The website of an eCommerce business serves as the face of the brand or business. It is the reflection of your online presence.
The first impression, and the ones that follow, are created by how your website is designed. After all, the human mind understands visuals at least 70% faster and better than it understands words.
Having a conversion-centric eCommerce homepage is critical for any business, as the conversion rates and sales depend highly on the homepage.
According to All Top Startups, 75% of users judge the company’s credibility based on its website design. Let’s discuss a few steps that can be taken to create a conversion-centric eCommerce homepage:
USE INTRIGUING HEADLINES
In the digital world, the customers and businesses are always on their toes in terms of keeping up with their surroundings.
An effective social media strategy includes the brand building phase, which isn’t easy and requires a lot of out of the box thought processes and innovations.
One of the ways of adding conversion value to your eCommerce homepage is by including catchy, attractive titles. This will intrigue your customer to find out more about the brand or the product that you are selling.
The average consumer has very little time on their hand. And if they are investing their time in your content, it means that they are investing their time in your brand.
Be precise and catchy to urge your visitor to make an impulse decision. New Chapter applies the same technique and creates curiosity among the visitors to learn more about the brand/product.
An appealing title creates a need for the product in the customer’s mind and attracts them towards it.
New Chapter does this perfectly with their catchy title followed by a call to action urging the users to learn more about the product.
According to the New Chapter team:
In less than one year, our store has gone from a $0 brand website to a thriving, seven-figure channel, due to our extraordinary site design. Conversion optimizations have increased from a launch state of approximately 0.4% to almost 2% through our use of iterative testing.
INCENTIVIZE THE VISITOR
Offer incentives to your shoppers right on the homepage. What a visitor sees on your eCommerce homepage during the first few seconds of their visit is crucial.
The value proposition should be clear and the incentives that your store offers should be visible to the visitors. High shipping charges are the leading cause for the cart abandonment according to a survey.
If your store offers free shipping or shipping on orders above a certain amount, you should advertise the fact. If your store has any offers or sales ongoing, they should be displayed on the homepage too.
ORGANIZE THE NAVIGATION BAR
Online shoppers have their frustrations, and rightfully so because they cannot physically experience the product that they want to purchase. Making their journey easy helps your businesses generate sales and boost your ROI.
Navigation bars in this aspect are very important, as they point to the exact category of the product that the visitor is looking for.
The navigation bar should be placed where the visitors can find it easily: horizontally on the top of the website and vertically on the left. Offer Factor does this well, as shown in the image below:
Apart from this, they make the navigation bar stick if you scroll down the homepage. This gives the customer an option to navigate to their desired category any time while scrolling through the homepage.
The website also ensures that the design is optimized for mobile devices.
As you can see, the navigation menu is set at the standard position while navigating the website on mobile. This creates an ease of shopping experience for their customers.
According to a case study, Offspring boosted their sales by 102.58% on a year-on-year basis and saw a 15.19% increase in the conversion rate for mobile devices after optimizing their website with a responsive design.
HIGH QUALITY PRODUCT IMAGES
Product images act as the primary element of any e-commerce website, which is why your e-commerce Website and social media graphics should be designed very carefully.
As mentioned before, online shoppers have the frustration of not being able to experience the product. So the responsibility lies upon the business to help them experience the products in the best way possible.
Having high-quality product pictures is surely a definite way to persuade your customer to experience your product.
The image above from Bliss World shows high-quality product images displayed on their eCommerce homepage in the bestsellers tab.
The design is engaging and fun. The imagery and the design go along with the brand’s philosophy of defining outer beauty through inner happiness.
GIVE YOUR HOMEPAGE A STRONG YET SIMPLE PERSONALITY
The personality of your website is defined by the color schemes and other brand elements. Minimalistic designs are easy to navigate through and give your visitors the ease of shopping.
When we say give your eCommerce homepage a strong personality, it does not necessarily mean that the homepage has to be flashy. The homepage should match the personality values of your brand.
Helbak has a very simple design for their eCommerce homepage. And it resonates with their brand image through the choice of colors that the brand uses on their homepage.
The product photography is done extremely well and the choice of colors go along with the type of product that the brand is selling.
Color psychology plays a role in customer decisions, as they attribute certain colors to specific decisions. Being simple and minimalistic is a sure fire way to increase conversions on your website.
ADD SOCIAL PROOF TO YOUR ECOMMERCE HOMEPAGE
Social proof is a great way to gain the trust of the visitor who is visiting your website for the first time.
By ensuring the customer that their shopping experience is being carried out in a secure and safe environment – and that others have trusted the website with their purchase – is a great way to boost your sales.
Customer testimonials or a review about the products or brands is one way of showing social proof. Another way is to add publications that the business has been featured in.
This greatly helps the first time visitor to be able to connect with the brand through the names that they are already familiar with.
The online wine store UpRoot, for example, displays the publications that the website was featured on.
This includes big names, such as Bloomberg and Tech Crunch. Visitors are already familiar with these big name companies and this helps to gain the visitors’ trust.
WRAPPING IT UP
Your design and sales strategies should complement each other when creating a conversion-centric eCommerce homepage design.
A good mix of these two elements will help your business increase its ROI and average order values.
Let us know in the comments below about your business and how you optimize your eCommerce homepage for conversions! 🙂