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Your guide to a successful e-commerce design starts here. We've put together the essential design elements that make up a great web store, how many of these features does your store have?

 HTTPS is essential to provide security to your customers. The green lock icon tells visitors your site is trustworthy.

 The hero image and headline strongly influence your visitor’s perception of your business by providing users with your most important offer and/or service.

 The call to action tells users exactly what you want them to do. Usually in the form of a brightly colored button, CTA’s direct visitors exactly where you want them to go.

 Displaying featured categories provides users an even easier way to find products relevant to their interests.

 Bring attention to promotional items by displaying a badge or similar element. This catches the user’s attention and will result in more page views of this item.

 Promote top-sellers, high-margin items, or products with high search volume.

 Use an add-to-cart button to make purchasing easier for users who already know what they’re looking for or are return customers who have decided to purchase.

 Use a “new arrivals” section to promote your latest and greatest products; visitors may be looking for new items.

 Build an email list to retain traffic and drive repeat traffic to your site. Email newsletters can be used for promotions, retargeting, and sharing news and features.

 Enable social sharing links to allow visitors to spread your business via social media. This improves search engine rankings and provides social proof to skeptical shoppers.

 Many customers will want to contact you directly; make it easy to find your support phone number.

 Significantly improve users' search experience and utilize this feature to suggest your featured products.

 Providing a category menu will allow visitors to quickly and easily find what they’re looking for by browsing categories.

 Clearly display your shipping, support, and other policies. No one likes to be surprised by shipping costs.

 Displaying recently viewed products increases the chance that a user will purchase a product they may have hesitated to purchase in the past.

 Clearly display your contact information, and if you have a physical location, list your address and hours of operation. This should be visible on every page of the site.

 Breadcrumb navigation shows your visitors where they are on the hierarchy of pages. This is especially useful when you have many categories and subcategories.

 This is the first image a shopper sees when looking for their product. A quality photo can increase the value of the product itself and improve trust in your brand.

 Simulate the experience of walking into a store and being able to pick up a product and look at it from every angle. This provides customers a better feel for the product.

 Video is the most compelling way to engage consumers, especially those viewing your site from mobile devices. Consumers are more likely to buy after viewing a video.

 Displaying related products is an easy way to cross-sell directly to your customers. You can offer them products that work well together or alternative brands.

 Your product title should be large and easy to read, but it also needs to capture their attention and provide enough information to differentiate the product.

 Most people consult reviews or ratings before making a final purchase. As a result, they are more likely to buy from your site if you have product ratings and reviews available.

 Your design should make the price of the item clear and noticeable. Any promotional discounts should be obvious; confusing pricing schemes will only frustrate users.

 Allowing customers to specify the number of items to add to their cart not only improves the number of sales you get but reduces friction and intuitively makes sense.

 Customers want to see all of the options available for an item they’re interested in. Make sure you show customers all of the product details with clickable color swatches.

 Use color and contrast to make the Add to Cart stand out from the rest of the page. The button should be fairly large and include an arrow or design element to draw the eye.

 Display a “trust seal” to overcome skeptical customers’ fears and increase conversions.

 Sometimes a shopper isn’t quite ready to order but wants to remember the product and your store. Make it easy to do so by providing an “Add to Wish List” button.

 Customers have questions about products. Your product description should answer all of the questions before they get to checkout. If they can’t find the information they’re looking for, they are likely to abandon the sale completely.

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The Essential Ecommerce Web Design Guide

Creating an email promotion doesn’t have to be a difficult task. If you already have your email marketing list in place and your marketing calendar planned out, you’re halfway there. Let’s look at what the next steps are to turning on the money faucet for your business.

For this example, let’s pretend you’re promoting a new line of Widgets from Brand X. It’s Valentine’s Day (a big holiday for Widget sales), and you want to offer 10% Brand X Widgets (for a limited time, while supplies last) with coupon code BRANDX10. That’s everything we need to begin.

Your email marketing platform (Constant Contact, iContact, Campaigner, Mailchimp, etc.) will have an option to create a new email campaign. They will most likely allow you to choose from a set of pre-defined email templates. However, it would be best if you had a custom template that you make and re-use for your emails so that all the correspondence that comes from your business is consistent and your customers know what to expect.

Your email template can be an simple as your business logo and a phone number on top, or you can also include links to your website and customer service hours. Whatever you choose to include, keep the header short and sweet so that readers can get to the most important content of the email right away.

You may also choose to include a standard footer with links to your website. This is likely the best place for links and additional information that are not as important as the promotion but necessary for your business (like legalese and disclaimers).

It’s important to note that people have no patience.

They just don’t read an email if you don’t get their attention right away. We recommend creating one big compelling graphic with your promotion in big bold letters to be included as the very first thing in your email (under the short header, or possibly in place of it). Use as few words as possible to describe your deal. Remember that pictures speak louder than words, so don’t cover more than half the image space with text (under 25% would be ideal).

Whether it reads “Shop Now” or “Learn More” or even “Donate Today”, customers need to be told what to do next to take action. You can’t assume they will know that they can click the image to go to your website (which it should absolutely do).

We recommend making this graphic about 600 x 600 pixels wide. It will be easy to read in all email browsers (desktop and mobile), and you can also use that graphic (or a derivation of it) on social media. Be sure to make a version of your promotion graphic for inclusion on your homepage as a billboard. Consistency in marketing is key, and it’s important that your customers know that your email message matches the branding on your site.

To support your fabulous new main image, you’ll need supporting text just below it. This can be your wordier explanation of your sale or description of the product or products that you’re promoting.

It’s up to you as to whether or not you’d like to promote other items, categories, or brands below this. In our experience, it’s best to keep emails as short and to the point as possible. With that said, if you’re running an ongoing promotion like free shipping over a certain amount, or a contest, it may benefit you to include a smaller section below the main promotion with a custom graphic.

Before you schedule the email to be sent, it’s time to test your email. Send a test to yourself and open it on your desktop, and on your phone. Make sure all the links work!

A great thing about using a professional email marketing platform is that you can schedule your emails well in advance. That way, you can setup all your emails ahead of time and not have to scramble at the last minute to get them done. Good-looking email graphics can take a while and go through a few revisions before you approve, so plan ahead with an email marketing calendar.

And that’s it! You’ve crafted an effective email marketing campaign. On the day you send it out, be sure to keep an eye on your site traffic and email campaign reports.

How to Create a Promotional Email Campaign

Having a fully planned out marketing calendar for the year is crucial for busy store owners. You don't have time during your busy seasons to sit down and come up with a marketing plan for promotions that need to go out on time. Graphics need to be created, compelling text needs to be written, coupons need to be made and tested, emails need to be crafted, social media posts need to be coordinated - it's a lot of work if you have a business to run as well.

If you're not constantly interacting with your customers, they tend to forget about your brand and lose loyalty. The best change you can make to get caught up on your marketing and stay in touch with your customer base is to first make a marketing calendar. So where to begin?

If you're new to making a marketing calendar for your business, a good place to start is by looking at all the calendar holidays. Here is a free resource with lots of holidays listed:

Most retailers do promotions and sales based on holidays, such as Mother's Day, Memorial Day, and of course Black Friday (in the US). If you're an international retailer, you have far more holidays to choose from.

Decide what promotions to run on which holidays. Emails with a "SALE" or a percentage off your order in the subject line tend to get opened more, so if you can run a sale on a holiday, do so. The best coupons promotions are ones that run only for a limited time, to create a sense of urgency.

How often do you want to send emails? Some retailers send marketing emails once a month, and some send them twice a week. It all depends on your business. If you are constantly getting new products and selling out of old ones, it's worth it to email as often as you can.

You could fill an entire year with just holiday promotions, but what about during the off weeks, and what if you don't have the margins to give discounts all the time? You can always fill those weeks with specific category, brand, or product promotions. Do you sell shoes? Promote a specific brand of shoe. Do you sell pool products? Promote your selection of Pool Covers. Got a great new blender in stock? Tout the features of it. Sure, you're not offering a discount or special deal, but what's important is that your message is getting out to your customers and you keep their attention so that when they ARE ready to buy, they know where to go.

You'll need to make a spreadsheet to track your marketing. For each row, include the following:

 - A short title of your promotion that can also double as a subject line on emails.

 - A short description that can be used for the content of your email and social posts for the promotion. You don't have to include a wall of text that no-one is going to ready anyway!

 - The day you intend to send the promotion

 - Is there a coupon for this promotion? Include the coupon code here for your reference.

 - Is the coupon valid for a specific set of dates?

Now that you have the structure of the calendar ready, work on filling out the most important holidays and sale days first. Once those are set, find (or make up) other promotion days to fill in the gaps.

That's it! Take a step back and look at what you've accomplished. With your marketing calendar for the year to come in place, you and your marketing team will know exactly what's coming and be better able to prepare for it. Some e-commerce platforms allow you to create coupon codes or time-sensitive discounts in advance. Better to get those setup now rather than at the last minute. You can always make adjustments later as necessary.

Planning Your Marketing Calendar

Having the trust of consumers is very important for online retailers. There are a number of different ways to build trust for your store. Becoming a Google Trusted Store and displaying the Trusted Stores badge on your site goes a long way towards building trust with your potential customers.

Being accepted in the Google Trusted Store program and displaying the badge on your site lets consumers know that their orders are protected by Google for up to $1000, and they know Google will help in resolving any issues they have with your store.

Google doesn’t just let any online retailer display the Trusted Store badge; There are several requirements you will need to meet to earn that badge:

Currently, the program is only available to US merchants

The site’s content and customer support must be in English

Merchants must process 600 orders on a 90-day rolling basis

The Merchant must maintain a minimum 4 star rating on Google Trusted Stores customer survey and seller ratings over a 90-day rolling basis

No more than 1 in 300 protected orders shall be escalated on a 90-day rolling basis

It shall take on average no more than 4 calendar days for a merchant to resolve any issues

If the annual payout of refunds paid by Google exceeds $5000 the client’s participation in the program may be suspended or terminated.

If you believe your store qualifies, head over to Google Trusted Stores to 

. Google will ask you several questions about your business. Once you answer all the questions you are ready to integrate the Google Trusted Store code into your site. Depending on the platform you use this could be relatively easy, both Yahoo! Stores and BigCommerce have built the code into their platforms, or may require more technical knowledge to integrate the code with your site.

Once the Trusted Store code is in place you need to test the code to make sure it is working correctly, Google gives you a special URL to test the code. If the code is working correctly, your store will enter the Trusted Stores qualification period. The qualification period can last anywhere from 30 – 90 days, depending on your order volume. During this time Google will monitor your store and the badge will not appear on your site. After the qualification Google will notify you whether your store passed and was accepted into the program. If it was the badge will automatically appear on the site.

Marketing

The Essential Ecommerce Web Design Guide

How to Create a Promotional Email Campaign

Planning Your Marketing Calendar

How Can I Make My Store a Google Trusted Store