5 Factors of an Effective eCommerce Web Site Design

By: Abel Quitoriano

An eCommerce Web Site provides a secure Internet-based facility for transactions between a business and a customer. It can use rich media presentations to help customers in their buying decisions, provide live support for customer inquiries, take and fulfill orders, and even provide real-time tracking of deliveries for physical products. Whatever feature these eCommerce web sites may have, they have one primary purpose and that is to bring in sales for the company 24 hours a day.

Although setting up an eCommerce web site has never been easier, the bigger challenge for most businesses is to set-up an effective website that tirelessly pulls in sales for the company day in and day out. The crucial element is in the design and structure of your eCommerce web site. This will make or break your online venture. It’s like having a 200 horsepower engine but without the proper chassis, it will end up nowhere.

So, in order to ensure a good return on the time, money and skill to be invested, make sure you take these factors into account.

1. Answer the #1 Question in Your Customer’s Mind

All successful eCommerce web sites know how to answer one critical question of customers – “What’s in it for me?” Let’s face it, all customers are “me-oriented.” You, yourself, are a customer and you can attest that before you give any bit of attention to a product or service, it must first answer, “what’s in it for you?”

So if you don’t give site visitors a reason to care about your product or services, no amount of sophistication to your eCommerce site can deliver the sale.

2. Organized content

Ever been into a market place where every vendor yells at you about what they have to offer? Not only is it confusing, it’s irritating. This would also be the case if you’re trying to present all your products benefits, features, prices and promos on a single page.

So structure your content wisely. Categorize your products or services based on functionality, benefit, feature, color, or size. However it may be, always put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Organize your products/services on how you think your customer can best find and decide on what he or she is looking for.

3. Use color and images to your advantage

Colors and images inspire feelings. It’s no accident why coffee shops like Starbucks and Coffee Bean are using almost the same color tones and images. Upon entering them, you instantly feel soothed by the ambiance and the cozy chairs invite you to sit, unwind, forget the world while enjoying the warmth, aroma and taste of coffee.

In almost the same way, proper use of color and images in your eCommerce web site will set the mood for your clients to stay awhile, read, listen or watch about what your product can do for them.

4. Don’t over sell or over promise

Nothing will make a customer hold-on to his wallet and ran away faster that an infomercial sounding sales pitch. No matter how other marketers would vouch that it’s effective, don’t degrade your web site by sounding like a used car salesman.
Your website should convey a lot of credibility and prestige to gain your customers trust.

And lastly…

5. High touch vs high tech

It’s no doubt that an eCommerce web site has a lot of intricacies wired into it in order to quickly process multiple online transactions at any given time. It’s a whole lot more efficient compared to hiring a lot of sales people to handle every customer on a one-on-one basis. However, you should never use the ‘high-techness’ of your web site to impress your customers. Gone are the days when people are awestruck by technology. As a matter of fact, some are already nauseated by it.

Instead the your eCommerce web site should interact to customers the way a real person would. It should be User-intuitive where only information and functions relevant to the customer are presented to him or her.

Since people want information and they want it now, your eCommerce web site should create an impression that you can cater to their wants.