Are you the owner of a small ecommerce business hoping to take your online presence to the next level without the help of a tech team? Well, you’re certainly not alone.
Whether you used a large portion of your budget on hiring a professional web designer, or chose a ready-made option for your ecommerce site, there are various ways you can improve a website’s performance without altering its fundamental design.
These four simple steps are great for improving the appearance and usability of any site.
Great Photography
If you are pushing for sales on your site, this is by far and away the most important point. It doesn’t matter how smooth or fast your pages transition, if the product isn’t attractively displayed no one is going to buy it. There are so many great guides out there on how to take professional quality product pictures, there is really no excuse for a poor image set.
Remember that your pictures should fit the style of both your products and your brand. For instance, if you deal in outdoor items, think about how you can incorporate a more natural, rugged theme into your pictures.
Product Descriptions
The product description is where you can really sell your item. Depending on the kind of products you offer you can give some background into the ideas behind items, the methods or processes involved in their production, or their many uses.
Remember: ecommerce is entirely about selling items without the purchaser ever having seen them in real life. Therefore, you need to clearly communicate all the information someone would expect to have were they in a physical store. This can include:
- Item dimensions
- Fabrics
- Colours
- Materials
- Weight
Give Everything Space
A common problem that many people fall into is over-filling their website. Think carefully about what you include on your page: if it isn’t essential, it probably doesn’t need to be there. This is especially true of the parts of the site where your products are: they are what you are trying to sell, so don’t let them be upstaged. Superfluous information or unnecessary images serve only as a distraction. If you have any particularly large blocks of text, remember that bullet points are a great way of breaking this up into more digestible portions.
Clear Headings and Calls to Action
Everything ‘above the fold’ is what a visitor to your website will see when they first land there – no scrolling. Make sure that your headings are clearly positioned within this space, so that people can quickly navigate around. Think about the terms people would use to refer to certain things, and try to replicate this in the language you use for your headings and directions. Similarly, make sure you have frequent calls to action: people need a little encouragement sometimes, so don’t be afraid to help!
Beyond the Website
Of course, if you are hoping to make changes to benefit your business there are various options in front of you. Take a look at these top tips for ideas on how to increase business using different methods.
Improving your website doesn’t have to be a huge endeavour. By following these simple steps you should be able to greatly improve your customer experience on the site. Always keep the customer and the products in mind, and the rest should follow.