You Can Learn a Lot About Ecommerce Website Design from a Department Store

Major department store use tried and true methods of enticing customers to enter their store and shop for multiple items. You can incorporate these same methods in the design of your Ecommerce website.

What is the first thing that you see as you approach a department store? Your eyes are drawn to large sale signs displayed in the windows. Your website should also have sales prominently displayed on the home page above the fold (the part of your homepage that is visible without scrolling down).

All major store have small signs on their front doors to let you know what payment methods are accepted. Why? A customer will be unhappy after waiting in line, or going through your shopping carts checkout pages, only to find that personal checks or a particular credit card is not accepted for payment.

As soon as you walk into a department store, the first items you see are the ones that have the highest mark-up. These make the store the most money, so everyone has to walk by them. Does your ecommerce site feature your highest mark-up item on its front page in addition to the on sale specials?

In the front of department stores, you will usually see a customer service desk. Many visitors to a store want to know a stores return policy or delivery options before making a purchase. Ecommerce sites should have links to their terms visible on the front page for the same reason.

Have you ever been lost in a major department store as an adult? Probably not. There are wide aisles that lead to the front of the store that make it easy to find your way. The equivalents of wide aisles for an ecommerce site are breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs are what you see near the top of the page and may look like this: Home>ladies tops>sweaters. It's easy for a visitor to feel lost on a website when they have to hit the back button multiple times to return to your home page.

Have you ever seen a bank or contact lens store inside a department store? They are probably renting the space and the department store gets to add a useful convenience for their customers while generating additional income. An Ecommerce site would call these revenue generating stores...LINKS. Appropriate links, those that complement your website, not compete with it, can generate additional income. Make sure these complimentary links open in a new window so your customer still has your site on their browser when done visiting the link. A reciprocal link that will enable their customers to visit your site can in turn generate additional traffic for you.

Do you remember what color the walls are inside your favorite department store? Even if you have been there multiple times, you would probably not. That's because they are a neutral color designed to be not noticed. The merchandise is the featured item, not the decor. Your Ecommerce site should also feature products, not fancy backgrounds and graphics, unless they are the items that you sell.

Your website has an even greater need to be easy to navigate and easy to purchase from than a department store. Just as department store visitors can get back in their car and drive to another store, website visitors only need to hit the back button. Hundreds of other e-commerce stores are only a click away.