Design that Sells: Nailing Web Design for E-Commerce Sites

by Ellen Foster
Web Design School Review Columnist

With more businesses seeing the benefits of online customer transactions, it’s vital that Web designers learn what makes an effective e-commerce site tick. If there’s a venue where all those Web design bells and whistles provide little more than distraction, it’s an e-commerce Website. For starters, think simple, straightforward, and spare.

Keep Web Design Smart and Simple

E-commerce sites built on elaborate digital video and Macromedia Flash presentations have proved less successful than their simpler, smarter counterparts. Consider some of the biggest online retailers—when you hit their sites you tend to notice the technical simplicity of simple tab or text-based navigation systems and the clarity of spare page design. These sites stay smart by employing search engines that can find the desired product even when the visitor enters a search term without an exact match.

E-Commerce Web Sites Require Sign Posts for Visitors

Web designers cringe at the notion of losing site visitors during a financial transaction. Thus, hitting the Web design mark during the order process is especially vital. A well-designed order screen should provide crystal-clear information for the site visitor. Generally, this means one screen per topic: credit card info, shipping address, and shipping method might all occupy their own screen, so that scrolling is unnecessary. Yet Web designers don’t want the process to feel tedious or never-ending. They might combat this tedium by providing very clear orientation for the visitor, a kind of “you are here” during the process.

Web Design Schools Teach Design for E-Commerce

If you don’t have the tools to tackle Web design for e-commerce sites, know that Web design school is a great place to learn industry-current design processes. Many Web design schools can provide students with the business-savvy that results in successful e-commerce Web sites.

About the Author

Ellen Foster is a freelance writer and teacher. She has worked with students of all ages

Source(s)

“E-Commerce,” Web Style Guide

Posted at 4:35 PM on July 9, 2007

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