5 Tips for Designing an Online Store

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If you are one of many who are planning to sell your arts and crafts or other handmade creations on your store, or you are part of a larger organization with a need for an efficient and professional online store, you need to design a store application that works for your customers and for you. It has to be accessible, functioning, and user-friendly, just like the rest of your site. The store is possibly the most important page on your site, as it is where the sales happen. The rest of your site will be for naught if your customers can’t operate your online store.

1.   Research

Before you start designing your own store, look into other online stores from big-name brands and from smaller, independent ones and note what they do well and how you would improve their user experience. It’s easy to note what you need from a store when you can see a working one in front of you. Most stores have basic functions and you need to ensure that your design covers all of them.

2.   Make it Consistent

It can be a confusing user experience when clicking a link to an online store takes you to what appears to be a completely new website. Keep the store’s design in line and consistent with the rest of the site to create an easier and more accessible user experience. If you use lots of blue on your main site, don’t make the online store yellow.

3.   Simplicity is Key

When a customer is logging on to an online store, they more than likely already have a purchase in mind, or they are searching for a purchase to make. You don’t want to confuse them and drive them off your site.

If you have many products on your store and you don’t provide an accessible way to filter them down to specific products, your users will probably click off because they don’t have the time to scroll through all the other products that they aren’t interested in. Keep the filter simple, too. One or two clicks is all a customer wants to do to get to the product they’re looking for.

4.   Test and Test Again

Before you put your store live, try out a few test runs or even look into web application testing to ensure that your store is running smoothly and is completely functional. Having a professional test your store can reduce the risk of bugs and other issues upon launching the store.

5.   Have a Feedback Option

There is always room for human error and your customers are all going to have their own opinions. Provide an option for your customers to give you direct feedback on your store so that you can continue to improve it over time and adjust it to fit their needs even more closely. The most important thing is that you listen to your customers because they are the ones keeping your entire business afloat in the first place!