A couple of weeks ago, I shared some of the ways that using color swatches can improve conversions and the overall eCommerce experience. Today, let’s take it a step further and talk about the importance of incorporating visual elements into the overall eCommerce experience. According to a study by Kissmetrics, 93% of consumers say that the visual appearance of a site is the most important factor.
What does this mean when it comes to online retailers? It means that unless you’re looking for ways to improve your website from a visual perspective, you may start losing market share.
Creating an experience that appeals to the average shopper involves more than picking the right color for your main navigation and buttons. In addition to making sure that you have great product images on your site, preferably with multiple views and zoom or enlarge features, there are some other ways to make the shopping experience visual.
One of my ways to add interest to a website is the concept of a search term or word cloud. It does a great job of creating a visual display that helps visitors to the website gain insight into the breadth and depth of the products within a brand or category. It also helps them immediately sort out which terms are most popular, which may help guide them to items that interest them but might be hard to find. The word cloud has a really modern feel and can set your site apart from the competition. Word clouds also make it easier for shoppers to navigate large sites and there can be some SEO benefits as well.
My second favorite visual shopping effect are dynamic banners.
Dynamic banners bring the shopping experience to life and visually improve the eCommerce experience because they can increase the relevancy of the page contents. If you have the right platform, banners can be dynamically displayed based on visitor attributes such as campaign source such as email vs. AdWords. Dynamic banners can also be triggered by values such as geographic location or search term. These variables can drive different banners, targeted search results, and even promotional offers; making the shopping experience both targeted and visual.
The real benefit associated with adding visual navigation elements such as word clouds and dynamic banners is that they can help increase conversions. Navigation that makes it easy to find products combined with marketing elements that improve the relevancy of a page increase the likelihood that a visitor will turn into a buyer.
Believe it or not, you don’t need to completely overhaul your eCommerce platform to gain this kind of functionality. Dynamic banners and word clouds are out-of-the-box features for advanced site search platforms like Hawk Search.
