If you own or are designing a Magento e-commerce website, your end goal is to convert shoppers into buyers. You want your visitors to remember your brand and to have a memorably smooth and easy shopping experience. You want them to face minimal distraction, to be able to easily find what they are looking for, and to pay for and receive their product without a hitch. From a design perspective, there are many things that you can do to find success with your Magento website. In this article I am going to provide advice for simple design fixes that can increase conversion rates by making the shopping experience easier and more visually pleasing.
1. Analyze and understand your shoppers and your products.
How are your shoppers finding your products and how are they navigating through your website? How knowledgeable are your shoppers? Do you have a unique product or are their other online retailers selling the same items? It is important to design your website around the way that you want your shoppers to experience your products. For example, if you are selling a completely unique product and catering to knowledgeable industry experts, you might want to provide an advanced search. Since your customers are probably not browsing, you might want to keep your categories more narrow than you would if you were catering to customers who might simply be price-shopping. Expert shoppers will also require more information up front about your brand and quality assurance. They will probably want to get to know your company in a more personal way and establish a deeper level of trust than someone who is browsing or price shopping. After you fully understand your customer base and take into consideration the investment that they are making when purchasing your products, you will be able to design a Magento website that caters to their needs specifically.
2. Navigate with ease
Organize your navigation based on the way that your shoppers are approaching the product. Remember that there are certain products that are more often browsed than searched for (like clothing), and certain products that are usually found through an exact search (like tools). You should consider giving customers multiple sorting options so they can customize the shopping experience based on their preferences.
Buttons are also an important way that customers navigate their way through their website. Buttons on a website do two things: either they navigate from one page to another, or they execute some kind of action. These execution buttons like “add to cart” or “checkout” are important and should stand out visually. Navigational buttons are more common and should blend in more so they are not visually offensive and are seen as helpful.
3. Don’t Hide the Important stuff.
There are a couple of things that should be clearly visible on your site at all times. First and most important is the Shopping Cart. No matter where your shoppers are, they should be able to access the shopping cart quickly. do not put your shopping cart in your navigation and make sure that the least possible effort is needed to get to the shopping cart page. Kombucha Brooklyn provides a navigation that is targeted towards their visitors. It has products listed for expert shoppers, but also has information available for beginners or browsing shoppers. The cart is also always visible in the header on every page.
4. Product Presentation
Since your online shoppers cannot try on, touch, smell, or otherwise experience your product, you must make their shopping experience as visually pleasing as possible. A huge aspect in establishing trust is ensuring your visitors that the product they see is the exact product they will be receiving when they decide to purchase. If your product comes in multiple colors, make sure they are all available for viewing. It is crucial to supply multiple high resolution views of your products.
Always let shoppers know the status of a product. Few things frustrate shoppers more than continuing through the checkout process only to discover that the product is out of stock or unavailable. List “IN STOCK” in plain view on the product page, under other important information like price and description. This will help reassure your visitors that they will be able to follow through with their purchase and receive their product on time.
5. Simplify the Checkout Process
The checkout page is crucial in web design is crucial because any sense of frustration or distrust can result in an abandoned shopping cart. One-step checkouts are proven effective and make the process simple which encourages follow through. Don’t force users to log in or create an account before being able to check out – this process can be time consuming and lead to abandonment. If possible, give the option to checkout as a guest and then create an account with the information provided at checkout.
6. Be Accessible
Your customers need to trust that there are actual humans running your company and that they are available to help if needed. Welcome customers to contact you if they need help, and encourage them further by providing a phone number, address, and help e-mail address for your company. Make it clear that you accept returns and lay out the process of returning a product if is unsatisfactory. If possible, offer free shipping and returns on all products, especially if you have competitors who are also offering free shipping.
Customer Success Manager
