There appears to be no standards among e-commerce design, but I will tell you, there are certain design practices that have proven to work. It is all about usability and the user experience. If they find your ecommerce site hard to use, they will leave without buying.
I thought I would give you a few key must-haves for your e-commerce site, based on the online store, Delias as you can see in the graphic below.
5 E-Commerce Store Must-Haves
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- The purchase button has to be the largest button on the page. Making it a bright color is another good idea. If it is black or white it tends to just disappear on the page.
- The price is probably the most important information, so it should be at the top, after the title, and if on sale, indicate so with a different color for the sale price or a strike through of the regular price.
- Sharing your products on social media is something you want to encourage to bring more traffic to your site. Therefore, don’t put the social media icons at the bottom of the listing or far away from the photo or make them too small.
- All of the ordering information, including the purchase button should not appear below the bottom of the photo. I was helping an e-commerce site the other day, and the way their template was set up, it put all the descriptive details above the purchase button, so the more text my customer added, the further down the purchase button was pushed on the page, to the point it wasn’t even visible on-screen. Now I was viewing it on a laptop, imagine what how far down it would appear on a mobile device. So keep your main descriptive short and sweet and all other details such as shipping, etc., should come after the purchase button.
- One of the biggest frustrations I find with e-commerce sites is having to return back to the category section to see the next product. That is why I really like the navigation arrows at the top of this listing that allow me to easily go to the next item or back to the one I just looked at.
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