eCommerce Design Guide

Everyone knows that there’s a science to creating the perfecting eCommerce store. If you’re looking for online success with profits to prove it, you’ll want to come up with the optimum design. Fortunately, we can tell you about some valuable research in the field to help you make the most of your online store.

The first thing to bear in mind: too many images and your customers will be spoilt for choice – literally. They’ll be overwhelmed by the options available. If you want the proof, look no further than a study into supermarket jams. One day 24 flavours were offered and 60% of customers stopped for a taste. Of these, 3% made a purchase – that’s 4 people. Another day the supermarket only offered 6 flavours and 40% of customers tested them. Of these 30% bought them, which was 31 people in real terms. So (keep up!) that’s 4 conversions for 24 jams, and a whopping 31 conversions for 6 jams. Interesting! Basically, that shows that if you’re looking for more visitors, variety will attract the crowds, but if you’re after conversions you want less variety. Here’s a top tip – group your wide variety of products into a smaller number of categories, and you’ll have the best of both worlds.

Here’s another tip. Don’t have too many images. Great photos are really important, but studies show that if you offer too many great photos you’ll have customers skimming and leaving. On the other hand, a written description gets people slowing down and thinking more carefully, as well as having better recall. Sadly we can’t tell you the exact tipping point in terms of the number of images to use, but as with so many things in eCommerce design, A/B testing should tell you what you need to know.

Finally, did you know that customer perceptions are different when they view horizontal designs rather than vertical layouts? Arranged across the page, they generally get the idea that there’s more variety on offer, whereas vertically it feels more like each new row presents a different category. Food for thought!

So there’s the science you need to get your eCommerce design optimised.