Can you imagine what your customers’ thoughts are when they see your dull, boring-looking website? Your customers are likely going to have second thoughts about buying from you. You see, how your website looks matter a lot, given the visual tendency of humans.
According to statistics, only 2.86% of website visits convert to purchase on average. And how your website looks like is one of the factors that affect the one chance your customer buys from you. The thing is if the website visitor doesn’t like what they see the moment they come, you lose them forever.
It brings many people to the importance of having a design template for their ecommerce website. You might have thought you always need to build your website from scratch to make sure it looks great. Yet, it doesn’t have to be that way all the time. The good news is you can choose from millions of design templates to choose from, some even better than custom ones.
So, you recognize how important choosing the right template is. However, it is not going to be easy to pick the perfect design template. If you want to attract customers and keep them entertained, your website has to look and play the part of a true storefront. To help you with that, this article introduces some critical pointers to keep the selection process smooth. What are the things you should consider when looking for the right design template? Let us find out.
Consider Your Goals
What is the purpose of your website? Your website goal must be aligned with your business goals. It can be that you want to increase your relevant traffic, grow your email list, provide your visitors with a personalized experience, or boost your sales. Those are well and good, but it’s only the big-picture goal.
You need clear, SMART goals even with choosing a design template for a site. That being the case, you want to make your website objectives to be more actionable. If you are looking to sell products directly on the site, ask yourself, “How do I do that?” With this question, some of the goals you’ll likely come up include:
- Increasing sitewide conversions by x%
- Reducing the cart abandonment rate by x%
- Increasing the size of orders by x%, etc.
With your list of goals, you can determine what action to take to achieve your ideal KPI. For example, you can reduce your cart abandonment rate by choosing a design template with a concise checkout process. With practical goals, you will know which direction to go in picking the design template.
List Your Ideal Template Features
One of the most significant advantages of using a design template for your website is that there are plenty of features available. What are the features you want for your website? Creating a checklist of them ensures you have them covered when you look around. It also helps you narrow down your option given there are millions available.
Some of the features you’ll want on your ecommerce site include:
- Product pages
- Category pages
- Image Gallery
- Header and Footer
- Navigation Bar
- Design and Color Scheme
When you know the kind of features you want, you can eliminate the templates that don’t have them from the options.
See if It Is Compatible with Different Browsers
Compatibility with different browsers matters when you choose your design template since not all your customers will be using the same browser. Most maybe using Google Chrome, but some are likely Mozilla, Internet Explorer, Opera, or Microsoft Edge users.
Each of these browsers has a varying configuration. They also support different data formats. It means your ecommerce design template might not work with all of them unless you choose one that can support the most common browsers. Significant examples include EZY, Javenist, and Stylexpo.
Choose a Fully Responsive Design
According to ecommerce marketing statistics, you have a better chance of converting site visitors is it is mobile-friendly (responsive). The flexible design allows your website to adapt to varying screen sizes and dimensions seamlessly. It’s crucial since most of your customers are millennials and GenZs, which often use their phones to shop online. Your chosen design template must be fully responsive.
It has to appear great no matter the device your customer use and can switch from portrait to landscape and vice versa without issues. A seamless experience is a crucial deciding factor if a site visitor stays and becomes a buyer. You want to give your customers all the reasons to stay, so make sure they can access your site wherever and whatever device they use.
Gecko is an excellent example of this. It is a fully responsive Shopify theme with a one-click import configuration. It is retina-ready and translation ready with a section drag-and-drop feature, quick and friendly support, smart theme options, and more.
Check if It Allows Customization
Besides the technical features mentioned above, you want a template with an extensive customization feature. Why? Because then you better personalize your website later on. You want your site to look closer to the image of your brand. Some templates allow you to tweak the font, colors, size, and all other features.
It is great to have freedom, but it might compromise the functionality, so take it easy. Instead, choose a design that looks closest to how you imagined your site would look. This way, you don’t need to customize it a lot. Journal: Advanced Opencart Theme is an excellent pick as it gives you total control over your online store, no matter the resolution.
Pick a Design Optimized for SEO
Being SEO-friendly doesn’t only apply in content. Your website has a role, too, when it comes to ranking. After all, the design is what ensures your content to stand out from the rest. With Google’s stricter algorithm, it won’t matter that you have high-quality content. Not if search engines don’t like the technical aspects of your site.
When choosing your design template, check to ensure it has a proper hierarchy. That way, navigation is easy both for the search engine crawlers and your users. If your website is not SEO-friendly, search engines will have trouble finding it, which means you won’t get your ideal page ranks.
Luckily, ecommerce templates today make sure they are SEO-friendly. Having eliminated one of your website problems, all you need to do is choose the right one. Depending on what purpose and features you need for your website, some of the best SEO-friendly templates are Nomos, Nexio, DSK, Lebe, Funiter, Casano, and more.
Make Sure It Has a Solid Support
Don’t overlook the importance of having excellent support when choosing a design template. The Internet has millions of ecommerce theme – free or paid – but not all of them can perform as you expected. Your template may experience a glitch or could have a bug, which the developer can quickly resolve.
Before you buy a template, check to see if its customers are satisfied with the customer support it offers. The best template is the one with a developer that readily troubleshoots a problem. They also continually provide updates for continued better performance of the template.
Where to Find Design Templates for Your Ecommerce Site
Many places are available where you can purchase all kinds of ecommerce site design templates. The Internet has many stores where you can get all types of themes for free or with a price and not only for online stores. Some of them even allow you to sell your design on their site.
Some of the places where you can find design templates include:
Design templates are not the only way to boost your ecommerce performance. Research some other methods of gaining an advantage over your competition. In summary, you need to know the purpose of your ecommerce site and use that as a reference to find what features to consider in choosing your design template. Besides your personal preference, it is best to choose a fully responsive, SEO-friendly, customizable, has solid customer support and highly compatible design.
About the author: this is the guest post by Lianna Arakelyan
Title image from the Abstract pack on Ouch free vectors library
Learn how UX design builds trust and loyalty, check the handy checklist for the effective website launch, and read how to design product pages and search forms.
