How to Implement Persuasive Design to Your Ecommerce Website
You know how important it is to make a great first impression. That is especially true in the online world.
For instance, your e-commerce website serves as the face of your brand or business. It is already a given that you need to portray the right brand image to your target audience. Not to mention that you have to persuade them to convert, and eventually become loyal customers.
But it does not stop there. Aesthetics is just the beginning. At the end of the day, it still comes down to persuasive design functionality.
What is Persuasive Design?
In a nutshell, Persuasive Design is a type of design practice that integrates behavioral insights from psychology.
This includes biases and motivations and then translating them into patterns and frameworks that can be effectively applied to the product design.
6 Ways to Incorporate Persuasion to Your Ecommerce Website
In this post, we will teach you how to implement a persuasive design for your e-commerce site:
Clarity beyond everything
Every modern customer wants to know what your site is all about, before anything else.
Within just seconds of landing on your site, users should already understand:
• Who you are
• What kind of value you provide
• And why they should care
Also, learn how to create a compelling value proposition. You must be giving your customers reasons why they should choose you over your competitors.
Moreover, it’s not just a homepage that has to be clear, but also your product pages, about us page, and so on.
The most important element in every page of your site is clarity. Everything should be clear and easy to understand from the get-go.
Work on your visual appeal
Research has shown that when users look at your site, 96 percent will notice your site’s visual design and only 6 percent will notice the content.
These numbers are telling. You need to make an excellent first impression to stand out.
So, make your site easily recognizable and improve the overall user experience. Make it familiar and simple to your audience as well. That’s because most users already have a general idea of what an e-commerce site looks like.
A great example of working on your visual appeal is using a white background to draw in the user’s attention to the most important parts of the page.
Map customer journey
E-commerce isn’t just about selling online. Note that your target customers don’t just want to buy things. They wanted to buy experiences.
Offer helpful information and support, convenience, and post-purchase assistance to your customers.
Similarly, you should also design your customer journey in a way that your target customers can have a positive experience. Doing so allows them to quickly associate that experience with your brand, which can encourage them to become loyal customers.
Your goal is to eventually lead them to your desired outcomes, such as repeat purchases.
Create a visual hierarchy
Let’s say it’s your first time visiting a site. Which will you click first?
Chances are, you’ll likely choose features that are prominently laid out on the page in terms of size, as well as visual aesthetics.
Visual hierarchy is the practice wherein you’re making a particular element stand out so that visitors will likely engage with it than anything else on the page. A lot of brands use visual hierarchy to persuade visitors to take a particular action.
This usually starts with how you place certain elements on your site.
For instance, do you know that most of your audience’s viewing time is usually spent above the fold, and that decreases as resolutions and screen sizes increase? Also, 69% of users read from the left side of the screen.
Capture and conserve attention
Ideally, you want your visitors to be engaged on your site. So much so that they tend to forget everything else while they are on your website.
So, after knowing what your target audience is interested in, your visual design will draw them in with the help of visual hierarchy. This will help them focus on what’s important. And doing so allows you to catch and retain your target customers’ attention.
Have a singular focus
Every page on your site should exist for a reason. Its goal isn’t to pull your audience from one direction.
Every single element and feature of a particular page should direct the visitor to a particular action you want them to take.
Whether you want them to sign up to your email list, purchase a product, or get in touch for you for more information, it should encourage users to take a specific action.
It doesn’t mean that everything else is unimportant, though. What we are trying to say is that a particular page should lead to a single action. And the other page elements can help compel your target customers to take that action.
When you approach your site design strategically, with your target users in mind and using these persuasive design techniques, you can boost your engagement and get massive conversions.
Jake Rheude is the Director of Marketing at Red Stag Fulfillment. He has years of experience in ecommerce and business development. In his free time, Jake enjoys reading about business and sharing his own experience with others. Discover more useful resources on Red Stag Fulfillment’s blog to learn what is 3PL, dropshipping, and more!
