Last updated - February 24, 2020
When it comes to WooCommerce store design, there is no “one size fits all” formula. You need to pay careful attention to make your design suitable to your audience. As eCommerce is gearing towards personalization in all facets, you really can’t leave behind design. In fact, design too plays a role in customer experience. You can read our article on personalizing customer experience here. Fundamentally, you need to have a clear idea on your target audience and the site design should suit that. If you are not sure on how to identify target audience for your store, here is another article that could help. In this article, we will talk about how you can align your WooCommerce store design to suit your customer base.
Communicate the value of what you are offering
According to experts, when users visit your site for the first time they should be immediately clear on what value you are offering. They might be able to find the same product somewhere else, but why should they buy from you? First and foremost, you need to understand what value you are really offering your customers. It might be our product, which is more advanced than its competition, or it might be something like free shipping that you offer on your site. Whatever it is, you need to communicate that clearly and pretty fast too. You need to assume that your user has only a short attention span.
How to structure your value proposition?
When you want to communicate to your customers your value proposition, you need to understand what problem of theirs you are solving. Find an aspect of your product or service that would change the lives of your customers. Then present it on your site’s homepage in a way to catch the attention of your users. Ideally, you can follow the below pattern:
- A catchy headline – You need to articulate your value proposition in one line. Remember, this is not the tagline of your brand or the mission statement. It should be something that is totally from the customers’ perspective. That way you can immediately generate interest in the customer’s mind.
- A short description – You can follow the headline with a well-written description of how your store would help the customers. Include one or two specific points that your target audience would be looking for in your product. Again, this won’t be a long list of your product’s features, just a simple explanation of your headline.
- An image that complements the text – The image that you upload here can really work a lot in convincing customers why they buy your product. Experts suggest keeping an image showing your products in use that can inspire people to buy. You can find a good example of value proposition below:
Some tips to create an attractive value proposition
Creating a good value proposition definitely demands some research. It is important to study the market and your customers before you get on to make one. Let’s look at some of the useful tips provided by experts.
Understand the problems your product can solve
If you have done good research during product development, this may not be really tough for you. Your product should be able to solve a specific problem, and you can simply put it across in convincing language. Take effort to present it in the customer’s perspective. Like how much this problem can affect their daily lives? What consequences they may face if they don’t resolve the issue in a timely fashion?
Present the most critical aspect
Your product might be capable of solving multiple problems related to the market. It is important to understand each of these problems in terms of criticality and urgency. Once you are able to distinguish a problem this way, you can present it with the solution offered by your product.
Mention the added features that you offer
Sometimes you may be selling a product quite similar to that of your competitors. However, you might be offering added features like free shipping, or expedited shipping. Find out what exactly is that customers are looking for on your site, and offer that as the value proposition.
Design the product page based on what users would want to know
Your product page is one of the most important factors determining the conversion rate of your store. Read our article on conversion rate optimization to know more. Different products require different approaches when it comes to product pages. For example, the product page of a designer clothing range would be totally different from that of an electronics store. And most probably, you are not selling both together in your store. So it is a matter of understanding what your customers want to see in your products.
To elaborate the point further, a fashion apparel store demands a lot of creative imagery on the product page. Different images with models actually wearing the product would definitely improve the appeal of the product. However, if you are selling mobile phones on your site, looks will be considered, but not much as the apparel store. In case of the latter, your focus should be on writing a detailed description listing out all the features of the phone.
This aspect may not be so apparent in most cases like the examples we have mentioned. However, you can still think from the perspective of the customer to really understand what they are looking for. There will be products that would require a balance of images and text description. Understand that well and apply it to you product page design. For example, if you are selling furniture, a lot of customers would want to know the features of the products along with the way they look. Information about durability, material used, assembly instructions, etc. might be really important for a customer buying furniture. At the same time they would want to see how it will look in their living room too.
Visual hierarchy and interactivity
You can use color accents to create a visual hierarchy. According to design principles, your color scheme has theme has three components – a background color, a base color and an accent color. The accent color will be the one that will stand out, and naturally your site’s interactive elements such as ‘Add to Cart’ buttons should be in the accent color. Fundamentally, you are making it standout, so that there are more chances of customers taking a desired action.
Another factor that affects the interactivity of the site is the positioning and size of these interactive elements. In fact Fitt’s law ascertains this by proving that a relatively larger object that is closer to us would be easier to reach to. On a web design perpective, this would mean the distance of an interactive element to your mouse cursor. On the home screen, where users land, there should be an option for them to take an action. It can be an option to browse through your products, or go to a specific landing page with an offer. You need to make sure that a call to action element is placed in the right position with a standout color.
You can see several innovative examples of dealing with the visual heirarchy. On an XAdapter product page, you can see the use of accent color for the ‘Add to Cart’ button.
And you might have noticed the sticky option on the WooCommerce product page. When you scroll down on the product page, a sticky Add to Cart option will be available on the top of the screen. So that customers are never away from the interactive element that would contribute to conversions on the store.
Make customers trust your brand
Design plays a big role in making customers trust your store and brand. Maybe that is not really required for well-known brands. For all the rest of us, there should be considerable thought to be put to gain the trust of the customer. There are several ways to do this, and we will see some of them below:
Testimonials from your most prominent customer personas
You might have seen a lot of cases where online stores display testimonials on the home page. In many cases, these may have really great things being said about your products and brand. However, there is more to testimonials than just the words. Mostly, the trust factor comes into play when users can relate to the personas that leave the testimonials. One thing you can focus on is to include a section for testimonials on the homepage. Most of the popular WordPress eCommerce themes will have options for this in the Theme settings. Next is to select the ones that are close to the target customer personas. This way, your target customer base will be more willing to do business with you.
You can find a few of the best selling WooCommerce themes here.
Tell more about you
An interesting ‘About Us’ section can help increase the trustworthiness of an eCommerce site too. People would like to know a little background information about you before doing business with you. If it is vague, or seem like you are hesitant to disclose information about yourself, customers might become hesitant too. Your first time buyers would really appreciate it when your site reflects openness in communication.
Live Sales notifications
Showing live sales notifications may be a good option for certain products. This is actually more useful to provide a psychological push to conversions. However, for a user on your site who doesn’t really know anything about your brand or customers, it might be helpful. The fact that someone somewhere in the world has purchased your product would be a reassuring factor for a lot of customers. It is better to test this approach to see if it’s effective before making it a permanent fixture.
WooBought is a plugin that would help you set up live sales notifications on your WooCommerce site.
Display trust badges
Another strategy that would really help to increase your trustworthiness would be a display of trust badges. Customers would feel assured from the fact that you are taking security seriously. You can make use of WooCommerce hooks to display trust badges on your Cart and Checkout pages. You can find more information here.
Display positive press coverage
If you have got any positive mentions on one of the leading publications in your domain would be an added boost. Being featured in one of the popular publications would help a lot in creating a good impression in people’s mind.
Be clear about the return policy
One of the constant worries of an online shopper is what if the product doesn’t turn out to be as expected? If you display your return policy effectively, this can be alleviated to an extent. Most online shoppers would prefer it to have a hassle-free return option if the product doesn’t meet expectations.
Consistently test customer interactions
Constant improvisation is the name of the game when you talk about customer experience. Even though you can predict a lot about customer behavior based on analytics reports, nothing beats seeing actual customer behavior. Tools like Hotjar can help a lot in understanding real customer behavior on your site. You will be able to understand the effectiveness of various design elements with the help of such tools.
Conclusion
Your WooCommerce store design is a deciding aspect when it comes to customer interest and conversions. With a little bit of careful design interventions and focus on customer perspectives, you can drastically improve your conversion rate. This article has offered a glimpse of strategies ranging from clearly defined value proposition to modifications based on heat map reports. However, please note that your store might need a very subjective approach based on the target audience. Intelligent use of analytics reports and regular testing can help you excel in multiple ways.
