OuterBox’s eCommerce Blog
Be Clear. I’d like to purchase from you!
With more and more eCommerce websites popping up on a daily basis, many of us are trying to find ways to be unique in selling our products online and creating successful online stores. Sometimes our creativity, in my opinion, gets “out of control”. What I mean by this is, no one can tell your even an online store! Whether it’s an atypical navigational format or a strange landing page, it’s probably not helping your conversion rate much. We’re creative, too, and like nothing more than to present unique ideas, but our end goal is always sales (And I think you’d like to make money, too!). With our analytic based approach to creating eCommerce websites we often work hard to figure out what is working on a website and what’s not. Oddly enough, many times the most basic sites convert best. To check a past of read 11 eCommerce Website Rules.
Whether it’s Ebay or Amazon, really, it’s nothing special. Of course this is easy for us to say because we don’t own either and we’re not billionaires like they are, but from a complexity design level, it’s nothing special. Each offers strong unique ideas and functionality which drive their success. Their strong points are ease of navigation and the ability for someone to get to the end goal. The side navigation and top navigation is what we’re all use to, so boring or not, we know how to use it already. There is no learning there. When a user is looking for a product, often they just want to find a website that looks secure and purchase quickly. If you offer them this opportunity, you’ll succeed.
Now I may seem like I’m contradicting myself, but adding some fun features may make the buying process one that has a bit of the “wow” factor as well. This can help in your website winning an award, a customer telling someone else or even your website being featured in a new article. As long as the fun feature does not interfer with a user purchasing quickly, or even better helps them to find what they need faster, it’s great to come up with creative ways to get from point A to B (buy).
SEO (search engine optimization) and Uniqueness – Anything built, if you’d like anyone to see it and you don’t have a huge brand that’s searched 1,000 time a day, should be search engine friendly and optimized. This once again can lead us to traditional navigations, breadcrumbs and some of the pieces we’re used to seeing. Never sacrifice your search engine rankings for a website that looks cool. In the end you won’t have sales and that’ll get you nowhere.
Through this post by no means do we mean to stunt your creativity, but just ask you to take our suggestions to be sure you get found and get sales! Remember, increasing profitable is the goal!
