In the two articles before, we already talked about the basic of e-commerce website design and the beauty of it. When it comes to an E-commerce site, a simple and clean look where visitors can easily navigate their way and make a purchase is the best choice.

Now, let's talk about how to attract customers to your e-commerce site. Beautiful design will be no use if it can not attract anybody, right? All elements in your site can influence a visitor's decision to buy things from you, from a simple image product to the placement of Call To Action button.

Here are some e-commerce design tips to attract customers and boost your sales:

1. Get more than just a beautiful design
Yes, your website must look pretty, but at the same time, you also need to think how your web design can help boost your sales and attract more customers. A good design should be easy to navigate and won't distract people from buying your goods.


Each page in your site must have its own purpose. Of course, you will need an attractive site to be able to stand out from all your competitors, but keep in mind that must not be your primary goal.

Simplicity is the very first rule you need to apply to your E-commerce site. Make sure it would be easy for visitors to shop, no matter what kind of device they use to access your site.

There are some design options you may want to consider:
•Shopping cart feature which can alert customers whenever they add a new item into their cart along with a subtotal and a quick link to the checkout page.
•"Add to cart" button for each product.
•A clear Control To Action button with proper color to add an item to shopping cart.

2. Using only high-quality image for your products
High-quality product image is not only great for attract customers and increase sales, but it also may influence people to share your product images in their social media account. There is nothing wrong by investing a bit of money for hiring a professional photographer (or you can do it yourself if you have a skill for that). Make sure to let customers see the best of what you can offer to them.

Some tips you can apply to your product images:
•Use zoom feature. While this point may seem obvious, there are a few sites out there that still haven't use this feature yet. For some product like clothes or shoes, customers want to be able to see the product clearly (because they are unable to touch it, so they can only depend on the picture). Let them see the details of your products.
•Put more than one image per product. People want to see your product from different kind of angles before they decided to buy it. If your product has more than one color, make sure you show at least one image for each color.
•Show the inside of the product. This kind of picture usually is more helpful than a long description text.
•Show how the product works. You also can use a series image to show how the product works to the customer.

3. Make a design that reflects your product
Visitors should be able to guess what kind of products you sell by just taking a glance at the design of your site. If you sell a various kind of product, then a neutral design can be the best choice for you. If you sell flowers and plant, then you can use a natural theme with soft colors.

You also can apply design based on the value of your product. For example, if you sell low price products, then design with simplicity and utility will be the best choice.

If you sell luxurious products, then your design must show that luxurious and elegance too.

4. Attractive content
Content is one of an essential element of the E-commerce website design.

So, why content is so important?

In the E-commerce site, content is one of your marketing tools to drive sales. As long as you do it right, customers will keep coming again.

All of us know that online shopping experience is very different than what you can get from bricks and mortar store. Customers can't touch and see the item directly before they buy it. They can only depend on product images, video, description, and reviews to judge whether the quality of the product is good or not.

Some good tips for your content:
•Create How To videos
How to video is an easy way to hook people with your content. There are so many things that you can cover in your video, based on your products. For example, if you sell hair dryer, then you can create a how to videos about its usage, or simple daily tips like how to do hair in a hectic Sunday morning (of course, do not forget to use the hair dryer in the video).

•Use as many photos as you can
You want to make an E-Commerce site, that is mean you have products to sell, right? So, get your camera, start taking pictures and figure out how you can make amazing photos for your products.
Beautiful product image always has a place on your site and social media like Instagram or Pinterest.

5. Plan your navigation properly
Your customers should be able to navigate wherever they want inside your site, so your navigation system should serve as their guide to help them find whatever they are looking for.

•Main navigation is different than sitemap
The easiest way to plan a store's navigation is to use a nicely organized folder system which usually similar with your categories and sub categories folders.

Learn the differences between attribute and category. People often mix them up. The rule actually quite simple. If you think it should rank well (in the term of SEO) and it should appear on your landing page, then turn it into your category. If not, then it more suitable as your attribute.

For example, let's say you sell branded clothes online. The brand is Burberry. Do you use "Burberry" as a category or attribute?

Burberry is a brand, and people may use it as a keyword when they want to buy it online (like "Cheap Burberry" or "Discount Burberry"). That is mean, a brand is better used as a category than an attribute.

What about color? Color like white or blue is far too general. When people want to buy branded clothes like Burberry, they will use the brand name as a keyword rather than its color (like "white branded clothes"), right? So, color is more suitable for your attribute.

•Simpler is better
If your visitors take more than 10 seconds to look at your navigation, it means you need to simplify it more.

•As long as it is important, put it in your main navigation
It does not matter whether if it just a single product page, as long as it is important, place it in your navigation plan.
For example, you sell smartphones in your E-Commerce site. From all the products you sell, there are 3 products with the most sales compared to the rest (which contribute less than 10% sales in your online store). Put those best sellers in your main navigation!