Whether you’re just starting a home business and need an online interface to get started, or you’re just looking to update the old and outdated appearance of your current web store, front page design is perhaps the most critical area of your design scheme to focus on. Unlike other web pages that aren’t used primarily to generate revenue and profit, e-commerce sites are specifically authored with the intention of monetizing the purchased web space. When bad design eliminates profit margins or worse yet, causes poor sales of products or services that would otherwise thrive under normal market conditions, you’ve really run into a visual roadblock with your web store. If you need to tailor your web store’s front page to not only appeal visually to customers but also entice them to browse around and make purchases, you’ll need to focus on some basic front page design facets in order to make your site work for you.
All good design is both purposefully and aesthetically pleasing, wherein one aspect never seems overpowered or sidelined by the other. Just as sports cars are designed to be more aerodynamic not only in order to encounter reduced wind resistance but also to look sleek and streamlined, web store front pages should exude visual freshness but also be manageable enough for a customer to understand at first glance. Like small bird cages designed with curved iron edifices and unique structural touches that maximize spatial allowance for the pet birds inside them, a web site store needs to look beautiful, but also use the elements of its beauty to entice, rather than distract, shoppers. Small bird cages that simply looked pretty and didn’t have spatial concerns considered in advanced can leave pet birds without adequate space to move around in and spread their wings, making the cages failures despite their appearances. Similarly, poor web store interfaces may look snazzy but never really draw the customer to the desired product pages, leaving the customer visually impressed but moving on to other sites. A web store that draws customers in but doesn’t get them to buy anything is a failure, and design can be blamed for much of that problem.[ad#ad-1]
When it comes to an online business startup or early web venture, chances are your company isn’t selling a very large number of products initially. This makes things quite easy to manage from a design standpoint. You want to focus the customer’s attention as much as possible before you lose him to other distractions on the web. If a potential customer has to dig through page after page of your site in order to find what he needs, he’s more likely to shop elsewhere than stay on your site. If you have only 6 major products, for example, at your online company launch, your site’s homepage should prominently display those six products so that they serve as focal points on the front page. That way, potential customers know what is being offered clearly from the get-go, and they can simply click through to their desired purchase without getting hammered down by unnecessary linking. As you expand your company’s product offerings, you may have to work on a more complex interface, but you don’t have to worry about that just yet.
One really crucial thing to remember is to never display the prices of your product offerings on first glance, particularly not on your site’s homepage. Let the customers explore your offerings further, and then let them decide before even seeing your price that they want what you have to offer. That way, should the see a price somewhat out of line from what they were expecting, they’ll still be more likely to buy it versus having written off the price first thing upon visiting your page. The major exception to this rule is when the price being offered is the big selling point of your product. If you’re selling your item at 50% off standard retail, that’s worth noting right up front and center, so that customers never miss it and are enticed to shop around your store even further expecting other great prices to pop up as well.
So long as you keep your site’s front page simple, uncluttered, and focused, you should start seeing some sales gains. Granted, success varies depending on a number of factors unrelated to design (such as product quality, pricing, branding, etc.), but at least with these tips you’ll know one area is at least a bit closer to where it needs to be for your business to succeed online.