There is a unique character associated with an ecommerce website which has a simple objective – to encourage a visitor to make an online purchase. When designing an ecommerce site, a web designer is required to consider a number of principles related to online selling.
Most people consider not much difference between an ecommerce and other website design. Both types of websites are required to be well organized, attractive and use appropriate colors to suit to the spirit of the website. A closer look into successful and effective ecommerce sites helps you find the conceptual differences between the two categories.
There are some basic selling principles that a successful ecommerce site imbibes in its design.
It gives a pleasing online shopping experience to its user
It provides all the required information to let the visitors know about the owner of the site and how they can be trusted.And, the website provides a convenient to use interface and applications that play an important role in retaining its visitors.And, these principles may not seem any newfound knowledge to you. You have always been finding these basics being followed by shopping centers, malls and other market places that look forward to a customer.
When it comes to the virtual world, it is a challenge for the web designers to transform the conventional marketing principles to the internet. For a simple example, bread stands in supermarkets are located at the far end of the market, but still visitors can get the fresh smell of bread even from the entrance. It is done purposely. Marketers use visitor’s sense of smell in order to move them across the store to the far end. This gets the visitors exposed to different kinds of tempting food. But this is not quite possible in the virtual world, since the element of smell cannot be brought on a website.
On a website, the shelf can be ordered in the best way to expose the products to the visitors. But the chances are always there that a visitor can find a link to another website.
Displaying your products on a website can be a much easier task than setting up a land-based supermarket. But, selling the products can be a daunting task.
A good ecommerce site design leads a visitor to the expected page in a single or at the most with two clicks.
At times web designers make use of such techniques that are not common to non-ecommerce sites. A sales letter website is a common example. These sites provide at the most a single link, and that too is to the order form. And an ecommerce site is not generally of the sales letter type, since the later sells only a single product. But, the once click principle is a great advantage to the sales letter web design. In such a website, visitors can find all the information that they require about a single product and at a distance of a few lines they can find the link to reach the order form.
