A well-designed ecommerce website gives your business a competitive advantage, helping you to access new markets, obtain new customers and increase revenue at a low cost.
To help set your online store up for success, we're breaking down the transition from brick-and-mortar into ecommerce in this series of bite-sized guides.
In the first part, we laid the groundwork with a pre-launch checklist that included defining your primary audience, picking the top-selling products for your ecommerce store, and figuring out the shipping process for your orders.
Now we’re taking you through part two of how to sell online so you can set up your ecommerce website for long-term, scalable success. You’ll learn:
- How to display your logo properly
- How to keep your website design consistent
- How to effectively use negative/white space on your website to highlight your products
- How to improve the readability and usability of your content
Building your online brand
Did you know it takes about 0.05 seconds for users to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they like your site or not, whether they’ll stay or leave? You don’t get to make a first impression multiple times, so how you present your brand on your website matters from day one. A successful online brand can help you get new customers, while your products and commitment to customer service will help retain them.
Display your logo properly
First, your logo should be easy to recognize and follow industry standards.
- Place your logo on the upper lefthand corner of the website because that's where most people will look for it.
- Logo size is important, so make sure that it's big enough to be noticed immediately by your visitors, but not so big it distracts from the rest of the page.
- Link the logo's image back to the homepage so your customers can quickly and easily get back to your website’s main page
Keep the design consistent
From your store layout to the colour palette and logo, you've built a brand for your brick-and-mortar store. Your regular customers know what your store is all about, so now you need to ensure that your ecommerce website matches this narrative. It's essential to fuse brand consistency in your web design to make your business feel engaging and authentic.
- Use the same colours, formatting, graphics, fonts, and personality on every page.
- Your customers should see a uniform design throughout your website.
- Consistency and simplicity will help your site perform better and load faster since you're reusing content.
Use negative space and minimal design
Everything from colours and fonts to the words and layout represents your brand. However, those design elements don't need to appear cluttered. By incorporating negative/white space into your website, you give visitors room to breathe visually.
Negative/white space describes the deliberate blank areas between the various elements on a web page, which allow certain content to take center stage and guide visitors to these places of interest. By adding negative space to key messages, product images, services, and call-to-action buttons, you can increase their emphasis and draw more attention to them.
Clean ecommerce website design is vital for user-friendliness, site speed, and responsiveness. If there are too many images and paragraphs of text, not only will your website be difficult to navigate, it won't be mobile-friendly either. While a minimal design is important, typography and contrast can help to increase readability.
Improve the readability of your content
The first thing a visitor will do is scan the content on your website. If they have trouble reading the content, there is a good chance they will leave. There are some things to keep in mind to ensure your website is readable, including:
- Typography. While cursive-style fonts are aesthetically pleasing, they can be difficult to read quickly. They can make your web page look cluttered. Stick to simple and clean fonts that are easy to read. Additionally, do not use more than two fonts: one for your headers and one for your body text.
- Contrast. Make sure the colour of your text is in contrast to the background colours of your website. Choosing a dark text colour against a dark coloured background is not a good idea. The background colour should be lighter than the colour of the text you use.
- Blank space. If your text isn't spaced correctly, it's going to be difficult for visitors to scan. We recommend breaking up large blocks of text by using different headers, bullet points, or numbered lists.
Ready to start building your website? Check out Moneris Online today!
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