E-commerce websites have emerged as an effective tool for selling your products on the internet without actually meeting your customer as well as without showing him the real products. In such case, the design of an E-commerce website becomes very important. The E-commerce websites are designed to lead the visitor to one simple task – Make an Online Purchase. There are varieties of online selling principles that an efficient E-commerce website designer should consider.
The first step is to know the difference as well as similarity between a simple website and an E-commerce website. First of all they all follow a unique selling principle. They all need to be attractive, well organized and should have easy navigation and should also make an apt use of colors, designs and graphics. However, a close scrutiny reveals some conceptual difference between them as well.
A successful E-commerce website will always
Give its user a pleasant and hassle free online shopping experience
Provide sufficient information on the promoters of the website and their credentials along with the reasons why one should trust them
Easy to use and navigate otherwise visitor will switch on to competitor’s website
These selling principles are very much similar to the strategies applied by the sellers in malls, shopping centers and every other marketplace. In the real market, when you enter a well organized and beautifully decorated shopping mall, you might have noticed the most precious or rather basic necessity items are kept at the remotest end of the mall away from the entrance.
For example sweet smelling food items are kept at the distance but their pleasant smell can be experienced at the very entrance gate. This is not always natural as sometimes the arrangement is done in such as way that the smell would reach to the visitor at the entrance gate by a special air duct. The idea is to attract the visitor to the end of the mall and in process exposing him to all kinds of tempting merchandises with an aim to open up his wallets.
The biggest challenge for an E-commerce website designer is to translate the aforesaid conventional marketing techniques to the virtual world of Internet. An experienced designer will draw an imaginative web path for a website visitor in the same way that has been explained in the real market scenario. However unlike the real mall the website has no smell to attract a visitor. Thus in a website a designer will arrange the “shelf” in such a way that the products are exposed to the visitors efficiently.
Layout of the website is a major part of E-Commerce websites. According to a research the middle left side area will attract the most attention followed by the center of the page. Knowing this a web designer should try to draw the “walking path” for the visitor’s eye, much like what was done at the shopping mall
An important thing to consider is that, arranging the products on a website is easier than opening a shopping mall. However selling the products on website is difficult. Thus a professional designing and look of an E-commerce website is eminent as it is an important factor for selling the products online. An effective E-commerce website design will lead the visitor to the right page in one click or two at the most. All the facts about the product have to be presented in a smart way while every few line the visitor should have the option to click on the order form.
A greater number of products on the website lead to more designing complexity. Most of the sophisticated E-commerce websites use certain personalization technologies in an order to determine the best selection of products to offer to the visitor. These technologies are the major part of advanced E-commerce websites. One of such technologies includes prediction of what to offer the users on his first visit on the site.