The Art of Making the Perfect E-Commerce Website - Avoid The Designing Black Holes

This is guest post by Albert Vaung
When you are designing an eCommerce website, there are no half measures. Your eyes need to be on the ball, all the time. You cannot afford any laxity when it comes to design. This is because more than anything else, the design of an eCommerce site is all about getting the attention of the target audience and creating an environment, wherein they are willing to part with their hard earned money. A website that can attract visitors, but has a very minimal conversion ratio is regarded a failure.
So, this begs the question – What’s the art of creating that perfect eCommerce website? Well, the answer is pretty simple, really and that is ‘Don’t fall into the black holes that are waiting to swallow you, every step of the way, when you are designing an eCommerce site. But you can only avoid them if you are able to identify them.



Here is a list of some of the design mistakes that eCommerce web designers need to avoid to bring forth the perfect website:

Forgetting that it is all about the products

You won't believe it, but there are some designers who actually forget to provide an interesting, intuitive, unique and detailed product information. Yes, I am sure you must have come across certain websites that have product information just for the heck of it. As a designer, you need to make sure that the prospective shopper is able to interact with the product that in many different ways, even though it's on the website. Even if the shopper cannot touch or feel the product, he/she must be able to experience it through the images on display, the in-depth and pertinent product information,  and anything else that you can put up on the product description pages (videos, audio) that will give the shopper a better understanding of what the product is all about.
The whole idea behind product description is to offer users a chance to make an informed decision regarding the product displayed.

Oops, I forgot the Contact Details

Only those designers who are not really serious about their website,  its products and services and the online business it represents, will hide the much needed contact information from website visitors.
They don’t want users to dig deeper into what the company is all about, but what about the online businesses that truly want to make their presence felt in the online world? If a designer forgets/hide contact information on such sites, then the credibility and profitability of the site take a direct hit. Every online shopper wants to know whether they are dealing with a company that is trustworthy, because at the end of the day, they will only part with their credit card information, if they are assured about the site’s credibility. As can be imagined, lack of contact information dilutes the trust factor big time and such website design ends up a failure.

Navigation that Lacks the ‘C’ Factor

The best website design, especially from the navigation perspective is one that makes, the navigation more ‘convenient’, yes forget about the X factor, it's actually the ‘C’ factor that determines the success or failure of the website. If your commerce website’s navigation is all over the place, there is no way in the world, that your target shoppers are going to buy from your site. Designers, at times, try to go overboard with their creativity, when they are designing the navigation for their online storefront. It’s important to remember that in such cases that the shoppers won't be appreciative of this fact. All they want to do, is search for their products, browse the various product categories, go through the product description and finally complete the shopping cycle effortlessly. They are not looking for creativity here, in fact what they are looking for is simplicity.

To Conclude

There is no shortage of black holes when it comes to designing eCommerce websites. If you fall into one of these, there is no coming back. But, on the other hand, if you manage to avoid them, you are creating an environment, when the success of the website is assured.

About Guest Blogger

Albert Vaung works with PLAVEB a Leading E-commerce Solutions Provider company that is also renowned for its web application development services. He is a web designer who has worked on a whole range of diverse project requirements for different business domains. He also loves writing about his designing experiences and sharing them with other like minded people. Oh Yes! And he loves binging on donuts as well!