Something is awry. You've launched a new storefront – yet conversions are underperforming. The dilemma isn't just perplexing; it’s costly. Understanding where things went wrong might just be hidden in the nuances of your website’s design. 

Why Design Matters

Here’s the crux: before a prospect reads a single line of text, design is the number one factor impacting credibility and purchase intent. Consider these insights:

• 75% of prospects judge your product and brand credibility based on storefront design.
• 94% of prospects attribute mistrust of a site to its design elements.
• First impressions are 94% design-related, formed within 55 milliseconds.
• 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. The human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text, which explains why design so significantly affects a visitor's perception of your business.

There’s a lot of 9x’s here, and they underscore a fundamental truth: good design is good business.

What to watch:

The devil is in the details. Here’s what you might be missing:

• 44% of prospects will leave if contact info is missing. Surprisingly, this falls into the category of risk mitigation. Whether or not the prospect plans to contact you is irrelevant: visible contact information builds trust and credibility. It tells the prospect real people are here to help if something goes wrong.
• 70% of small business sites lack clear CTAs—don’t be part of that statistic. Ensure every landing page has a clear Call to Action above the fold. Look at heatmap data, and navigate your site from the most typical customer journeys. Each page should feature a next step immediately on load.
• 85% of prospects feel overloaded with too much information. Avoid clutter, and remember the signal-to-noise ratio. More isn’t always better. In fact, usually, it’s worse. Take a look at your Shopper Decision Questions and feature those answers prominently. Everything else non-essential should go.
• Visuals rule. 92.6% of prospects say visuals are the top purchasing influence. This highlights the paramount importance of strong visual design in influencing buying decisions—crucial for eCommerce sites aiming to enhance their conversion rates. Immersive elements like scroll based triggers, video, and interactive functions like quizzes and forms keep the prospect on your site and build affinity. Just make sure you’re providing value in the process. (*Note: creative photography and video in your product image slider is an easy way to differentiate and close the sale. In a recent implementation, we saw product page visuals improve site conversions by a whopping .24%).

Design sits at the intersection of shopper, and strategy. Before the technicalities of flows, lead gen, heat mapping, or conditional logic have an impact, design has the ability to capture a buyer in half a second.

Mobile and Responsive Design

Mobile-first is your new norm. In 2011 when the dinosaurs still roamed the plains of yahoo.com, mobile traffic measured just 6.1% – now, 78% of site visits come from smartphones, and 66% of eCommerce revenue comes from mobile. It’s time to STOP looking at your website on desktop, and evaluate changes through the mobile view first. Remember that 25% of our audience will stop engaging immediately if the content doesn’t display well on their device, so your design must perform seamlessly across all devices. (*Note: we constantly have clients screen share desktop sites on calls, and pitch new ideas with desktop view screenshots. The key to eCommerce success is customer intelligence, and this begins with viewing the storefront in the same way your prospects do.)