During economic uncertainty, eCommerce remains resilient. In 2024, eCommerce made up about 20% of all retail sales worldwide, and by 2027, it’s expected to hit almost 22%. With that kind of growth, it’s clear that selling online is a smart move for any brand.
Yet, with so many online marketplaces out there, do you really need your own eCommerce website? The short answer: Yes! While marketplaces give you access to a wider audience, having your own branded eCommerce website puts you in control. Even small businesses and startups can strengthen their brand awareness and compete in expanding markets with a sustainable customer experience. An eCommerce website allows you to own your customer data, use various multimedia to showcase your products and connect with your audience through multiple channels without relying on third-party platforms.
The foundation of a successful eCommerce site comes down to a few key elements. These include intuitive and accessible information architecture (IA) to deliver a clear and easy-to-navigate site layout, a well-organised page hierarchy, and landing pages that grab attention and drive sales. You’ll also need smart eCommerce customer segmentation models to personalise the shopping experience. Let’s break down each of these in detail.
Information Architecture
Website information architecture (IA) defines how the user interface is arranged. Efficient IA makes it easy for customers to find what they’re looking for with logically organised content, starting from broad categories and shrinking towards specific categories, products, services or articles. Apart from enhancing the user experience with a smoother shopping experience, it helps search engines understand your site when crawling and indexing the pages to help your site rank higher in SERPs.
Key steps to create an effective information architecture for the eCommerce website:
- Find the right target keywords with higher search volume and lower competition based on core topics. Then, group a list of search terms and phrases into relevant categories and product names to make it easier to optimise your content.
- Organise your categories smartly and structure your website logically so it makes more sense for customers. Group certain categories, products, services, and articles so users can browse them effortlessly. Hierarchically plan out your key pages—like the homepage, about us, and contact pages—then map the minor pages like category and product, service or information pages.
- Build a simple, easy-to-use menu structure that clearly reflects the main categories of the eCommerce website. Use logical links to ensure other navigational elements easily connect pages, including product pages’ automated links. Use keywords strategically in page titles and navigation links to highlight the high-value content. Your menu is the guide that helps customers find what they need quickly while prioritising the pages that hold the most importance.
- Refine the navigation flow, ensuring users can move seamlessly through your eCommerce website. Every click should feel natural, navigating easily without confusion or frustration. Poor navigation is one of the main reasons users leave the page and the website—so keep it smooth and straightforward.
The Power of Visual Hierarchy in eCommerce: Design for Clarity
Visual hierarchy uses size, colour, and placement to direct the viewer’s attention to important information. An eCommerce website with a well-designed visual hierarchy makes it easy for visitors to navigate, drawing attention to key elements such as product categories, calls to action, and essential information and products, services, and information without frustration. Good design isn’t just about how the site looks; it is critical because it directly affects user experience and, ultimately, sales.
Website visual hierarchy principles rely on common sense and best practices. For instance, best practices recommend that action buttons be green or blue, whereas premium buttons be gold or purple.
Big eCommerce players like eBay and Amazon are masters of visual hierarchy, knowing even small design tweaks on their sites can significantly impact sales. Given the scale of the daily traffic on these eCommerce platforms, small businesses can apply the same principles by studying what works on these platforms. Following these giants, SMEs can help create a seamless shopping experience, boost conversions and build customer loyalty.
eCommerce Landing Pages: The Key to Conversions
When prospective customers click through ads or other marketing campaigns, they are sent to landing pages. An eCommerce landing page is a fundamental part of the sales funnel, unlike a regular product or category page. It is designed for one specific goal—to take action! Make a purchase, sign up for a subscription, download an app, or begin a free trial. Every element of the landing page is meant to motivate that action without the distraction of extra navigational links.
So why are landing pages vital for an eCommerce website?
- They boost ROI on paid traffic: When users click an ad, they already have a clear intent. A well-crafted eCommerce landing page ensures they find exactly what they’re looking for, increasing the chances of conversion. Paid traffic visitors’ have a higher expectation to land on a page related to their search, so it’s important to build them into your marketing campaigns. High-quality landing pages can lower your cost-per-click in search engine marketing campaigns like Google Ads.
- They’re perfect for testing: Since landing pages are built for marketing campaigns, they’re a great place to experiment. A/B testing different images, headlines, or CTAs (calls to action) can reveal what resonates most with your audience. If Image A outperforms Image B on your landing page, chances are it will work better in social media ads, too.
- They allow precise targeting: You can create multiple complementary landing pages tailored to customer segments or campaign goals. Customising aesthetic elements like headlines, value propositions, images, and CTAs makes each page more relevant to its specific audience, increasing engagement and conversions.
- They are easy to build: Modern CMS platforms and landing page builders make it simple to create and customise landing pages with templates and drag-and-drop tools. Research shoes that business websites with 10 to 15 landing pages can achieve a 55% increase in conversions compared to those with fewer than 10.
What Makes a Landing Page Effective?
Key attributes of effective landing pages and best practices:
- Fast loading times: In today’s modern marketplace, nobody likes waiting! Use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to check your page speed and keep things quick so visitors can complete the action without any temptation to leave.
Simple ways to improve landing page load speed include:
– Compressing images
– Optimising the code
– Minimising the animation
– Minimising plug-ins and apps - Clean, responsive design: Keep it simple, use bullet points to break up text, and remove anything that doesn’t serve the page’s main goal. A mobile-responsive design is vital as it directly affects conversions. Since mobile users account for almost 62% of web traffic, if it’s not mobile-friendly, you’re losing sales.
- A clear, compelling headline. Your landing page headline should instantly tell visitors what they’ll get. Follow this with a strong subheading highlighting the value—whether it’s a special offer, free resource, entertainment or exclusive content. Keep sentences short, clear, and confident.
- One clear call to action (CTA): Too many choices can overwhelm visitors. Your landing page should focus on one single CTA—whether it’s “Claim your discount,” “Buy now,” or “Sign up”. Use action-driven text that makes it clear what the user is getting, and avoid generic CTA buttons that distract the focus, like “Complete” or “Submit”.
- Eye-catching visuals: A great hero image or video grabs attention and reinforces your message. Product demos, screenshots, GIFs, customer images and videos diversify the content and help engage different types of learners to keep people interested.
- Social proof: People trust other eCommerce customers more than brands. Communicating the benefits through customer reviews, testimonials, and case studies makes the offer more credible and drives conversions.
- A simple form for collecting info: Less is more when it comes to forms. Only ask for essential details—too many fields can push away potential customers before they complete the action.
Customer Segmentation in eCommerce
Every shopper is different, with unique preferences, habits, motivations, and various characteristics, which are defined by interests, age, education, location, devices, browsing habits, and more. These factors influence what, why, and how of their buying decisions.
Customer segmentation in eCommerce groups customers with similar characteristics. By identifying patterns, businesses can tailor their marketing strategies to each group, ensuring a more personalised shopping experience that leads to better engagement and higher conversions.
Customer segmentation helps businesses connect more deeply with shoppers by delivering personalised marketing strategies for each segment, tailored promotions and relevant product recommendations. The smaller the segment, the more customised the shopper experience.
By combining different segmentation models with behavioural data from eCommerce marketing platforms, online stores can create highly personalised shopping experiences. This often exceeds what’s possible in brick-and-mortar stores with personal shopping assistants.
Segmentation is a powerful tool in website design (UI) and personalised user experiences (UX). By applying eCommerce segmentation models, businesses can create a more targeted and effective user experience, making websites more engaging and user-friendly.
A few ways segmentation influences website design:
- Personalised Content: Segmentation allows websites to display products, offers, and recommendations that are most relevant to each user segment. For instance, an eCommerce site can draw on a user’s past purchases or browsing histories.
- Higher Engagement: When users see content that matches their interests and needs, they are more likely to engage with the website. This can lead to higher conversion rates and increased user satisfaction.
- Better User Experience (UX) User Interface (UI): Different user segments have different needs, so tailoring navigation and layouts makes the site more intuitive for each segment.
- Targeted Marketing: Segmentation enables more precise marketing efforts. Personalised email campaigns and promotions reach the right people at the right time, increasing the chance of conversions.
- Efficient Resource Use: Focusing on the most valuable user segments helps businesses allocate their resources more efficiently and prioritise their attention.
How to Choose the Right Customer Segmentation Model
Picking the right customer segmentation models is all about understanding your business and marketing goals. Here’s how to do it:
- Review Your Data: Look at the customer data that drives revenue. If there are gaps in important information, something essential is missing, and you need to plan how to collect it.
- Set Marketing Goals: Set clear and smart objectives, whether reducing the marketing cost or increasing the customer’s lifetime value.
- Find the Best Segmentation Models: Choose a model that complements your marketing strategies and allows you to reach ideal customer segments and established goals.
- Test and Adjust: Once in place, use the insights in your marketing strategies, track performance and tweak the model as needed for better results.
No matter the size, whether it’s a global marketplace like Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, and Etsy or a small eCommerce business, every successful online store is built on the same key principles: a well-structured website, clear navigation, convenient information architecture (IA) and hierarchy, high-converting landing pages, and smart eCommerce customer segmentation. Ensuring you get these right from the start sets up your business for sustainable growth, helping you attract new customers while keeping existing customers loyal. Establishing these foundations is easy with a trusted partner.
Contact LION Digital eCommerce Digital Marketing Team Today!
Let’s give your online store a big advantage over competitors! Our team of experienced eCommerce experts can help you reach much bigger goals with our proven strategies. Get in touch today—we would love to explore new ways to grow your eCommerce business!
