10 Important Ecommerce Web Design Tips

1. Deciding on the purpose before you start designing your web site is extremely important . Each part of your website should lead to your purpose. If the purpose of your website is to sell, don't fall into the trap by designing a website which impresses people but does not sell. You would not want people to get astonished by your web design and then close the window and go to another site without even noticing your salesletter at the bottom of the page.
   
   

2. Wild graphics and animations are “traffic killers” . Using too many of them will slow down the loading time extensively and your visitors naturally without that much time and patience will have no choice but leaving your web site. If you really need to use graphics, keep the files small and use alt tag on graphics so that people can read those texts before the graphics download.
   
   

   
   

3. Choose font types that are clean and easy to read by most visitors . Use of new and proper font types may make a site stand out effectively. However, use of comic font types on business web sites will just do the reverse.
   
   
   

4. Mind the size of the text . If visitors have to struggle to read the text on your web site, they will probably choose to leave your site.
   
   
   

5. Do not use distracting or busy background where text is much harder to read. Text is most easily read on extreme contrasting solid colored background like black text on white background.
   
   
   

6. Navigation should be easily and quickly found by visitors . Moreover, visitors should be able to access all pages of your web site from any page as visitors will often enter your site from a search engine listing with a link other than your home page. You will have wasted the traffic and give the prospect a bad impression of your business if they find a dead end with no way to access the rest of your web site.
   
   
   

7. Keep your site clean and uncluttered . Use spacing properly. Headings, subheadings, sentences and paragraphs should be consistently spaced. Indent and bullet should be used to highlight the key benefits of your products or services.
   
   
   

8. Ad banners and outside links should be kept to a minimum on the home page of your web site as nobody wants to visit a link farm. If you are doing link exchange, make pages that are just for links or ad banners. However, if you belong to Google Adsense, it is recommended to place those links at the top and left hand side of the page because they produce revenue.
   
   
   

9. Creative and original web site layouts are now easily implemented using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Creative use of navigation positions and other techniques have created sites that are very much different than the old standards. For most ecommerce businesses, uniqueness is a competitive edge which makes your website more memorable by customers.
   
   
   

10. Do not use underline to highlight keywords as this will confuse your readers with hyperlinks.