10 Common eCommerce Website Design Mistakes

More and more people opt in for online selling in 2022 because it provides a lot of great advantages for both buyers & sellers. Entrepreneurs are happy because they aren’t responsible for taking a physical shop for rent which allows their business to cut costs. And from the customers’ perspective, exploring the market has become so easy with online shopping. They don’t need to roam street to street anymore, just hold the mobile phone and explore millions of products from different brands from the comfort of their couches.

eCommerce faced a revolution during the COVID-19 pandemic as people got a safer way to purchase what they need. Even as the epidemic is coming to an end (hopefully), all these businesses are still and will be present on the internet as buying products online has remained a habit.

eCommerce website design mistakes

eCommerce website development is tough enough. To ensure you have a great online presence, we have compiled a list of top common mistakes to consider when designing your e-Commerce website. Let’s dive in…

1. Not Ensuring a Responsive Design for Mobile

It may not be surprising anymore that more than 60% of people visit those e-commerce website pages from their mobile devices. There’s a variety of mobile devices like tablets & smartphones mainly based on two OS and for those, there are several statistics which we’re not mentioning here. But, among every 100 mobile phone users, 79 of them have done a purchase from the internet.

So, you need to make sure your site is compatible with all mobile devices for this huge number of people. If you don’t ensure that your site is responsive, you are on the fast track to failure. You must offer your potential customers a smooth experience while they’re browsing through your website.

Just don’t apply and tweak a Shopify store design, you need to think that there are a huge variety of mobile devices. Your design may look great in all size’s laptops, but it’s probably looking caged in a mobile phone. When designing your eCommerce website, you should always keep in mind that it needs to look responsive on both small and wide screens.

2. Poor Layout & Design

Do you know what’s the primary rule of branding? That’s using the same cohesive design feels and layouts across all your marketing materials including your website. Your unique website design, colour palette, and layouts help to highlight your brand identity and distinguish your brand from your competitors. Getting the right design that perfectly meets your desired requirements makes it easier in long run.

At Star-media, we can help promote your business with custom-built websites. You can have a look at our web design services to check out our latest website design & development work.

3. Inadequate Product Description & Images

Think about a physical store in the real world. You walk into a store, you’re able to pick, give a trial, feel that product, then read the packaging labels, and talk to the sales staff for more information if you need to know more. Online shopping is absent from human interaction. Then what do you do as a customer? Customers have to rely on just how a product looks in the picture – and the information you provide in the product description. If that reliable description or image lacks detail, potential customers wouldn’t be able to grow trust in your product, which is a failure.

Copywriting is also an art that plays well in terms of steady business conversion. Include minimum visual clutter to ensure easy viewing of the product features and specifications. Make the description easy to understand, and attractive too. That’s all matters to the customers.

Now if we come to the images, e-commerce graphic design is mowed down by Site speed – that’s an SEO issue. But it’s recommended to use high-quality images so people can zoom in to get a closer look at the product. Not to mention, people nowadays like to read less and watch more.

4. Time-consuming Checkout Process

It’s one of the worst things according to experts. If customers change their minds about leaving your site just because you’re wasting time, that’s the biggest punishment after creating an online shop. Why do they need to create an account on your site with too much information?

Think about a simple design. Just add the products on the first page, then add a phone number, payment, and shipping info. That’s enough for both product selling & lead generation.

Without that, those people browsing your website are probably going to another site in search of those products.

5. Lack of Customer Service

It’s one of the significant e-commerce mistakes. Your company is just not a matter from the Infinite Space. It’s also directed by humans, and thus your customers want to keep connection with humans. They’re providing their name, phone number, address – so it creates a trust issue. So, include contact information (email, phone number, contact form) across your site. You may wanna include them in the footer, or somewhere in the sidebar.

Besides this traditional customer support, you can also integrate a chatbot that can answer most of the common customer queries and guide customers in solving common problems and complaints. This can help in improving business branding even more.

6. Not Providing a Search Engine & Filter Options

Most potential customers while accessing the online stores on their tiny mobile screens seem restless and they always prefer using search options to zero in on the product they are looking for. An e-commerce page design is ideal with a built-in search engine. This search bar is needed to keep them engaged.

The search option can be further simplified by detailed filter options related to the niche covering each and every specification. You know, a search can return hundreds at a time. For example, if someone searches for a “mobile phone”, the mobile phone covers may also pop up. To prevent these, you should also go for a filter option.

7. Annoying Shopping Cart Design

Let’s give a short suggestion on how you can design a shopping cart as it’s crucially important for e-commerce web design. Some e-commerce has such kind of shopping cart web design that it looks annoying. Without mentioning the problems, we’re telling about a perfect shopping cart Interface design. Make sure your shopping cart follows these suggestions.

• The shopping cart should be flexible. It should let customers add more than one product easily, set the quantity number, and add or remove products from their shopping cart.
• Make sure the shopping cart is developed in a way that customers can just add the product without leaving the product page they were on. Thus, they can continue browsing your website, and they can even choose more products – that’s a win-win for both the customer and your business.
• Make sure to show up the delivery fee with the total expense.

8. Complicated Navigation

If navigating a your eCommerce website seems like solving a Rubix Cube or if it’s hard for customers to browse products and make purchases, it can leave the customers feel frustrated.

Here are few tips to make navigation simple:

• Increase the size of all the clickable elements so it’s big enough for finger taps. Following that, there are some most commonly accessed navigation buttons such as Home, Menu, Shopping Cart, Account, etc. Place these on the leading spots of the device screen.
• One more thing, if you don’t sort your products under categories, the customers will find it really difficult to find a particular product type. Ensure that all your products are categorised properly, or some smaller categories together under larger categories that are similar. But remember also, don’t create such a category that’s famous on all other e-commerce sites on the web, but you don’t have any products for that. Some online e-commerce sites are doing this fake thing and that’s hilarious.

Follow these steps and provide the best e-commerce menu design to make it easy for visitors to browse through your e-commerce site.

9. Lack of Payment Policy information

In the 5th point, we talked about customer service. Your potential customers are humans, and they also wanna buy from humans, not just a website. So, there should be 100% transparency on your website. It should be full of information, and among them, payment policy is a sensitive issue. Nobody would like those surprises which make them exasperate, it may be mentioning the unavailability of home delivery, or any such information that is terrible for the customer.

Be upfront about your payment policies. Include every single detail about payment options, shipping charges, returns in your design. Make sure these fades up to your visitor before they reach the final payments page after adding some products to the shopping cart. Providing this information in the right spot helps to build trust, and prevents the disgusting state of the customer’s mind.

10. Inadequate Delivery Options

As you know, priorities vary from person to person, shipping behavior is also different. Popular eCommerce websites provide as many shipping options as possible. That’s what people would expect too.

Many shipping options give customers more flexibility. Some of your customers are students, probably they always run on a tight budget, and try to save more every day. You can put options of reducing the shipping cost. For example, a customer can choose to pick up products from the nearby store instead of doorstep delivery to save the delivery charge. Or if a customer doesn’t pay cash on delivery, and completes advanced payment, he/she will receive a 10% cashback.

Try to add more options and offers, and as we recommended before, e-commerce site design should make these options & offers visible before the customer reaches the final payment page.

Conclusion

Certainly, there can be more ecommerce website design mistakes, but these 10 are the most demanding and common problems that most e-commerce sites have. You can focus more on Landing Page Optimization, Page speed issue solving, and others. Any design mistake that sabotages the shopping experience and makes purchases difficult should be avoided at any cost. While working on e-commerce website design, always focus on making things easier for the customers to browse, navigate, search, and buy on your store.

Hope this article helps you learn the top common mistakes in eCommerce website design. Questions? Leave a comment. And share with your entrepreneur partners.