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The way you make a good first impression is through the great design of your site and a good user experience. For today’s back to school post, we’re going to jump in to what aspects you should keep in mind when trying to put your best foot forward when it comes to your site.

1. Purpose

Your website should always cater to the needs of your visitor. Are they looking for information about you, your products, or trying to find out how to contact you? Each page of your site should have a clear purpose, fulfill that purpose, and satisfy the needs of your visitors.

2. Your Content

That’s right, the words you put on a page should be a consideration when designing your eCommerce site. Flooding a page with endless walls of text will make your site seem unorganized, confused, and unprofessional. Your site’s home page should be a very broad overview of what your company does but provide the ability for your customers to dive deeper into your services and products.

3. Typeface

Just like how the words you put on a page should be a consideration when designing your site, how those words look should be a consideration too. Tiny and hard to read fonts, or even worse, a slew of different fonts, make a terrible experience for your customers and make your website look amateurish and unprofessional.

4. Product Images

In eCommerce, your customers can’t just show up at your store and try out your products. The most they have when shopping on your eCommerce site is the photos and descriptions you provide. So don’t skimp on the information you can give your customers and make sure your product images look great. Great product images will put your products in the best possible light and encourage your customers to purchase from you.

5. Navigation

Don’t punish your visitor with confusing and difficult to find information. If you do, they’ll get frustrated and go find another site to visit- they don’t owe you any time to fight with your badly designed site. Providing your visitor with easy to read and reasonable navigation will let your visitor know exactly what your company is all about and entice them to read further.

6. Colors

Just like I mentioned in my post about flag design, a well-designed eCommerce site has a color scheme that is well thought out and complimentary to your brand. Having your website plastered with seven different types of plaid makes for a disjointed and confusing website. No one wants that.

7. Load Time

While this is not something that might be considered on-page design, it is still a factor to take into account when designing your website. The internet is all about instant gratification and as time goes on, users are expecting the web to move faster and faster for them. Don’t get left behind. The average user expects a webpage to load in under two seconds and your website design should take this in to account. You could have the most beautifully designed site ever created, but if it takes all day to load, no one is going to see it. Having optimized images and efficient coding are easy ways to makes sure your site loads quickly enough for your users.

8. Mobile Friendliness

It’s becoming more and more important for businesses to understand that the web is viewed on several different devices. In 2013 Sophos Labs conducted a mobile survey that found that the average person had 2.9 mobile devices on them at any one time, whether it is their smartphone, e-reader, tablet, or laptop, and they will probably be browsing the internet on each of them. Make sure your website is responsive and can be viewed no matter what device your visitor is on.

Class Dismissed

This list may look like a lot, and there is a lot to it. But these factors are all part of constructing a useful and well-designed website that will delight your customers and help your company make a great first impression. Implementing these aspects of good design into your site can make a huge difference for your company. A well designed website attracts more visitors and that means more potential customers.