Having a professional-looking site isn’t going to cut it. Even if you have a stunning product that’s priced reasonably and you’re getting TONS of relevant traffic, you could still end up with abysmal conversion rates if your website is designed poorly.
That is why, when starting your e-commerce store, you need to find the best platform to build on as well as to optimize it for conversions and not just focus on aesthetics.
To keep your web design from hurting your conversion rates, we’ll cover four web design mistakes that website owners often make (and how you can fix them).
1. Poor Site Navigation
Navigation is an essential aspect of your website. It needs to be logical so your web visitors can navigate through your site without getting lost.
Your website navigation should help your customers find quickly what they are looking for, be it your contact details, blog posts, products, and prices, helpful resources, etc.
If their on-site search is taking too long, they get frustrated, leave your site, and are likely never to return. Poor site navigation ruins the shopping experience and hurts your sales and conversions.
This is why, at the onset, you must plan out your store’s navigation structure. Follow this rule of thumb: your site navigation should let visitors land on any of your web pages and find what they’re looking for in three clicks only.
Consider these tips as well:
- Streamline your navigation bar with the right menus and sub-menus.
- Use clear, simple, and recognizable terms and formats for your menu labels.
- Include a search box, so your visitors can save time when looking for something on your site.
To demonstrate how your site navigation should look like, here’s an example by Esqido:
Esqido has a simple navigation menu that you can easily understand and browse pages from. At the top right, it has the search feature, personalized user profile options, and other quick shopping settings. The scroll bar is also distinct and manageable on the right side. All this makes the customer experience more convenient.
Thing Industries takes on a different yet equally functional layout:
Its navigation menu at the left runs from top to bottom. The store still used simple words and font styles and the right colors, enhancing readability. Its scroll bar at the side is also visible and accessible.
2. Cluttered, Low-Impact Layout
Cluttered web designs with irrelevant elements overwhelm and repel your visitors. This makes them ignore your content, scroll down, and click away, killing your sales and conversion opportunities.
Ensure your design is neat and visually appealing, so you project a powerful impression on your visitors. This way, you get to grab their interest and engage them more effectively.
Use plenty of white space, and employ minimalist designs such as this site by MINKPINK:
Minkpink organizes its navigation menu and other website elements neatly across the page. The white background, negative spaces, and sans serif font styles make the site look clean.
Its photo gallery of the products and other offers below the fold are also displayed in definite structures, producing a consistent, easy-on-the-eye layout appearance.
If you’d like to reflect a more creative brand on your homepage, you can still build colorful, artistic pages and look organized.
Bon Bonbon shows us how to do that:
Bon bon bon displays bursts of color in its homepage photos and images but distinctly separates its headers, so you can still notice and access them immediately.
Designing neat sites like MINKPINK and Bon bon bon looks like hard work — but it doesn’t have to be. Choose the best theme for your WordPress site (if you’re using that platform) with premade layouts to guide your page-building process. That makes it easy for you to come up with a clean, impactful store presentation.
3. Uncompelling Calls-to-Action
Calls-to-action (CTAs) contribute greatly to boosting your conversion rates, so it’s only right to pay attention to how you exhibit them on your site.
Unattractive, indirect CTA buttons do not compel your shoppers to commit to your desired actions, whether it’s to sign up for product demos, purchase your featured products, subscribe to your newsletter, or others.
Unclear CTAs and poorly designed CTA buttons also shoot down your customers’ attention, leading to fewer and low-quality conversions.
Optimize your CTA buttons in these ways:
- Keep your text short and direct. Use active verbs. For instance, write “Sign Up,” “Try for Free,” “View Products,” and more.
- Instill a sense of urgency (as appropriate), such as “Buy Now.”
- Use a readable font style and the right colors for your text and button.
- Place your button above the fold with lots of negative space around it. This highlights your button, so it’s more noticeable.
See an excellent example by Pipcorn:
Pipcorn colored its CTA button orange and placed it at the center with enough negative space around it. The store also used a short phrase, Buy Now, to direct visitors to purchase.
Wholly Dose has another example:
Wholly Dose took a minimalist approach, with the same font style and color as the text above. To emphasize the button, though, the shop enclosed the CTA text in an outlined rectangle and kept it concise and creative (“Start Dosing”).
4. Second-Rate Visuals
Photos, images, and videos play a valuable role in improving your conversions. Displaying high-quality visuals, which are fundamental in ecommerce site design, entices your customers to buy, but second-rate visuals taint your reputation and ruin their shopping experience.
For instance, blurry, pixelated photos hurt your customers’ eyes as they squint and study the featured product and its details. Without knowing your product’s quality, they won’t be convinced to buy it but leave your store instead.
Moreover, low-quality visuals give shoppers the impression that you only took them from the Internet and did not invest in photographing your products.
To entice your customers visually, check out these tips:
- Use large, high-definition, but optimized images, photos, and videos.
- Keep your visuals authentic by producing them yourself.
- Add concise, relevant descriptions on product pages.
- Enable your customers to zoom your images and photos in and out.
- Take photos of your products from different angles. This allows shoppers to examine how the item looks on all sides.
See this example by Milk Bar:
The bakery displayed a large photo of its mouthwatering cake shot up close, revealing the details and stimulating its’ customers’ cravings.
On its product page, Milk Bar exhibits its available cakes with photos from different angles when you hover and click on “Quick View.”
Presenting your products that way proves your confidence in your products’ quality and builds your customers’ trust in your store — increasing your conversions.
5. Lack of Accessibility
Web inaccessibility means the site lacks enabling features that help people with disabilities (PWDs) navigate or transact smoothly with your website — or it contains elements that prevent them from doing so. Sample scenarios include:
- Website’s incompatibility with blind persons’ screen reading software;
- Unavailability of keyboard shortcuts for motor disabled visitors;
- Hard-to-read texts for visually impaired people;
- Flashing GIFs triggering seizures for those with photosensitive epilepsy, and others.
When that happens, PWDs struggle with viewing your site, getting the information they need and doing other activities. This ruins their shopping experience and leaves them no choice but to leave your store without responding to your CTAs.
If you have an inaccessible site, use accessiBe, a leading automated web accessibility solution powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Its AI plays a critical role in helping blind and motor-disabled persons operate your site easily.
accessiBe offers various accessibility profiles according to the visitor’s type of disability. When activated, accessiBe applies features necessary for the PWD customer to use the site smoothly.
For instance, shoppers with glaucoma, degrading vision, and other visual disabilities can click on the Visually Impaired profile, and accessiBe immediately enhances the site’s visuals. With AllSaints as a sample site, here’s how the applied profile looks.
AllSaints’ homepage initially appeared this way.
Notice the difference? The texts are much larger, font styles are more readable, and accessiBe increased the saturation for a more vivid photo.
Visitors can also apply their other desired accessibility features manually from the accessiBe window (which contains several options).
By making your site accessible, you can open your online store to a much larger audience and skyrocket your sales and conversion rates.
Hurt Your Conversion Rates NO MORE.
If you’ve found yourself committing these mistakes that produced low conversion rates, you can still turn them around. Continue to study your store design, monitor your performance data, and apply the necessary fixes, such as the given tips. You’ll soon reach your desired conversions over time if you do not give up!