5 major web design issues that lead to conversion decline and how to fix them
In the recent years, the ecommerce industry has developed rapidly. What once was a platform just for learning about new products and promotions is now a global sales sector worth in trillions. With the growing trend of online shopping, it was calculated in 2016 that the global B2C e-commerce sales increased to 1.92 trillion U.S. dollars.
It is estimated that by 2020 the ecommerce sales will reach $523 million, almost 53% rise from 2015. In other countries such as Japan, 97% of internet users purchase products online. In UK, online shopping is taking over brick and mortar stores as it now contributes to 30% of UK’s total economy. New statistics also revealed that 13% of Russians are shopping online from their total population. So when it comes to selling your products online, you know it’s a market that never rests. But in order to win traffic that visits your website and purchases your products, you need to be as appealing as possible.
What is web design?
This is where the most important component of ecommerce websites comes in, and that is Web Design. Web design is the conceptualized and planned structure built from the collection of electronic data that you determine such as color, images, layout, text and other forms of graphic to make it interactive for visitors. Without a good website design your website is incapable of attracting any visitors, meaning no conversions, no sales and most definitely no revenues. If you are selling online or plan to move your business to an ecommerce platform, you might as well consider avoiding these 5 notorious conversion destroying mistakes for your website.
1. Bad power structure
First and the most crucial aspect of a web design is the power structure or hierarchy. If you are selling a lawn mower to the consumer you will most definitely start with its exceptional qualities to cut grass neatly and effectively. After that, you might as well brag about the color and shape to go out with a smooth finish. Similarly, when you are presenting your business on a website, the design must first speak about the purpose and goals of your business through its elements. You wouldn’t want your audience to just visit and leave immediately with disappointment.
Solution
By adding a power structure you can showcase the most important details in descending order, so that that content catches the interest of the visitors and encourages them to keep on looking further. You can use banners, images, videos and attractive phrases to prioritize your content and bring it to the limelight.
2. Outdated landing page
In this visual-centric eCommerce industry, the eCommerce trends & statistics shows that the customer only needs a glance to proceed or abandon your website. If you need to make it count you must trash the old conventional homepage design and build it up in accordance with the latest trends. Customers prefer landing pages to be simple, neat and with tabs and headers less as possible. A good illustration combined with the right navigation features is enough to give the customer a strong idea about your business.
Solution
Customize your homepage with HD images, banners and navigational tools to guide your customer instead of leaving him in bewilderment. This helps your website to become more engaging and customer friendly.
3. Amateur photography
Now that it’s brought up, I can finally share the frustration I face when I see a badly photographed product when buying it online. Your web design is incomplete if you don’t have the right visual quality to pursue your marketing and bad photography is the culprit behind it. Any photo that is captured badly without clarity or relevance can be a big NOPE. It not only sends the customer away, but also creates complications for the product from being marketed again on your store. A sloppy design that lacks the basic visual element can ruin the business within days.
Solution
To prevent this from happening you can hire a professional photographer to enlighten your customers with the bright side of your product. With the DSLR technology, photography has been redefined with high resolution results and digital compatibility. Every successful web design uses HD photography to capture the obscure details in products that can only be seen while holding or touching it in a brick or mortar stores.
4. Ignoring the adoption of responsive design
In the past decade, internet has emerged as powerful variable in the wholesale sector providing commerce and marketing platform to millions of businesses across the globe. All with the help of technology that keeps on going and going, blowing minds and breaking new heights on its way. Ignoring or failing to acknowledge technology in the domain of ecommerce industry can spiral into a costly catastrophe. Yes, I’m talking about mobile friendly design.
Solution
With the rise in smartphone users all across the world, online shopping trends are shifting to mobile devices. Internet users are feeling more secure and comfortable using their smartphones to purchase products. With responsive web design your store can open and scale on any screen size regardless which device the buyer is using. This web development strategy not only helps secure mobile shoppers but also improves your rankings on search engines.
5. Slow speed
Aside from being a crucial ranking factor on search engines, page speed is the primary determinant for conversions in your ecommerce store. If your web design does not register the minimum threshold speed required to qualify a smooth and lag free checkout then you are wasting your time and investment. Without a speedy response the customer is as good as gone, simply because there are too many other websites that can open within 3 seconds and navigate without delays.
Solution
To put a cap on this bounce rate, you can call your web development specialist to reconfigure the web design and eliminate errors and glitches that are slowing it down. A speedy website is always preferred over any other competitor. If you can overcome this, then you might as well have recovered half of your conversion drops.
Conclusion
Websites are the online ambassadors of your business. A good web design is capable of communicating your business goals and ideals directly to the customer. Hence, it is imperative that you show the best of your abilities through your website by overcoming the most notorious conversion killers in the ecommerce industry. A business that has perfected its web design by solving these 5 problems can succeed in increasing its revenues and decrease its bounce rates significantly. I can bet you on that.
Author bio:
Asad Ali is an online marketing specialist with over 7 years of experience working with renowned web development and web design companies. He currently works for GO-Gulf, a Dubai website design agency that provides custom web development services.