. Keep the colors and brightness consistent with the theme of your brand. For example, if you’re selling clothing to the corporate sector, you want a website that appeals to those professionals working in corporate offices. If you’re selling clothing to teens, you want something more colorful and playful.

No matter what, be consistent throughout your entire site. A successful ecommerce website is one that carries the theme throughout each page, including checkout, for the customers; often at times you will find plenty of website templates out there which have been specifically designed for ecommerce websites and are available on a variety of themes, like clothing, lifestyle, electronics etc.

Make Customers Feel the Buying Urge

Customers need to know what they’re looking at when they’re on your site. More importantly, they need to be reminded on each page. Every page of your ecommerce store needs a title tag, description, etc. You do this not only to tell visitors what they’re getting by visiting that page, but you’re also helping your search engine rank. By telling customers what they’re about to find on your site, they’re more urged to click and visit your ecommerce store.

Make Buying Easy for Customers

There is nothing more frustrating to customers than clutter on an ecommerce website. You need to imagine if you had a real store, how you would lay it out? Would you have aisles so narrow the customer couldn’t walk through them? Would they be able to move freely and look around? Your store online should be easy to navigate and spaced out well enough that your users can browse products without feeling as though they’re piling up on top of one another. The easier it is to navigate your ecommerce store, the more likely a person is to stay on the store and possibly buy.

Keep Non-Product Items Simple

Non-product items are things like your background and text. While these are important, they aren’t what you’re selling. Also, make sure product descriptions, titles, and information is legible. Don’t use fancy fonts that customers cannot read. Because your customer is likely to want to be informed first, buy second, he needs to be able to view the text. Fancy backgrounds or backgrounds that make it hard to read the main body of your ecommerce store shouldn’t be used. Stick to fonts that most computers and web browsers will recognize as well, such as Verdana, Arial, Georgia, Times New Roman, etc. In ecommerce, white backgrounds are often best, because they give you a clean, blank canvas to display your text and products.

See What’s Selling and Follow the Lead

Check out ecommerce stores online like yours and see who is successful and who is not. You’ll want to design a website that is similar to those who are doing it right. While you don’t want to copy them, seeing what the successful ecommerce stores are doing can help you design an online store that is user-friendly and appealing to your ideal customer. See what type of background they use, how they display their products, and the layout they use to show it all. You might notice a pattern in the high-sellers that gives you a good starting point for designing your own ecommerce store.

Do you have an ecommerce site? Share your opinion with a comment!

Ryan Jeremy works in close coordination with many leading ecommerce website solution providers. He has a lot of experience in online marketing & ecommerce and has been offering expert guidance to many upcoming businesses as well as entrepreneurs on the intricate details of setting up an effective eCommerce business.