Developing an ecommerce website is a piece of cake (We can hear our lead developer scoffing here!) except, you have a choice - to cut a slice out of a moist pound cake or carve it out of a beautiful fondant covered three tiered red velvet cake with vanilla frosting. Pardon if our analogy got you drooling but the point we are trying to draw here is that there’s an ecommerce website and then there’s an exceptionally attractive ecommerce website with clean functionality. And to have a successful online venture, the former just doesn’t cut it. In this competitive digital era, where every small and big businesses have an online presence, the challenge to have your ecommerce website stand out is a fair challenge. The trick here is to simply combine the aesthetics and functionality to derive a seamless user experience. Online users do not demand a carnival; just a simpler, easy, fast and safe online shopping experience. If your website has an informative homepage, precise navigation, reliable payment methods and high-quality visuals, you are on the right track. Over and above these basics, we have compiled a list of must-have UI elements for any ecommerce website which ensures a comprehensive user experience  

Intuitive Home Page

Every user journey begins on the home page and hence it has to be the most welcoming page of your website. Use the homepage to tell your customers about your brand, products, USPs and any other special offerings in store for them such as free-shipping or free trials which would encourage a purchase behavior. The home page should also offer clear navigation cues, connecting the user to all important sections of the website.  

Gamification

There’s a kid hidden in every adult and that kid for sure loves gaming. Gamification is an innovative and engaging way to retain customers and to promote repeat purchases simply through tangible rewards such as certificates, medals, stickers, gift cards or through intangible recognition via leader boards, loyalty points, coupons and other lucrative stimuli. Make sure your gamification tactics are announced loud and clear on prominent sections of your website where a user cannot miss it.  

Visual Elements

A picture is a worth a thousand words, especially for your ecommerce website as majority users are visually driven. High quality visuals play an important role in lending an attractive appeal to your website, in turn capturing customers. From UI perspective, visuals would include: Images: High resolution theme photos clearly projecting the mood or intended message. Images should highlight product, special offers, blog title concepts etc. Illustrations: Informative and original graphically designed illustrations and infographics allow the website to stand out of the competition. Icons: The tiny superheroes of your website, icons play an important role in information and data exchange between the website and the user. Clear and precise icons often simplify user navigation Brand Identity: Various branding elements like logo, custom fonts, tagline, brand name or any other element that establishes your identity should be strategically leverages across the website.  

Landing Pages

Landing pages are useful when you need a user’s undistracted attention to a specific item. Landing page is focused on reducing delays, especially when target user seeks for specific operations, services or items. This is usually overlooked in the case of e-commerce websites when unpractical website design solutions bring to poor user experience and financial losses.  

Minimizing User Efforts

If there’s one thing your online customer would thank you for, it will for all those times you didn’t make them fill endless forms. Saving users’ time and effort is the key for any ecommerce website. This is how our team of specialists at CreativeWebo go about it: Related Products: Displaying products of similar portfolio makes the process of searching and browsing easy for the users. Please ensure the algorithm functions to show only the related product and not any random results. Simplified Sign-in: Not everyone will be impressed with the idea of having to fill an application for journey to the moon before being allowed to make their purchase. Keep your sign-in registrations as simple and minimal as required to avoid losing customers. Shapes and Colors: Color or shape markers simplify navigation and keep the consistency of design enabling users to remember the prompts and find the content they want easily. For e-commerce platforms which are usually full of numerous items, it can make the interface much more user-friendly. Harmonic layout: Visual harmony plays an important role in decision making. Uncomplimentary color combinations, non readable or unrelatable fonts, aggressive background, intrusive pop-ups or animations, annoying sounds or pages loading for ages — all these spoil the experience quickly and move users away.  

Scannable pages

As bitter to the ears it may sound, yes, your customer is not going to read all the content on the page but rather scan it to sift through the information overload and find what they came looking for and hence core data and interaction elements such as your CTAs (Call to action) should be placed in zones of high and natural visibility where it can be instantly seen.   While we could tell you a lot more about it, the above UI strategies do not compile a complete list but serves as a checklist for those intending to create user-friendly ecommerce websites to support their business goals, leave the buyers happy and bring more profits to the stakeholders. In case you need more information, feel free to reach out to us.