Website design is that one thing, which can set you apart from your competition and make your eCommerce memorable, easily recognizable and most importantly – useful to customers. With so many different websites available online, beginning retailers often struggle with finding good inspiration for their own eCommerce websites. If you are looking for fresh ideas, check the following tips:

Research your competition

As an online retailer, you should always keep an eye on your competition. This also applies to the website design: if you want to know which solutions work in your field of expertise, check the options used by your biggest rivals. Of course, there is a limit to how much you can copy. For example, you can use the same layout or product categories for your online store, if they work well for your competition. However, you should never copy logos, graphics or photos used by your rivals, otherwise, you will confuse your customers and start losing them on behalf of your competition.

Follow good examples

If you want to have a website, which is modern, innovative and far ahead of what your competition have to offer, check the newest trends in eCommerce and visit one of many blogs and galleries, which showcase the best examples of website design. There are many good websites offering a fashionable selection of the best designs online. You can start by checking Web Design Inspiration, Inspirational Shops or CartCraze. If you look for inspiration for a logo, visit LogoPond or LogoGala.

Highlight your strongest points

Another possible starting point is to consider your strongest points and use them as inspiration for the website design. For example, if you sell natural cosmetics, use graphics associated with nature and colors, such as green and blue as the dominant motifs on your website. If your products are somehow inspired by the past, you can use retro fonts or graphics in your website design. To make your offer look more professional and innovative, use shades of blue as the dominant color in your design.

Consider your target

If your products have a well defined target group, it can serve as yet another possible source of inspiration for the website design. For example, if you sell products designed for young people, you will probably benefit from innovative Magento enterprise development and creating an application, which is fun to use and offers features, such as product comparisons and social sharing.

Make it functional

Last, but not least, make sure that your website design is practical and will look just as good on a desktop computer, a laptop or a smartphone. Look for eCommerce developers for hire to create a responsive website, ready to use on mobile and desktop platforms. Design your website navigation with mobile users in mind, taking into consideration the fact that mobile users perform almost all virtual operations with their fingers. Make sure that icons, buttons, photos and other functional graphic elements on your website are separated one from another and easy to notice even on small screens of mobile devices.

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•  License: Creative Commons image source

Marta Gromadzka is a writer and editor with a wide variety of experience, including writing for websites internationally and editing books on many different subjects and in a variety of formats.