Ecommerce UI Design: Strategies and Best Practices

Online shopping is on the rise. Consumers are becoming more familiar with buying online rather than visiting brick-and-mortar stores. As per Statista, the global digital buyers count in 2021 stands at 2.14 billion. The numbers have sky-rocketed in recent years. As a result, more and more businesses have started marking their presence on the digital platform by building an eCommerce website.

Today, we will be talking about one important aspect of an eCommerce website or application that plays a key role in attracting customers and improving the overall user experience- the eCommerce UI Design.

What is eCommerce UI?

Ecommerce UI can be defined as an interaction point between a user and the eCommerce application and refers to the visual aspects of the latter. With a key focus on the overall look and feel, UI designers aim to create interfaces that are intuitive, aesthetically pleasing, and user-friendly. The ultimate goal of an eCommerce UI design is to enhance the experience of the end-users.

Related: Understanding the difference between UX and UI

Best Practices and Strategies for Ecommerce UI Design

UI plays a crucial role in eCommerce as far as sales and conversions are concerned. Because if your end-users do not find your site or app design appealing or user-friendly, they would likely bounce off immediately irrespective of how quality products you offer. Let’s take a look at some of the best practices and strategies for an eCommerce UI design.

1. Branding and Homepage Design

The first on our list of eCommerce UI best practices is Branding. Branding implies creating an image of your brand using a certain set of elements like the logo, symbol, color patterns, design, etc. It provides a recognizable face to your business and helps customers easily recall or identify your brand in the future.

Work on Branding

UI designers work on multiple UI aspects such as illustrations, icons, typography, etc., and create interfaces that reflect the image of a brand. Take an example of Amazon. If you visit the website, you will notice that the logo, search bar, sign-in button, add to cart button, and rating stars; all follow an orangish color pattern. That color represents their brand. Now imagine if they had used multiple colors. Not only does it break the consistency throughout the website but makes it difficult for the users to remember the brand.

You can try to integrate your branding in the header and splash screen as well. A splash screen, also referred to as a welcome screen, is a screen that is displayed to the users for a fraction of a second when they open or enter an application.

Informative Homepage

Branding is followed by an informative home page. A home page is the initial interaction point for the users and carries the overview of an application. If it is not informative enough, users won’t likely dig further. A homepage, in general, can include-

1. Carousel/Sliding banners
2. Easy to spot and well-positioned search bar
3. Bestsellers
4. Testimonials/Social Proof

Depending on your business niche and target audience, try to put up as much valuable information as you can on your homepage to leave a strong first impression. A nice homepage sets the base for your eCommerce website.

2. Smooth Navigation and User Journey

Adding to the eCommerce UI best practices is smooth navigation. A clear and easy navigation path is essential for a converting UI design. If users find trouble moving around your eCommerce website, it can severely impact your conversions. Create a path that makes the user journey fluent and keeps them informed about their position on the website.

Use Progress Bar

A progress bar is used to enhance the eCommerce checkout experience. It basically informs the users which stage of the checkout they are present at. This provides them with a clear idea of the checkout path as to what all steps (sign-in, billing details, shipping details, etc.) they need to go through to complete the purchase. As they progress, it is shown on the progress bar.

Integrate Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs can be referred to as the parent category of the progress bar. It is also a form of site navigation that indicates where the user is present on the site and makes it comfortable for them to move between categories and products. Breadcrumbs are also helpful from the SEO perspective since they enable search engines to crawl those pages and rank them.

Reduce User’s Efforts

As we discussed above, a great eCommerce UI design should be efficient; requiring minimum user efforts to achieve the desired outcome. This should be strictly considered in case of a checkout. If you are making users go through a lengthy checkout process, it will not only create annoyance but might even kill their purchase intention. Try to minimize the number of clicks or form fields. Some eCommerce websites abruptly present a long sign-up form during checkout that disturbs the checkout flow and hampers the user experience. Simplifying the registration process in such cases would help users save time and effort.

3. Call-to-Actions and Mobile Responsive Design

Users usually don’t consume all the information they see on their screens. They scan the content and focus primarily on the elements that grab their attention. Therefore, it is essential to highlight your key and interactive elements so that they are easy to spot on the very first look. The role of CTAs becomes highly important here for an effective eCommerce UI strategy.

A call-to-action needs to be eye-catching, and if designed well, can trigger users to take the intended action, thus fulfilling its purpose. CTAs tend to be short and crisp so think about it and create ones that clearly describe the purpose and also help users understand the expected outcome if they click on the CTA button.

Make good sync of the text and background color to make it visible and readable. An effective CTA can significantly scale up your conversions.

That’s all we have for you in the eCommerce UI strategies and best practices. If you have something more to add, do mention it in the comments below.