3 Ecommerce Design Changes That Can Bring Big Results This Holiday Season

Online shopping reaches its highest point every year during the holiday season. Learn how you can take advantage of that on your website.

Alibaba, the global B2B ecommerce giants, reported more than $9 billion of ecommerce sales in 24 hours just a few weeks ago. Many other ecommerce websites reportedly earn as much 40% of their annual revenues during the last quarter of the year. And there’s every indication that this year’s holiday shopping figures will surpass the spending of the previous years.

If you’re an online store owner you should be prepared to make the most of the increased number of people shopping online. But increased traffic doesn’t always lead to increased revenue. That is why your design should be optimized for maximum conversions.

Here are 3 design changes that can boost your ecommerce sales this holiday season.

1. Create the Holiday Atmosphere

Creating the holiday atmosphere on your website, by using the traditional New Year colors and symbols, can immediately get your visitors interested. You can do this by changing your store’s design theme, website logo (Hint: see how Google makes changes) and by highlighting holiday offers on your homepage.

Customers expect discounts and special offers on ecommerce websites during the holiday season. If there’s no change to your standard design, it gives them no indication that anything special is on offer. Colors have a deep impact on consumer psyche, and they play a key role in driving conversions. So you need to take this seriously.

Another key factor is the color combination of your “calls to action” or “Buy Now” buttons. Make sure they don’t blend in with the design and can be easily spotted. Using contrasting colors always works best.

2. Focus on Mobile Shoppers

Mobile traffic is poised to take over the desktop visitors over the next few years, but it’s not just the volume of mobile traffic that is important. People are using smartphones and tablets, for online shopping and research, a lot more compared to desktops. But the mobile conversion rates are still lower. This is because many ecommerce stores still do not provide a smooth mobile experience to shoppers.

If you’re not using responsive design for your ecommerce website or online store, you’re going to lose potentially thousands of dollars in sales this holiday season. Depending on your website, you can address this issue in the following ways:

• If you have a custom built ecommerce website, confirm with your designer whether it’s responsive or not
• In case you’re using a third party store, go for services that use responsive design (see comparison here)
• If your store is based on WordPress, make sure your theme and store plugin are responsive

You can also take it one step further and go for a mobile-first online store. One example is Selz, a simple to use ecommerce shopping cart and online store solution. It can be embedded in a website, used as a WordPress plugin or as an online store. It adjusts dimensions for desktop users accordingly and provides them a smooth experience, but it is primarily designed for smartphone and mobile visitors. Here is an example of what it looks like:

As I said, mobile traffic is on the rise, but the conversion rates are still low. This presents a great opportunity to increase your sales by improving the mobile user experience and beating your competitors to the checkout!

3. Simplify the Checkout Process

Did you know that a large number of online shoppers leave just because of the complexity of the buying process? These are highly qualified and motivated leads that are willing to buy your products. But you could lose them just because of poor user experience.

What exactly makes the checkout process complex? There can be several reasons:

• The checkout is hard to find or navigate on a smaller screen
• You ask for a lot of information on the checkout, forms are harder to fill in on a smartphone / tablet
• Using multiple redirections in the payment process can lead to higher bounce rates if the buyer loses patience, his browser crashes or the internet speed is too slow.
• If you require buyers to make payments separately for every purchase.
• If you reveal any hidden costs at the checkout that were not listed on the product page.
• If you do not use a mobile friendly/responsive website design.
• If you offer very limited payment options

Remember, simple is always better. Here are some ideas to simplify the checkout process. Make sure:

• you have the shopping cart in place
• your payment processor uses JavaScript and completes the process in the same window without any redirections
• that your payment gateway is secure.
• your forms are as simple as possible (less fields)
• you don’t require people to become registered users
• you accept as many payment methods as possible

You can ensure payment security by using services like Gumroad, Ecwid or Selz who can process secure payments on your behalf and offer a variety of payment options. Here is what that can look like:

Conclusion

Almost every ecommerce store attracts higher traffic during the holiday season compared to the rest of the year. But traffic alone is not enough if your customers cannot easily find your products and complete their purchases. All three design recommendations in this post focus on converting your visitors into paid customers. And that is something we all want, right?

To make sure that you break all your previous New Year sales records, make these changes to your ecommerce website or online store before the holiday season gets into full swing and reap the rewards!