The importance of website design can never be overstated.
“Web design plays a crucial role in your online business success,” says Romain Berg Creative Director, Aria Tsiomakidis.
“I always recommend taking from your own experiences with a successful checkout and noting what they did right to get you there. Your website’s look and feel have a tremendous impact on your customer’s purchasing journey–so making it a pleasant one is crucial. “
There’s nothing more to add to this other than to establish what comprises a “pleasant” purchasing journey for your customers using your site.
It all boils down to the elements you will include as part of your site’s web design. Choosing the right ones will dictate how successful your eCommerce website can be.
Normally, you may need professional design help to get this done. For now, however, learn which components you must be mindful of in your web design.
Color Scheme
When brainstorming for web design ideas, choose your colors deliberately. The colors you will use on your site should make sense. That’s why you need to rely on a color palette to establish order in how the colors of your website should flow.
Below are the basic color schemes and frameworks you can use to design your website:
- Complementary – Choose a color, then find the shade on the opposite side of the color wheel. Complementary is a very common scheme used with white for simplicity and contrast.
- Rectangle – Select two colors and find both of their complementary colors. The four colors help offer more variety to your website.
- Analogous – Use the colors closest to each other on the color wheel to give that harmonious and vibrant feel.
- Triadic – Use colors 120 degrees away from each other to produce a homely and safe-looking website.
- Square – Choose four colors of equal distance from each other and use one among the four to be the most dominant. This scheme is perfect for achieving a warm or cool feeling on the site.
- Split Complementary – Choose a color, determine its complement, and choose the two colors beside it. Similar to the complementary color scheme, this offers contrast but with more room for freedom and creativity.
Navigation Menu
The menu is usually located at the top bar of the page. Each menu item either links to a specific page on your site or serves as a category that shows a drop-down menu of different pages when users hover on it.
You want to feature the most important pages in your menu so users can easily find them. At the same time, you must limit the number of items to include here as not to overwhelm people. Striking a balance between the number of items and user experience is key to providing the best navigation menu for visitors.
Consider using a fixed menu bar on the page where it stays in the same place, even if you’re scrolling up or down. This navigation bar style allows visitors to flip through pages from the menu if they want to learn more about you.
If you want to take your navigation menu a step further, take a cue from Magnet Co. as a website design inspiration. Instead of the usual navigation bar, the site requires to click on the hamburger icon to see the menu section that occupies the entire screen.
Source: magnet.co
Footer
Similar to the navigation menu, your site’s footer houses links to other pages on your site. The difference is that the footer section is at the bottom of your site.
If you have pages on your site that can’t fit in the navigation menu, include them in your footer. You can include a wide range of elements that you wouldn’t typically include in the menu, such as:
- Contact form
- Latest blog posts
- Contact information
- Links to social media profiles
- Terms of Service and Privacy Policy pages
Among inspiration sites, Chobani has all these plus a sign-up form to their newsletter in case visitors want to receive the latest news from the brand.
Source: www.chobani.com
The reason for being able to include more links here is because of its location. If visitors scroll down the page, that usually means they’re done browsing its content. And once they’ve reached the end, they’re probably looking for additional information about the site.
Therefore, use this opportunity by injecting items and design elements that visitors would like to see about your site.
Typography
Typography is a design element that refers to the typeface used as a site’s font.
Choose a typeface that is easy to read and understand. This reason is why Arial and Courier are the most commonly used typefaces on websites.
Also, most browsers won’t have any problems loading them properly, which results in a more seamless user experience.
However, it’s hard to stand out from the pack if you use either typefaces on your site. Nowadays, it’s possible to use unique readable fonts for your website from Google Web Fonts. Choose typefaces that best fit your site’s theme and feel so they align with your brand.
Aside from the typeface, you need to consider the size and space in between lines of text on your site. All elements should help make your content a pleasure to read and browse.
Source: GRT Calculator
To help you find the exact figures for each, go to Golden Typography Ratio Calculator. Use this calculator to see what the font size should be for your chosen typeface and content width.
White Space
Source: Squarespace
White space is a design element that refers to the areas in between different elements on a page. The goal of using space in web design is to create a natural flow that makes browsing your site much more straightforward.
To do this, you want the elements to be able to breathe. Beautiful designs aren’t always crammed with various components and elements. Sometimes, even the simplest web design can have an even more powerful impact with the proper use of white space.
For your web design inspiration, The Picasso Chronicle maximizes white space on a black and white color scheme to great effect.
Source: thepisaccochronicle.com
The result is an elegant-looking, clutter-free online publication that matches the topics it talks about (food, art, and cinema).
Call to Action
Call to action helps give your pages a sense of purpose. If your website’s appearance drew more visitors in, your call to actions should mobilize them to take action once they’ve gone past your content.
Your CTA will depend on the type of business you have. Since you’re in the e-commerce industry, your call to action likely is to encourage visitors to buy your products.
When creating a CTA for your web page, consider the color and size of the button they’ll click. Each color has different psychological triggers, so choose a color that conjures the emotion you want to invoke from visitors and convince them to click on it.
Conclusion
If you want to sell tons of products online, you need to develop a high-quality online store that’s easy to navigate and purchase from.
This post helps you cover the design aspect of your website. However, it would be best if you made sure that all its parts work fine and won’t cause frustration to customers.
There’s nothing “pleasant” about a pretty-looking online store where people can’t place their orders properly!
To make sure that your shop looks primed for conversions and works like clockwork, you’ll need the tandem of professional designers and experienced developers who will build your site from the ground up. This way, you can maximize your earnings with a fully-functional website that your audience will love.
For more information on how Romain Berg can help you, fill out this form. We’ll get back to you shortly.
