Got a great product that you’re planning on selling online? Looking to retail cool custom designed tees or those elegant accessories for the iPhone?

When setting up an eCommerce platform to get you in touch with consumers, keep in mind some DOs and DON’Ts that can get you started in the right direction. Certain practices can help ensure a seamless and rewarding experience for the user. These can aid in engaging the customers for a longer time and decrease the number of people who leave after just glancing at the homepage.

At the business end, it can mean better conversion rates and more checkouts.

Read on to find out some of the best practices when putting your product out there and stepping into the eCommerce playground.

1. Limit choices for user

Fewer options help keep the interaction crisp. image: myownbike.de

Don’t give the customer so many options to click that they can’t make up their mind. In order to control the flow of user experience and make it intuitive prune the number of options available up front to the user. Don’t bombard them with categories and products. Keep the essentials at the forefront. These are the most likely choices that a customer may be looking for. Populate the fringes with useful information & alternatives but don’t overdo it. Make their visit to your site a delicately — guided experience; enough room to explore independently, but not so open for them to get lost in space. Look at sites such as Pixel Industry and Third Man for good examples of this.

2.Respect the balance between images, text and white space

Balance the space between different elemts. image: www.starbucks.com/menu

Manage the design so that the space allotted to pictures and product descriptions is in tandem. One of them should not overwhelm the other. General web trends are all about minimalist design. But that cannot necessarily work with e Commerce. Your site needs have the right mix. Also, keep in mind to fine tune the balance between text and images as the user progresses from the generalized homepage to a more specific product lineup. Homepages should allot more space for visual cues to draw in the user while pages deeper into the experience, such as those for a specific product, should invert this status quo.

3. Are rotating sliders a good idea?

Rotating sliders can be a hit or a miss depending on how you use it. image: http://www.boldandnoble.com/

Image carousel. Image Rotator. Rotating Banner. Call it what you want. But there can be pros and cons to this feature.

It gives you a great way to display some highlights from the offerings, yet does not over populate the space. Keeping a lineup of maybe the top four or five picks ensures that the experience does not reach a saturation point. A rotating slider is also a great way to display sufficient content above the fold and tempt the customers to browse further. This will keep the page clean and concise, so as to not make it a very long scrolling experience.

However, some UI designers point to it as one of most rampant trends that is actually not adding any value. There is a lot of debate about how effective it is in driving conversion rates. Orbit Media Studios did a good article that talks about actual case studies with rotating sliders on sites. Check that out to see if you are convinced by the arguments. The article also discusses how many items you should have on the slider and would they all get enough attention.

4. Personalize the session

Add a personal touch to enrich the experience. image: http://www.ninewest.com

Amazon is of course great at this! Customizing user experience is a must to keep the customer engaged and prolong the shopping session. Based on past clicks on products and viewing patterns, keep the recommendation system ticking to pop up interesting and helpful suggestions for the user. Showcasing suitable alternatives or other choices in the same style is a great way to guide the user experience further. If you want to understand the Who and the What of the personalization experience, this post at Optimizely Blog has got you covered.

Another wise move is to keep product reviews well organized near the product info to make up the customer’s mind when they may be uncertain. Positive feedback from the reviews engages the user better and also reinforces their choice. But make sure it’s not all 5 star ratings. Ensure that the reviews are real, from accurate consumers and useful to future buyers.

5. Forgiving interface

Make it easy for the user to make changes or correct mistakes. image: amazon.com

Allow the user room for error. Optimize the checkout experience so that the user can modify cart items satisfactorily. Give them the opportunity to navigate without getting lost at the click of a button. This means easy transitions from menus and broad categories to individual items and vice versa.

6. Coherent design across multiple platforms

Uniform design philosophy across devices helps create the brand

Mobile devices are nearly on par with computers, in terms of economic traffic. Having a uniform design philosophy across different devices and platforms aids in building a unique identity. Whether the user is browsing your website on their mobile, or on their laptop, it’s best to not make the two experiences very different.

A take away from this point is that don’t implement radical design choices on one platform that may not work effectively on another. Subtle changes and optimizations on individual platforms have their own merits but drastic changes can be a bad idea.

Ensure that banners and hero images resize depending on the device so that bloated, improperly aligned elements are not an issue.

Conclusion

Good design is a cornerstone of sound conversion rates. In the end, it is the simplicity and swiftness of purchase that will draw buyers to your platform. If they can quickly find what they are looking for, they’re gonna keep coming back when thinking of buying again.

Also, don’t give in too much to trends at the cost of uniqueness. The same ideas cannot work for every case, so see what suits your product best.

Hope you got some sound ideas about how to go about setting up your eCommerce website!