Ecommerce websites have their own single character that is designed to lead the visitor to one simple task – create an online purchase. A web designer wants to consider a variety of online selling principles while designing an ecommerce website. In this article we will try to take a look at some of the major design aspects that you must have in an ecommerce website.

Several of you are probably already asking why ecommerce website design is dissimilar from any other website design. They all require being attractive, well organized and use the right colors that fit the website spirit and so on. Your characters are good. However a close look at some successful ecommerce websites will disclose the conceptual differences that are typical in a successful ecommerce website.

An ecommerce website wishes to follow certain selling principles:

1.         Give the user a pleasurable experience during his online shopping.

2.         Make certain you offer sufficient information on who owns the website and why they must be trusted.

3.         The website should be easy to use. If it isn’t, the visitor will go to your competitor.

Those principles are not new. We all know those fundamentals from our day to day experiences in the mall, shopping center and every other market place that is waiting for us to open up our wallets. The big confront for a web designer is how to explain those conventional marketing techniques to the virtual world of the internet. I’m sure you’ve all noticed that in most supermarkets the bread stand is placed at the far end of the building, yet you can smell the fresh bread at the entrance (sometimes they even use a special air channel to carry the smells). That has been done deliberately. Marketers use our sense of smell to draw us through the store where we are uncovered to all sorts of tempting goodies as we go to get our loaf of bread.

How do you draw an imaginarily path in a web page? A path designed to lead the visitor to do what you want him to do…make an online purchase. Unlike the supermarket our website has no smell. In a website the detachment from one point to the other is pretty much the same, so the exit is always right there. In a website you can try to order the “shelf” in the way you think will best expose the visitor to many of your goods, but there is always a chance that he will find a short cut to another page that can also be the way off your site.

As can be see, although putting your goods on the web is much easier then renting space and opening a supermarket. However, selling your goods on the web can be hard.

A good ecommerce website design will lead the visitor to the right page in one click or two at the most. Sometime web designers will use techniques that would never be measured for non-ecommerce websites. Everyone has seen at least one sales letter website. On these web pages the only link is to the order form. Sales letters are not the most typical ecommerce website because they generally sell only one product. That permits the web designer the ability to exaggerate the one click principle and make it and advantage. All the facts about the creation have been presented to the user is a smart way while every few lines he has the option to click on the order form. If he is not yet convinced he will have the option to continue to read more facts and testimonials about the goods. Believe it or not, those sales letter websites are really selling.

“What about online shops?” Online shops have to deal with more then one creation. Of course, the greater number of goods increases the complexity of the website. Sophisticated ecommerce websites use a variety of personalization technologies in an effort to decide the best selection of products to offer to the visitor. Personalization technologies are a major part of advanced ecommerce websites. However this topic is beyond the scope of this article. The cleverness of an ecommerce website’s personalization technology has a major influence on its design. The first to use such technology was Amazon.com who decided to push their client’s books to a visitor based on that visitor’s past orders combined with the data they had collected on all visitors used to predict what someone looking at an exact book might also be interested in reading. Today the goal is to try to predict what to offer the user on his first visit as well.

An ecommerce web design is also about the layout. One significant characteristic is where the user’s eyes look first when accessing a web page. Lots of research has been done on this topic. Most research showed that the middle left side area will attract the most attention followed by the center of the page. By using these techniques web designers try to draw the “walking path” for the visitor’s eye, much like what was done at the supermarket. An experienced ecommerce web designer will know how to make designs to meets those demands.

If you are about to open an ecommerce website or you are already own one, ensure you understand the web design principles for online selling. Consider consulting with an experienced website designer preferably someone who has experience with ecommerce websites.