Before we look into how to create an award winning e-commerce website we need to look into what makes a website great in 2021!
Ultimately, research shows us that it boils down to an amazing user experience! So, whether or not you are in the planning stages of your website design or your site is currently up and running, you will need to dive deeper into the user experience that you provide or aim to provide in order to get you on your way to owning an award winning e-commerce site!
When we look at the user experience, there are a number of categories that fall under that umbrella. Below you will find a few that we feel are most important, that will go on to impact your site the most.
BREAKING DOWN THE USER EXPERIECE
Content
Engaging
Is the information provided and / or products on sale valuable to those that are browsing through your website. Are the images representative of the products, are the product descriptions well written.
Useful
Is the content on each of the pages reflective of the titles and the website itself. In order to avoid a high bounce rate it is wise to create content on-site that matches what the user has clicked through to as that is their area and / or product of interest.
Page content and titles that do not match, cause an increase in bounce rate which is when the user visits a page and leaves right away as they have not found what they were looking for.
Design
Mobile Friendly
A good design is a mobile friendly responsive one. The reasons for this is that statistics show us that:
“Mobile accounts for approximately half of web traffic worldwide. In the first quarter of 2021, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 54.8 percent of global website traffic”.
Call to Action
Is your site easy to navigate, have you thought about your current layout, are the products and pages of your site easy to find? The faster a user is able to get to what they are looking for, by being able to navigate swiftly through your site, helps not only to improve conversions but sales too!
Marketing
Can people find your website?
Is your website SEO Optimised for search engines, do you do any PPC (pay per click advertising), do you do A/B testing on your Ads? Do you do any cross selling of your products on-site.
Whilst there are many options for you to choose from some more costly then others, there are simple and often free ways for you to try and improve the sales on you e-commerce site, and cross selling is one of them.
For example have you ever been on a website such as Amazon, where they recommend related products to you that you may be interested in based on the items that you are viewing or having in your basket?
CMS Platform
Whatever the CMS platform that you decide to use, it is important to make a note of exactly what you are looking for not only when it comes to your e-commerce stores design but also with it’s functionality. From there you can go on to review and research the CMS platform that matches up to your requirements.
Using the above as a guideline, alongside your own research, you will be well on your way to not only creating an award winning website, but a website that appeals to its users across all spectrums of the board.