How to Design a Customer-Friendly Shopping Website

How to Design a Customer-Friendly Shopping Website

Even if your customers are not familiar with website design, we can promise you that they will know when they’re on a badly designed website. From unappealing design elements like flashing details, uncomfortable color contrasts, or unattractive fonts, to bewildering design that leaves your customers angry and confused, to straight up broken elements, a badly designed website is one of the fastest ways you can turn your customers off your company.

Don’t believe us? It’s been shown that customers that encounter websites with poor usability are less likely to purchase from that company and will actually hold hostile views towards the company due to their negative interaction with the website. Needless to say, this is something you want to prevent.

To create a customer-friendly website, there are a few key points to keep in mind so that you don’t risk frustrating or alienating your customers.

Mobile Responsiveness

First, make sure that your website is designed to be mobile friendly. This does not mean simply scaling your website down to mobile screens but making sure that it is actually built to respond to each mobile device that accesses it. This includes easy navigation bars and restructured layouts that simplify any distractions.

A perfect example of this is JJsHouse.com. Their mobile website is completely responsive and structured to work with all mobile devices. It changes to a stacked, scrolling layout for easy viewing, with convenient navigation dropdowns and simple, clear pictures.

Speed

Your mobile website (and your actual website) should both load at lightning fast speeds. Any more than a 3-second delay means that people will be clicking away to find another site that loads quicker. If you notice your site loading slowly, you should investigate further with your hosting company to make sure you’re not being throttled and that you get all the speed you need relative to the amount of content you need to load.

Call-to-Actions

The call-to-action on your mobile site should be clear and plentiful. By adding these clear call-to-action, you will be able to guide users into buying products more easily. VeryVoga.com uses clear “shop bestsellers” or “50% off here” call-to-action to guide their customers to sections of their site they want to move the most product from.

Balance text and media

While mobile websites rely heavily on photos and visuals, you don’t want to completely neglect text—nor do you want to overwhelm the user with blocks of text the second they hit your page. You have to find a balance that showcases high-quality, real photos that don’t overwhelm the text, while still providing users with enough information to make educated decisions about their purchases.

Make content shareable

The best way to promote your business and encourage purchases is to make all your mobile content shareable. Many people want friends’ opinions before purchasing something and the easiest way for them to get those opinions is to share the post through the website. Make sure all your items have visible and easy to click sharing buttons for all major social media sites, with options to copy the link and share to email as well, just to make sure you cover all your bases.