With the continued improvements in mobile technology and accessibility, 2015 could be an important year for people to consider their websites and e-commerce operations. These facilities would once have been considered to be a competitive advantage and taken alongside physical operations, but they are increasingly becoming a necessity. Companies that don’t make full use of the internet can quickly find themselves falling behind their competitors. If you are thinking about how to best utilise your website the following tips could provide the inspiration you need.
The limited space offers by mobile browsing means people need to be careful when considering the menus for their websites. Customers don’t want to visit a site that is cramped with a lot of space taken up by a menu. As a result hidden menus are becoming more and more important. These keep menus out of the way until you need them. Google is setting the trend with this and uses them across almost all of their sites, even those that are viewed on larger devices.
Designing the site to suit the size of the screen has been a worry for the past few years. Responsive design is the solution but businesses need to ensure their websites adjust to both small and larger screens. Whatever size the screen is the site should offer a good experience for the users.
One of the most important trends for 2015 is expected to be topography. There are more fonts available than ever before so designers have a great deal of freedom in making their choices. With mobile browsing and responsive designs it is essential that the topography is perfect. Businesses also need to feel more free to choose a unique design rather than sticking to safe choices. Fonts give you a great opportunity to stand out and connect with your audience.
Large pictures are known to have an impact on the load speed of websites but there are advantages to having them, particularly on product pages. With a larger picture customers can get a better look at products. When using large images you need to make sure you don’t overdo it and ensure you get the responsiveness right so they don’t take up too much space on mobile devices.
Videos remain one of the best types of content for e-commerce websites, whether they are adverts, product descriptions or interesting background images. These are also known to have an impact on site loading but ensuring they don’t start automatically will help avoid much of the delays.
If you want people to purchase via your website you need the checkout process to be seamless and easy to use. This is really important and you need to give people the chance to see their basket and make changes to it whenever they want to. The last thing you want to do is put people off at the end when they are ready to pay.