As a Shopify store owner, you have chosen one of the most reliable platforms for online stores. It’s easy to use, loads quickly, and has a responsive design. It’s reassuring to know that your products will display nicely, whether on laptops, cellphones, or other devices.
80% of customers say their shopping experience is as important as the products and services. Shopify’s themes are clean. The intuitive design provides shoppers with a positive user experience. Still, there are ways to tweak your store to improve user experience (UX), impressions, and functionality.
This post will cover seven enhancements that will make your Shopify store stand out and generate more sales. To learn more, check out this resource on the best features of Shopify.
Why Is Enhancing Your Store’s Design Important?
A successful Shopify store should focus on the product, marketing, ads, and store design equally. Why design, you might ask? It stimulates shoppers’ interest, improves credibility and trust. Optimizing your Shopify store’s design is critical to getting customers to buy from you.
Studies highlight that 42% of visitors will leave a website due to “poor functionality.” In another survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers, 600 of them said that “website usability” is important to them.
Here are the most effective eCommerce design elements to consider implementing for your store.
7 Ways to Enhance Your Shopify Store’s Design
Making it simpler and faster to shop in your Shopify store can be a game-changer.
Source: Shopify
1. Make It Easy for Customers to Browse and Buy
How straightforward is it for your customers to navigate from finding product information to making selections and placing the order? A measure of your store’s usability relies on how simple it is to use or complete their desired tasks, such as looking at the product descriptions, prices, or making a purchase. Shoppers should not have to navigate all over the place to find what they need.
Some quick ways to improve usability are to:
- Have relevant, brief, and precise information on each page
- Reduce on-page clutter
- Minimize choices to one or two per product
Giving customers too many options leads to analysis paralysis. They just click away because they can’t decide. Keep your offers simple and to the point.
2. More Readable Fonts = Higher Conversions
The font can be just as important as what the text says. A study of website visitors revealed that they read only 28% of the words on an average page, but 20% is more likely. It doesn’t mean you should have less text. Just be sure it’s in a clear easy to read font.
There are three elements to quality typography:
- Legibility – Make the page easy to read. For online stores, use a “sans serif” font like Tahoma or Arial.
- Readability – Readability design elements include type size, color, spacing between words and lines. Use high contrast, typically black letters on a white background, and break up large blocks of text with headlines and images.
- Context – Keep your font relevant to the message and audience. You don’t want to use a calligraphy font for pet products or big, bold, capitalized red letters to advertise baby sleepwear.
Typography is the personality of your text, and it’s a critical element in keeping visitors on your store’s pages.
3. Incorporate Your Brand Identity
Have you ever seen a Coca-Cola bottle or can in another country? Even in a different language, you still know it’s Coke. Regarding your brand, the color and logo should be consistent across your pages and marketing channels.
Proper branding and design let people know they are in the right store.
4. Evaluate Your Organic Traffic
The best way to demonstrate your products online is with a series of photos showing people using them. Videos are even better.
User-generated content (UGC) boosts sales. 88% of shoppers look for videos and photos of people using a product before committing to a purchase. Curating UGC on Pinterest or your website will drive more traffic, conversions, and sales. Image quality matters, so only select the best high-resolution images. Another UGC resource is Yotpo. How does Yotpo work? Check out this resource to learn more.
5. eCommerce Store Navigation UX
A properly designed eCommerce page enables your customers to find what they want using easy-to-follow menus and filters.
Let’s say your store sells all kinds of sweaters, and your customer wants to find a red cable knit sweater for a medium-sized woman. You’ll need to set up filters in the form of navigation menus so your shoppers can find them quickly. For example, you can separate your products into departments, such as women and men. Each department should include a list of all clothing categories and a separate one for brands. The lists would have to show various styles of your sweaters, including the cable knit. Here’s what the customer wants. Photos and descriptions of all the cable knit sweaters that you offer. Each description should include size and color choices and the critical “Add To Cart” button.
This is a simplified overview, but the customer needs only four clicks to sort through potentially thousands of products to get what they want.
6. Fast Loading Pages
Online shoppers are an impatient bunch. A BBC study revealed that for every additional second it takes a store’s page to load, 10% of shoppers will drop off.
Loading speed is essential for keeping shoppers on your site. There are four ways to help your product pages load faster:
- Remove Nonessential Widgets – Widgets, apps, and other plugins can add tons of data and slow downloading times. Keep only the necessary apps.
- Compress Image Files – You can find third-party tools (Compressor.io, ImageOptim.com, etc.) to compress high-quality images by 50% or more while retaining image quality.
- Use Shopify Themes – Third-party themes can be bloated with apps, slowing download speeds. Shopify’s themes are leaner and load faster.
- No Carousels – Carousels loaded with product images look great, but they are a tremendous drag for page loading. Consider single images instead.
To check your store’s loading times, try Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool. You can see the page speeds, and it will provide advice on how to improve it. Check out this resource on building a website with Shopify to see how you can build a faster site.
7. Intuitive Design for the New Mobile
Most eCommerce owners know that optimizing for mobile is mandatory. Every word, image, and link must look great and load fast on mobile devices. Experts estimate that 54% of all retail sales this year will be through smartphones.
However, mobile is changing. Galaxy Z Fold phones open like a book, doubling the screen size to 7.6 inches. Copycats won’t be far behind. That means different coding to make your site compatible with another device.
As a Shopify store owner, you need to ensure that your store displays on both flip phones and standard smartphones. Use a developer familiar with optimizing for the latest flip phones.
Bonus Tip - Don’t Ignore the Buttons
Source: Yotpo
Buttons are another unsung critical design element to your Shopify store. They drive the visitor where you want them to go. Navigation buttons help shoppers find information quickly and are an essential element to navigation UX best practices. Make them easy to see and understand using icons or bold text.
The CTA button should be the most obvious because it’s the most important button of all. It’s the last step between your product and a sale.
Some UX best practices for buttons are:
- Keep the size and shape consistent. Start with 10mm x 10mm
- Use a highly contrasting color for CTA buttons
- Keep CTA button microcopy to a minimum such as “Add to Cart” or “Download Now”
The takeaway here is to make your buttons look like buttons. Try and keep them consistent with your brand’s font and color scheme unless it’s a CTA. Always use a noticeable color for the CTA.
Use the Right Designer
Store design affects your bottom line. Shopify makes it relatively simple to design a functional store that will get you up and running. However, making it look professional and incorporating all elements that increase traffic and sales takes experience.
It’s best to hire an eCommerce designer familiar with the best practices of Shopify store design. A Shopify store design agency will save you time and improve your sales from the start. You won’t spend weeks figuring out the best apps, themes, and plugins for your store.
If you're new to Shopify and want to start, Shopify offers a Free Trial that you can test-drive for 30 days to see how you like the platform and the features.
