Important Things to Avoid when Launching your eCommerce Website

Ultimately, building an ecommerce website that customers love comes down to two things – sweating (and testing) the small stuff, and understanding human psychology. In this article, we have covered 5 of the biggest ecommerce websitedesign mistakes that we spot frequently on the online stores we visit. Whether you’re in the process of designing a new website, you want to make changes to your existing site, or you’re about to launch your platform for the very first time, we recommend taking notes – are you making any of these mistakes? If so, try out some of our suggestions to fixing them!

Lack of a Clear Value Proposition

A strong value proposition is your argument for why consumers should buy from you instead of your competition. Not only do many ecommerce websites have poor propositions – many of them actually have trouble communicating what they sell! The essential elements of a good proposition include: a headline (simple, clear language); body copy (why it’s the best choice); additional benefits and social proof; and images that create desire.

Misguided Product Descriptions

Whilst we all know the product descriptions can be very important, as it turns out these descriptions mean different things when you’re selling different products. When looking at a bookshelf, for example, consumers are most concerned with the images – they want to know how it’s going to look in their home. When looking at televisions, on the other hand, they’re more concerned with the specs (how big it is, etc).

Failing to Properly Use Quality Images

If you happen to sell items that are mostly dependent on looks (like our bookshelf example above), you should know by now that visuals are incredibly important in your ecommerce website. There is also the matter of image quality. If the image looks good, people are more likely to buy it (as they cannot physically see and touch it when shopping online). It pays to invest in some quality photos of your products.

No Visual Hierarchy or Attention to Fitt’s Law

With visual hierarchy in place, it’s easy to navigate the ecommerce website because actions begin to become recognisable. For example, accent coloured text is a clickable link and base text is unclickable (used only to complement the overall background colour). One part of this hierarchy is Fitt’s Law, which states that the eye is drawn to larger items (which makes them more clickable). Important elements should be made larger.

Website Doesn’t Look Trustworthy

Just because you’re trustworthy does not mean that consumers will believe you. You need to make yourself appear more trustworthy, which can be achieved with these elements: customer testimonials, notable press, interesting information about your company, and an up-to-date ecommerce design. This last point is incredibly important – if customers are visiting a site that was built during 2009, they may feel as though the company behind the ecommerce website isn’t professional or efficient.

We wanted to leave you with a final thought – when it comes to ecommerce websites, testing should be an ongoing process. You will always discover things that go against the "best practices" that are preached elsewhere – just because others say that it isn’t something you should do doesn’t mean that it won’t work for your online store. The only way to determine what works best for you is to test, test and continue testing. Happy designing!

Lets Talk Web is the author of this article on eCommerce Website.