E-commerce Look and Feel Should be Professional or Creative?

Is there any so so-called incoherence between professional and creative e-commerce design? To the dismay of many experts who otherwise hold a completely contrary notion in this respect, such perception exists. Many web designers also at the initial stage of their career have a notion that the functional ease and brilliance can actually undermine the creative excellence in design.

Is there any slightest trace of truth in this? Can anyway a design focused on features and functions prevent an e-commerce site from being creative? Our enquiry in the present post is solely centred on this and in doing so we are going to explain how an e-commerce site can be designed equally professional as well as creative.

Clarity in design serves both

Let us begin with the most obvious truth of web design. Yes, it is nothing but a clean user interface. The user interface should be least cluttered ensuring easy and unobstructed access to the site features and all the offerings in a visually engaging manner. The design should be optimised with the white space around every on-page element. Let us offer here some of the key tips to boost clarity in your e-commerce site design.

• Ensure lot of white or negative space around every on-page element including the images, contents and CTA buttons.
• Make sure that the typography used is clean and prominent. The typeface should not distract attention to the font itself but should guide attention to the contents.
• There should be enough buffer area between every on-page element. The on-page visual elements should have optimum clarity. They should not look jumbled up or cluttered.
  

Quality visuals are the key

An e-commerce site cannot refrain from using visuals since visuals play the key role in portraying as well as describing products. More high density and quality images are used representing product offerings, bigger the chances of user traction and engagement an e-commerce site enjoy. Just like the images videos also can play a huge role in driving user traction in e-commerce websites. Let us offer here a few important tips to utilise visual elements for your e-commerce site design.

• Always use high-quality images for each product.
• Make sure you have provided images to portray the product from every angle.
• Allow the users zooming the images to take a detailed and scrupulous look.
• Leave some white or negative space around every image.
• Allow opening each product image in separate pages or tabs when necessary.
• Use short video clippings with ‘how to use’ product guide.

Consistency of brand presence

Any e-commerce business must have a branding strategy in place. The brand message should be felt visually throughput the website which is extremely important for the business to address its audience. When it comes to brand strategy it is extremely important to ensure a consistent approach in look, feel and overall usability aspects. Let us provide here a few important tips in this respect.

• First of all, make your brand visually shine through consistent colour, layout, typeface and all other visual elements.
• Secondly, make sure that the brand logo instantly connects the audience with the business offerings.
• Thirdly, create a brand message which is ascertained throughout the business platforms. From your online store to the retail store to your mobile app to the social media page, the look and feel of the brand should be consistent.

Optimise the CTA and the clickable areas

CTA or call to action buttons are ultimately going to convert business for your e-commerce websites and naturally, you cannot underplay them. You should boost the prominence of these buttons to facilitate clicking on them easily. Beside CTA all clickable and actionable areas should be placed prominently on the website. Consider the following tips.

• Make the CTA buttons bigger enough for grabbing attention and also for easy finger tap when accessed from mobile devices.
• Boost the click rate of your CTA buttons with appropriate colour and contrast. A whole array of websites is using orange in their CTA buttons as it proved effective in grabbing attention.
• Apart from the CTA buttons place all the clickable links and other functional elements like the contact no in prominent spots to achieve more traction.
• Finally, follow the thumb rule when designing for mobile. As most mobile users access the device single-handedly and they mostly navigate through through the touch of their thumb, the on-screen clickable elements should be placed within the thumb range to allow more ease of access.

Creative use of navigation

Finally, we have come to the web design element where e-commerce websites can really unleash their creativity to make the interface more user optimised and professional. While ease of access and quick reach to products and various areas of the website should be the primary objective you can easily ensure this with creative tweaking of navigation. Let us provide here some ideas and tips to make use of creative navigation in your e-commerce website.

• Do not use too complex multi-layered parallax scrolling to showcase products as it can take more loading time and can make access to various products and other areas of the website a little challenging.
• Continuous scrolling which is also called as infinite scrolling is a nice idea to allow navigation through our products.
• Do not forget to offer a search function to help accessing any product or -on-page elements quickly.
• Offer as many filters as possible ranging from the price range, brand, size, colour, availability of payment methods, locations of availability, discounts, etc.
• Make checking in, creating the wish list and saving in the cart as easy and quick as possible.

When it comes to e-commerce website design creative spirit runs high since every online store trying to stand out from the competition with attention-grabbing the look and feel. It's quite normal and we can easily predict that every second e-commerce site will focus on creative outpour in design to boost their online presence. But without a simultaneous focus on the functional ease and usefulness, creativity in design will not help e-commerce sites converting business.

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