Internet Retail Web Design Conference #IRWD: a Meteor Shower of Trends Reinforcing Best Practice Retail Web Design
The 2013 Internet Retailer Web Design Conference set attendance records again! Of course, getting best practices in retail web design on how to create well-designed eCommerce sites through the eyes of the experts in the field, was the purpose, but so much more was at play.
Some trends with metoric impact, that just a few years ago that had nothing to do with design, were scorching hot topics during this year’s conference.
Several key takeaways:
- An eCommerce website should be a compilation of thoughtful design, User Experience (UX) based testing and SEO. In the old days, these were often at-odds with each other; not the case in today’s eCommerce world.
- Recent SEO updates to logic and algorithms have actually brought an unification of thoughtful retail web design and SEO, hinging on unique content.
- Speaking of SEO, Google has openly supported responsive design as the preferred way to handle multiple device browsing. Since Google can discover your content more efficiently, it stands to assume that mobile and tablet friendly retail web design will get better grades with Google too.
- Whether you have a retail web design budget for a full responsive experience or not, mobile shopping is here to stay and mobile-friendly designs for eCommerce are essential.
- Online store owners or key decision makers commonly don’t understand their visitors and these retail web design success factors:
- Navigation & Search: If visitors can’t find items with search, navigation and organized content, you’re losing customers.
- Continuous Improvement: Testing and analyzing again and again is the only way to get it right.
- Personalization: For far too long, eCommerce has been distant and non-human, presenting the exact same content to every visitor. That is changing fast. ECommerce is becoming meCommerce and store owners need to engage immediately or lose forever.
What is a Jet Setting Etail-er to do?
Online commerce faces an ever-changing environment of competition, features and functionality changes and trends. FastPivot’s team of experts are here to help you understand your current limitations and recommend ways to defeat low conversions, confused shoppers or stale content.
Grade your retail web design and retail strategy on these key retail web design risk factors:
- You haven’t changed your eCommerce store design in over a year.
- You are using the same rotating banners for more than 6 months
- You have not looked at any analytics in the past week (month)
- You have the same content on your site that others use too
- You have duplicative product descriptions on your own site(s)
- You’re eStore is not mobile-friendly
- You don’t know where to even start understanding what’s wrong
Then you need this:
FastPivot Design, UX and Marketing Report (Moving eCommerce to meCommerce):
Don’t put the cart before the horse. Contact us to conduct a Design, User Experience and Marketing Report. We’ll guide you on what your next action steps should be for thoughtful design, intelligent interface, unique content, leveraging SEO and solutions driven by your brand and those who compete in your space. For the month of March, these reports start at $699.
Ps. If you are still recovering from the painful PANDA Update, you might focus on the fundamentals with the Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.
