Identifying and adopting creative eCommerce strategies is essential to the success of any online business. There’s a lot of competition out there and taking the time to optimize your website to encourage conversions can give you an edge.

Two creative professionals working on eCommerce projects in a modern cafe environment. — Image Source

Many companies focus on the back-end elements that keep sites operating efficiently, but making smart and creative front-end design decisions can have a significant impact. You can give your eCommerce site the best chance of grabbing consumers with some relatively simple adjustments, enabling you to drive them toward sales.

Understanding Creative Design Needs

There are some general standards for solid website design. Creating from an informed standpoint can be part of a strategy for future-proofing your organization. Tactics such as encouraging strong internal communication, making smart partnerships, and planning for risks can safeguard your company. By soliciting regular customer feedback, you can better understand consumers’ current preferences and needs, helping you to make up-to-date adjustments that directly impact conversions.

This can begin with issuing surveys to your customer base. You could offer these as brief pop-up surveys immediately following purchases. The timing of this can be a good way to get customers instant reactions to their online experience. An alternative option is providing more in-depth emailed surveys to customers to learn about their online shopping preferences, their responses to your website materials, and what improvements they’d like to see.

Alongside seeking customer opinions, you can gain objective data from website content monitoring software tools. These platforms can give you real-time reports on what consumer bounce rates are, what pages or resources customers are disengaging from, and what elements retain attention. You can then use these insights to inform your design choices.
Walmart is a good example of this informed approach to changes to eCommerce creative designs to convert consumers. The brand noted that its consumers were having difficulty adapting to purely digital sales channels. It then designed its eCommerce sites with an omnichannel experience in mind. Walmart built platforms that incorporated the convenience of online purchases with options for customers to continue their sales experience in-store with familiar pick-up and customer service methods. The result of this was that the design helped preserve customer relationships, took a gentle approach to migrating consumers to online spaces, and avoided excluding many people from valuable digital experiences.

Prioritizing User Experience

User experience (UX) is among the key influencers of conversions. Unless consumers have positive online experiences, they may be less inclined to move further down the sales funnel. The user interface (UI) is one of the most direct website design contributors to UX. It’s how customers most directly interact with the eCommerce site.

When designing positive UX/UI for eCommerce sites, you should consider the following:

Intuitive navigation: It’s not enough to design the navigation of your site with few hurdles. A good UX requires intuitive navigation to be part of its UI. The layout of the site should reflect how users like to move through your pages on their journey to conversion. Ensure that each page has links that help customers move seamlessly onto the next natural step. For instance, blog content that highlights how to solve specific problems customers are having should include links to pages with the relevant products mentioned.
Personalization: Many users today expect the website UI to offer some form of personalization. One brand that has done this well is Sephora. Rather than simply relying on past purchases for data, the UI first invites visitors to take quizzes or follow guides. These help serve each customer’s individual needs, making note of areas of interest to inform personalized recommendations in the future. It also makes the collection of thousands of products less overwhelming for customers.

You also need to put infrastructure in place to support good UX alongside the above front-end considerations. For instance, if your business loses internet access, this could disrupt your networks and cause significant downtime. The result can be a drop in conversions and damage your reputation for reliability and even security.

Investing in a backup internet connection can minimize the damage outages due to weather, equipment failure, or cybercrime might cause. Using a diverse approach here can make your networks more robust. This includes physical diversity, where you have various types of hardware, such as a main fiber optic internet connection alongside a cable backup. Network diversity, in which you choose a backup internet source in a different location from your main provider, is also effective.

Leveraging Visuals

The visual style of your website and its materials are crucial. They contribute to improving the online shopping experience, particularly when using photos for product listings or videos to demonstrate effective use cases. Visuals can also bolster the customer’s journey, creating an atmosphere that strengthens their connection to your brand, and potentially influencing conversions.

You need to make a good visual impression almost immediately. Studies have shown that people form opinions about visual appeal in the first 500 milliseconds of viewing a page. Making good choices about your visuals when designing your site enables you to engage consumers within that time and drive them forward.

This may involve choosing colors that key into psychological responses that you want your consumers to have when interacting with your brand. Reds can give a sense of urgency, while greens can quickly communicate calming nature and sustainability. Understanding and leveraging these subconscious trigger points can empower you to encourage positive responses to your site.

Pay close attention to how you use images on your eCommerce site, too. Consider how you can pose photographs of products to emphasize the impact your items can have on their lives. If you want to lean into shared values, such as ethical sourcing, you can also highlight images that show your behind-the-scenes activities.

Conclusion

Building an eCommerce site that converts benefits from informed creative decision-making. When driven by reliable feedback, UX improvements and visual materials can encourage consumers to embrace your brand and buy your products. Putting this kind of attention to the design choices of your marketing items, social media, and even customer service portals are key to offering customers a holistically positive experience that boosts conversions.

Ready to elevate your eCommerce brand and boost sales? Contact Growth Spark for web design that drives engagement and growth.

Author bio

Charlie Fletcher is a freelance writer passionate about workplace equity, and whose published works cover sociology, politics, business, education, health, and more. Check out the full portfolio on https://charliefletcher.contently.com/.