You chose to start a new e-commerce venture. Scary but exciting at the same time! You have great merchandise, and have decided on competitive prices. You’ve also started working on a brand new platform to display the items and start selling online. Nothing seems to come between you, and instant results, right? However, you’re almost forgetting the most important step, and that is to design an ecommerce website which can either make or break your business. Since it can be quite taxing, here are a few of the best practices to building a good ecommerce website that you can follow.

A website’s look and sound is the prime predictor of initial thoughts. Evidence suggests that, in 50 milliseconds, users can decide whether they like a certain website or not. Here are some useful guidelines for developing user interfaces:

Follow the brand identity

The brand should be visible all over the website page. Use colors that match the company, and adjust the theme to make visible what kind of items are being offered. Make sure the brand experience remains consistent across all platforms including the Internet, in-store, or handheld. This helps in building a sturdy relationship between brand and customer.

Assume visual hierarchy

The most important material will be seen in the fold above. For certain instances, it is easier to use fewer white spaces to get things back together than to move sensitive material under the fold.

Don’t go overboard with the design

Restrict font types including font profile, height, and colour. If the text appears so much like illustrations, it is likely to be mistaken for an ad. To keep the material as simple as possible, use high-contrast text and background colours.

Use recognized symbols

Use clearly recognizable signs or marks. Unfamiliar icons can just leave shoppers frustrated. Providing symbol marks is a safe way of preventing any potential misunderstanding.

Avoid popups

Popup windows become a disturbance. If they include useful details, shoppers are more than likely to automatically ignore them. Once lost, even though they wish to, it’s impossible for shoppers to recover the details again.

Improve product search

If shoppers can’t locate the product, they can’t purchase it — build a search feature that will help them locate what they’re searching for easily:

Make search omnipresent

Place the search box in common places and on any tab. The box will be clear, simple to find and quick to use. The default locations for applying the search box are either the top right or top left of the pages, or the main screen.

Support all kinds of queries

Searches will answer other forms of questions, such as model descriptions, definitions and product characteristics, as well as details related to customer care. Including a sample search question in the input area is a smart move to recommend shoppers the usage of the various features.

Include a search auto-complete functionality

Auto-complete feature allows customers to easily discover what they are searching for and enhances the opportunity for purchases by recommending items inside the region they are already searching for.

Allow sorting and filtering of results

Let shoppers filter the search results on the basis of various parameters (best selling, maximum or lowest quality , product ranking, newest object, etc.) as well as exclude products that do not fall into a certain category.