Are you trying to get your e-commerce site off the ground? Wondering if you’re making some of the most common e-commerce design mistakes?
Launching an e-commerce store can be an exciting venture that can potentially make you a lot of money. However, it can be tricky as well. If you’re not careful you may fall into some common traps that can minimize your success and make you feel like you’re spinning your wheels.
Fortunately, we’re here to help you out. Below we’ll look at some common e-commerce design mistakes that you’ll want to avoid making if you want your shop to be successful.
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Difficult Navigation
One of the biggest mistakes that e-commerce websites make is not ensuring navigation is as easy as possible.
Website visitors should be able to clearly see what your shop’s categories are and easily figure out where to go on your site to find the products they’re looking for. Typically, each product or page on your site should be able to be reached with only 3-4 clicks from the main homepage.
Make sure that you have a great navigational menu that will quickly make sense to your customers. A visitor who can navigate your site well will be more likely to stick around and go through with making a purchase.
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Not Using a Responsive Design
Many e-commerce sites also fail because they don’t have a responsive design. Mobile users make up a major portion of website visitors these days, and if you’re letting them down, then they may not stick around to buy any of your products.
A website that is responsive is made to adapt to any device or screen size that a visitor is using to access your site. When you use a responsive design, your site will look great on mobile devices. As a result, you’ll get more sales from customers who are accessing your site on their phones.
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Not Using a Professional Logo
Many e-commerce business owners fail to recognize the value of a store logo, but the truth is that it is essential. A well-designed and professional-looking logo will be an important part of your brand and its overall image.
Having a great logo will make your site seem more trustworthy and will make it more likely that a new customer will buy from you. It will also help in the long-term since a great logo will be useful for building more brand awareness across the web and social media.
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Adding Poor Quality Product Images
In addition to not having a killer logo for your e-commerce brand, it’s also a huge mistake to neglect other images on your site as well. It’s important that product images and branding graphics are as high-quality as possible and that there are no low-resolution photos on your site.
Customers often need a lot of information about a product before deciding to buy a product, and if they can’t see a product clearly, they may not feel like making a purchase. Poor quality images or images that don’t look professional may make potential customers think twice about buying products from your shop.
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Cluttered Product Pages
While you should be aiming to provide plenty of product information to customers on your e-commerce site, it can be a mistake to overdo it. You should make sure that your homepage, product pages, and other pages on your site aren’t overly cluttered or too “busy” looking.
Using plenty of white space is often a good idea and will help you to avoid overwhelming your customers. You may also want to try adding product information to your site in a way that is less cluttered, such as by including product descriptions, specifications, and other details in separate tabs within your design.
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Difficult Buying Processes
When building an e-commerce site, it’s also important that you don’t overcomplicate the purchasing process. Making your shopping cart too complicated or difficult to use, requiring a lot of unnecessary information to order, and making the buying process more difficult will turn a lot of visitors off and make them decide to look elsewhere for products.
Instead, try to streamline the buying process as much as possible. Ensure that a customer will know exactly what to do to begin and complete the process, and try to reduce the number of steps that making a purchase takes.
By making the purchasing process easy, you may find that your customers will close Amazon account connections for good and will start regularly shopping at your e-commerce store instead.
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Forgetting to Create an “About” Page
One of the biggest mistakes that e-commerce shops make is failing to provide customers with enough information about the shop itself. It’s essential that you create an “About” page on your site and fill it out thoroughly.
Also, don’t be afraid to show a little bit of personality on this page and let customers know what makes your shop unique. You may also want to let customers know a bit about you or some of the actual people behind the business as well.
Adding more information about your company can make your site seem both more professional and more trustworthy and this can be very helpful for an e-commerce shop.
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No Trust Signals
While we’ve touched on this a bit above, one major mistake that e-commerce business owners make is that they fail to build trust with customers. Because of this, it’s important that you add adequate trust signals to their site.
While big sites such as Amazon and Wal-Mart are well-known to consumers, smaller e-commerce sites don’t have the same level of brand awareness. If a customer is unfamiliar with your shop, they need to know that they can trust you with their hard-earned money before making a purchase.
Adding trust seals to your site such as a Better Business Bureau accreditation badge and credit card badges can help. You can also add policy pages and offer money-back guarantees to build trust as well.
Avoiding These E-Commerce Design Mistakes
If you seem to be spinning your wheels with your online shop, you may want to consider whether you’re making some of these common e-commerce design mistakes. By avoiding the mistakes above you’ll ensure your site is performing well and winning new customers over on a regular basis.
Looking for more website design and e-commerce tips? Read through our blog now to find more useful guides and articles.
