Designing an eCommerce Website with Personality

Whether you sell clothing or furniture, makeup or electronics, there’s a good chance at least one competitor within your sector sells similar products. And yet consumers develop fierce loyalties to certain brands, buying repeatedly from one while ignoring or shunning another with comparable offerings. Why? Well, partly because different eCommerce companies have different personalities. This affects the relationships merchants develop with their customer bases, as well as their brand perception among online users.

 

Designing an eCommerce website personality is a must it’s the only way to stand out in today’s saturated marketplace. But it’s also important to make that personality unmistakably your own.

 

Here’s how.

 

Write Compelling Copy

They key to establishing a brand personality is, above all, consistency. Successful companies craft messaging to fit their brand identities rather than letting it unfold piecemeal over time.

 

Copy plays a huge role in your on-site marketing efforts. It pays to consider how the words on your website feed into your brand personality. If each landing page features a different tone or message, people will only become confused as they try to pin down what your company represents.

 

For example, an ecommerce merchant selling products for children will likely want to target parents with understanding, supportive and authoritative language. A company selling hypoallergenic, chemical-free garments for children could first sympathize with parents in a product description—noting that their products provide peace of mind, citing the fact parents don’t have to worry about harsh dyes or chemicals irritating their children’s skin. Taking a comical, aggressive or technical tone here would be less effective than appealing to the customers’ psyche through gentle and targeted copy.

 

Conveying Your Unique Selling Proposition

Modern enterprise ecommerce solutions allow online retailers to clearly communicate their unique selling propositions (USP) to website visitors with flexible control of their storefronts. That is, effective website design and brand strategy means visitors understand why they should buy from your store and not a competitor’s at a glance.

 

Your company must settle on a USP, whether it’s free shipping, handcrafted products, a subscription box, remarkable customer service, exclusivity or something else. The key is finding “your thing”, then using your website to exude this USP across landing pages.

Optimize On-Site Images

The images on your website give it life. Sure, your product catalogue contains some static images of items from multiple angles. But there are plenty of opportunities to use artful photography and well-staged photographs to create a mood customer will come to associate with your brand.

 

It’s important to show your products in use and “in scale” so users can imagine incorporating them into their lives. As Baymard Institute writes, “Placing the product within a typical use environment, showing people interacting with the product, and showing the product in use—will all help users get a sense of the product’s scale.”

 

Let’s say your online store sells chairs. A stock photograph of the chair gives users no reference for size, nor how it will look in a room. It’s important to include a more creative photo, perhaps showing someone sitting in the chair at a gathering and laughing at something someone just said. Or you could include the chair in a photograph of a young professional working from home, ultra-focused on the task at hand. You could show the chair on a porch, occupied by someone soaking up a beautiful summer scene.

 

The actual content of your on-site photographs depends on the specific products and, more importantly, the personality you’re trying to convey as part of your branding strategy.

 

Designing an ecommerce website with personality is the best way to set yourself apart from the pack, no matter what you sell.