The eCommerce homepage is one of the most important parts of your online shop. It is essentially the storefront of your business. Effective and best practices for eCommerce homepage design can draw in visitors and convince them to become paying customers as they continue down the sales funnel of your website. These tips can help you create an eCommerce homepage design that enhances your business and uses the current digital trends to increase sales.
The Importance of eCommerce Homepage Design
The eCommerce industry is rapidly growing and ever-changing. By 2020, eCommerce is expected to rise to become a $4 trillion market, according to Emarketer. The potential when it comes to eCommerce B2C and B2B business is huge. With new businesses emerging online every day, it’s important to stand out from the competition and meet the needs of your customers.
Your eCommerce homepage design creates the first impression a potential customer has for your business. When you look at your design, will your eCommerce homepage create a good first impression? If you want to run a successful business, you need to make sure you follow the best practices for eCommerce homepage design.
Your eCommerce web design has a huge impact on how your customers feel about your brand and how they perceive your business. If you don’t give a clear definition of what sets you apart, you will easily lose customers to your competition. While B2B and B2C design will need to follow different requirements, it’s crucial that you have a great homepage design no matter what eCommerce industry you serve.
10 Tips for Best Practices For eCommerce Homepage Design
The homepage is the highest traffic page of your online shop because it is generally the first place your customers land. Your homepage has the potential to increase sales, drive customer satisfaction, and enhance brand reputation. Creating an effective online store can be a challenge, especially if you feel overwhelmed by the design process. That’s why it’s important to hire a professional eCommerce web design company and talk openly about your expectations and the goals you have set for your business.
These 10 tips can help you deliver a better eCommerce design for your customers and your business!
1. Make Your Navigation Bar Clear
The navigation bar is a very important part of your homepage design. Many of your customers land on your website looking for a specific product. That’s why having a clear navigation bar is so important to your business’ success. If your navigation bar is disorganized and difficult to understand, your customers may leave your shop out of frustration and head to your competition. Studies show that online stores with complicated navigation bars can lose customers to their competitors as quickly as 15 seconds into the process.
Clear navigation bars should be located horizontally on top of your website or vertically to the left of your homepage. An effective method of website navigation is using the “sticky bar” feature that allows customers to continue to view the bar as they scroll through your website. Another important feature of the navigation bar is responsiveness. Responsive design is not just a way to increase conversions, but it also helps with your SEO strategy.
2.Have an Omnipresent Search Box
Your search box should be easy to find and clearly displayed. Some online shoppers want to go to your page and do business as quickly as possible. Many of your viewers already know what they need or want when they land on your homepage. If you don’t make it easy for them to find what they are looking for, they will go elsewhere to shop.
3.Implement Personalized Content and Product Recommendations
If you’ve ever shopped on Amazon, you know they make recommendations based on your previous purchases and searches. Personalized product recommendations don’t just increase conversion rates, but they also increase the average number of items added to the shopping cart. Implementing this process into your homepage design can help you gain customers and increase profits from your current customers. Personalized content and product recommendations in your eCommerce homepage design can increase conversion rates for your business. It gives you one more way to provide users with the ultimate shopping experience and increase the value of your brand.
4. Use a Persistent Shopping Cart
How does your shopping cart work? If shoppers add products to their cart and leave your website for some reason, will products remain in the cart for the next time they land on your site? Having a persistent shopping cart can be a big asset for your business, especially if shoppers leave your website accidentally. Long-term cookies and the ability to show products added to the cart over a long period of time are a great way to increase revenue.
In addition, shoppers can use the “add to cart” feature as a wish life to save wanted items for a future time when they can complete the purchase. While this can be a problem for some businesses, as it affects the sales pipeline and takes products out of your online shop inventory, many businesses find the persistent shopping cart to be an asset to their business.
5.Provide Phone Number and Address Contact Information
With the influx of online stores as eCommerce continues to grow, some shoppers may be leery of the trustworthiness of your business. That’s why it’s so important that you have strong credentials. By adding a physical location and a contact phone number to your website header, you can ease the worry and gain the trust of new customers. They’ll know their sensitive information is safe with your company.
6. Make Social Network Sharing Easy
For some businesses, more than half of their eCommerce orders come from social networks like Facebook and Instagram. That’s why making it easy to share your business on social networks can be a major benefit for your eCommerce store. This can help create a buzz about your brand and increase conversions. Social media presence is so important for today’s online retailer, and adding social network sharing to your homepage will only increase your customer base.
7. Get Rid of Rotating Product Carousels
While this might have been a big practice of the past, rotating product carousels can actually hurt your business these days. Sure, you want to show off more products, but studies show that this actually annoys the average online shopper today. They also slow down the speed of your website, which can negatively impact your SEO. Successful online shops use static images on the homepage.
8.Display Trust Marks
Trust badges are essential, especially if you want to gain new customers. When people see trust marks on your website, they know it is safe to do business with your company. Trust marks have been shown to increase conversions by over 30%. Make sure you are using well-known trust badges to guarantee security for your customers. Customers need to know that their most sensitive information is safe and protected.
9. Offer Free Shipping
Shipping charges have been commonly linked to cart abandonment rates. The main reason your customers may be leaving without completing an order could be due to the shipping charges. Customers don’t like to take on additional costs. Studies show that online shops that provide customers with free shipping are much more successful than others that don’t. You should also clearly display the expected time of shipping completion. If it seems like adding free shipping will take away from your bottom line, just think about all the extra business it will bring.
10.Display Discount Options in One Location
If you offer online discounts, make sure you create a menu that organizes discounts in a clear way. When you keep coupon codes and loyalty point offers in one place, you can attract more customers and increase conversion rates. When you implement these best practices for eCommerce homepage design, you will benefit from increased conversions and effective business growth.