Just like any business, online stores generally follow the same business model to bring in revenue. Think of eCommerce as a brand new road that has yet to be built. The first step is to choose your site’s theme before you can pave the road for others to come and use it. Once everything is set up, you can invite all your customers to come and use the road you have built. At the same time, outsourcing Ecommerce website design services can be a starting point to building a good eCommerce store. There are many traps along the way so it’s important to be aware of them before starting, so here are the top 12 eCommerce design hacks to keep in mind when building your online store.
1. Hire a professional eCommerce developer
This is the most important step in building an online store that is both beautiful and easy to use. If you try to build your own custom site from scratch, it will be extremely difficult for you to understand what goes into making a store run smoothly with all of its features in operation. If you don’t know how to do it yourself, you should hire a professional.
2. Optimize your website for mobile devices
There is no doubt that smartphones are becoming more and more popular every single day. To put this into perspective, over half of all online purchases made in the US were completed on mobile devices during Cyber Monday in 2021. With professional eCommerce web design services, you can be rest assured that your site will be optimized for mobile devices from the get-go.
This means that if you don’t have a website that is easy for your customers to use on their phones, they will not be able to access your store at all. If you’d like your site to be in full compliance with the latest web design trends, it’s best to do some in-depth research on responsive web design and how it can benefit your business.
3. The importance of choosing a professional hosting company
If you want your site to run smoothly, then the hosting company you choose is essential. Many people underestimate this part of online store design and try to use free or budget hosting options that may seem like they offer everything necessary for a successful website. Outsourcing ecommerce website design services can be a great way to start something fresh and that being said, choosing a company that specializes in hosting for ecommerce web design services can mean the difference between a smooth-running store and a bumpy one.
However, these types of sites only look good on the surface and they often lack a lot of important features. Without a high performing hosting company, your site may not be able to keep up with user demand and this will lead to a very poor experience for your customers.
Also Read – Combine Existing Listings and Make A Variation: Unveiling/Answering the Why’s and How’s
4. An eCommerce store needs to have an SSL certificate
SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer and it’s a type of security used to keep all of your customer information safe. If you do not have one on your site, any information entered there is at risk of being hacked or accessed by third parties. This includes credit card numbers, names, addresses, phone numbers – anything that can be stolen from an unprotected site. If you are building your own custom eCommerce store, it’s extremely easy to add one and they usually don’t cost very much.
5. Building a friendly website design
The internet existed long before screens of different sizes existed and in most cases, websites were designed to be viewed on a computer monitor rather than a smaller mobile device. This means that if your site was designed a long time ago, it may not be able to accommodate the needs of all your customers. If you’re working with a professional web designer or developer, they can help determine whether or not your website is design-friendly and how easy (or difficult) it will be to make changes as needed. If this is not possible, you can always check your site on a variety of screens to see how it looks and if there are any problems that need to be fixed.
6. Make sure your images load quickly
A picture might say a thousand words but when they do not appear in front of the customer until after several seconds, they can say a whole lot more. If your images take too long to load, it will leave customers waiting and this may cause them to click off the page or close out of their browsers altogether. You do not want to take any chances with slow loading times because you’re essentially handing over sales opportunities to other stores that are faster and easier for customers to use.
7. Don’t settle for a “good enough” theme
Let’s face it – there are a lot of free website templates available today and they’re extremely easy to find all over the internet. However, if you build your own eCommerce store using a poorly designed template, it will only end up hurting your business in the long run. Not only will you have a hard time finding a decent developer to upgrade your website, it’s likely that the design you chose does not match the overall look and feel of your brand. You’ll want to do some research on sites with designs similar to what you have in mind and compare them all carefully before making a final decision. If you find it difficult in choosing one, hire a company specializing in professional eCommerce web design services.
8. Think about how well your site will do on search engines
If you’re writing content that no one can find, then it doesn’t really matter what you’ve included or how well it’s written. To make sure your website gets discovered by customers, the best thing to do is use a service like Google AdWords and bid on a few keywords. That way, you can track how well your site is ranking and see what kind of results you’re getting over a period of time. This information will be very useful to any developer or designer who works on your site later on because it allows them to optimize the content for easier discovery by search engines.
9. Keep your template up to date
You may have the best looking website on the internet, but if it’s built using an older design that cannot accommodate mobile devices or is incompatible with search engines, then you’re likely going to miss out on a lot of sales opportunities. While these problems can be fixed with changes made to your site, you’ll have to determine if it’s even worth the time and money to upgrade a product that isn’t bringing you very much traffic. If this is the case, then you may want to invest in an entirely new website design that incorporates current web trends and looks great on any device (and doesn’t break the bank either).
10. Don’t forget about local search engines
It’s likely that you’re not the only business in your local area and when customers are looking for something to buy, they’ll turn to search engines like Google or Bing. To make sure your eCommerce site appears when these searches are made, you need to optimize the content using keywords specific to your area. This is best done whens you’re writing the initial content for your site but if it’s already finished, then you can always hire someone to do this for you.
Conclusion
Above are the list of top eCommerce design hacks. They are given to you to help you avoid some of the most common mistakes when designing an ecommerce site so that you can get maximum benefit out of your website design cost and time. If possible, try them all before deciding which one is best for your website.
