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12 Tips for Creating the Best Ecommerce Website Design

on 14 July 2025, by Bogdan, in Blog, Cloud, Shopify, Guides

by Bogdan

Creating-the-Best-E-Commerce-Website-Design-1400x728.jpg

If you’re looking for the best practices to design an ecommerce website, you’re in the right place.

We can’t emphasize the importance of having a well-designed ecommerce site to you as an ecommerce seller. It affects everything that goes into building a successful ecommerce business, including sales, conversions, customer retention, and expanding your customer base.

However, knowing what to do to create the best design for your ecommerce store is a challenge in itself. We’re here to help. We’ll walk you through 12 of the best tips for creating a great ecommerce website.

Who is this guide for?

New ecommerce sellers who want to create a user-friendly, high-converting ecommerce site to launch their business.
Established ecommerce sellers who want to revamp their existing ecommerce site to boost conversions.

Straightaway, let’s begin with one of the most important ecommerce website design ideas: prioritizing a responsive design.

1: Prioritize a responsive design

Building a mobile-responsive ecommerce site is crucial because the majority of online shopping takes place on mobile devices. And this isn’t going to change any time soon.

In fact, Seller’s Commerce projects that by the end of 2025, mobile commerce will account for 59% of total retail ecommerce sales.

What’s more, customers today expect your website to operate seamlessly across all devices. It’s no longer a privilege but a necessity, so there’s no better time to make your site mobile-optimized than now.

How to build a responsive ecommerce store

Responsiveness means your ecommerce store automatically adapts its design to suit your shoppers’ devices. Everything from the layout, images, buttons, and content should look and feel like it was created for the device the shopper is currently using.

Luckily, with website builders like Brizy, you won’t have to do much, especially when you use its templates. These templates are already built to be responsive.

Assuming you want to create everything yourself, here’s what you should do to make your site responsive.

Make buttons and navigation touch-friendly. By this, we mean that there should be enough space for a thumb to click your ‘Add to Cart’ buttons, links, and elements in your navigation menu.

Optimize images. You’ll need to resize images so that they don’t look too big on mobile devices. If images are too large (for example, a hero image), you can simply choose to hide them on smaller screens.

Use hamburger menus for navigation. Mobile devices lack the width to display your entire navigation menu. You’ll have to condense it into a collapsible hamburger menu.

When making these adjustments, switch between different screen sizes just to see how the site will look.

2: Build a credible shopping experience

For customers to buy from you, they have to trust your ecommerce business. However, most customers are often skeptical about buying from a new brand or buying a product they haven’t used before.

They tend to have questions like:

Is the product of good quality?
Will the online store keep my payment details safe?
Can I return the product if it doesn’t suit me?
And so on.

To get them to purchase, you’ll need to settle these concerns. Fortunately, there are many ways to do this.

How to build trust with customers

To build trust with customers, highlight your previous work with the help of social proof. This includes customer reviews, testimonials, star ratings, etc. But, how effective is social proof?

Studies show that 75% of customers trust reviews, and not as many of them trust ads.

Walmart uses customer reviews to build trust with new customers

This means that social proof can help you seal the deal with hesitant customers. For instance, if they see that your products mostly get positive reviews, they’ll be less skeptical about buying them.

Use trust badges

These are digital icons you display on your ecommerce site to show potential customers that your brand is legitimate, secure, and trustworthy.

You can add different types of trust badges, including:

SSL certificates - To reassure customers that their payment information will be secured.
Accepted payment badges - These show the payment options your online store accepts.

Adidas’s accepted payment badges

Policy-specific badges - Such as ‘30-day money-back guarantee’ or ‘Easy returns’ to take the purchase burden away from your customers.

With these badges, you’ll convince new customers that they can trust you with their personal data and rely on you to deliver what they buy as promised.

3: Create a visually compelling website design

Your ecommerce website should be visually compelling because first impressions matter. And in ecommerce, where the competition is at an all-time high, these impressions happen in seconds.

A well-designed, visually compelling ecommerce site creates a good first impression for first-time customers. They’re more likely to stay on your online store and convert if everything looks good and works well. Simple as that.

Make your online store aesthetically pleasing

The visuals you use will play a key role in making your online store pleasing to look at. So, use high-quality images throughout the website. To make the images pop, ensure you use a neutral background (white or light gray).

When we talk about ‘aesthetically pleasing’, you might automatically think about adding animations, mixing up colors and design patterns, etc. But with ecommerce, less is more.

The more elements you have on your web pages, the more it takes away from the main point of having an ecommerce website in the first place. Which is to close a sale. So, ensure you use plenty of whitespace to give elements enough room to breathe.

4: Design a clear and simple site navigation

When it comes to navigation, you want customers to get to the main points of parts of your site in as few clicks as possible. You can do this by making your site navigation simple.

A simple site navigation is so important to customers’ shopping experiences that 68% won’t return if they have a poor search experience.

Adidas’s simple navigation

If you want to increase your conversions and keep customers coming back, you must simplify navigation on your ecommerce site.

How to design a clear and simple site navigation

You can help customers reach different parts of your website easily with the help of these elements on the shop, category, and product pages:

Search - This presents the fastest route to a customer’s preferred product, especially if they already know what they want.
Filters - Suppose a customer has a general idea of what they want, they can filter your products based on their general preferences. This helps to narrow down their search.

Swatches - These are small icons representing product attributes such as color and size. If customers are looking for products of a specific color, they can click on that color swatch to get products with that color.

Breadcrumbs - This helps customers trace the path they follow to arrive at a specific page. It helps them to find their way back if they get lost browsing different products.

eBay’s breadcrumbs

Most importantly, your menu must be intuitive. After all, it is the primary way customers will navigate your site. To make it easy to use, limit the number of items on it. If you must, avail extra menu items on hover.

Ensure you place it in the header, because this is where customers expect to find it.

5: Choose the right ecommerce platform

If you’re just getting started, choosing an ecommerce platform is one of the most important steps you’ll take. These platforms are in plenty, which could make your choice a bit difficult. To simplify this, come up with a criterion for your platform of choice to fulfill.

What to consider when selecting an ecommerce platform

Here’s a breakdown of the key factors to consider when picking your ideal ecommerce platform:

Ease of use. It should allow you to quickly and easily create your online store, add products, create web pages, etc..
Cost effectiveness. If you’re just starting, you wouldn’t want to spend your entire profits on monthly fees or transaction costs. So, pick one that has affordable fees without any transaction charges.

Scalability. The platform should be able to support your business’s growth. Your site should still perform well when you get more shoppers, add more products, etc.

Customization and design flexibility. In such a competitive ecommerce space, you understand how important it is to stand out. For this reason, your ecommerce platform should come with a variety of design features to allow you to build a truly unique online store.

Which ecommerce platform should you choose?

You can choose different ecommerce platforms such as WooCommerce, Shopify, and Brizy Cloud Shops, depending on these criteria. However, WooCommerce’s complexity and Shopify’s cost-ineffectiveness make them less than ideal options if you’re just starting.

For this, we recommend Brizy Cloud Shops. Brizy Shops is built to enable you to get your ecommerce store up and running effortlessly. With Brizy Shops, you can create a stunning, completely customizable online store and sell across multiple channels.

You can do all this without writing any code. There’s no need to learn anything new, as you’ll use the same Brizy Editor you’re used to. Once you build your store, you can integrate it with your social accounts and other marketplaces and start selling there.

Given that it charges no transaction fees, it is perfect for you if you’re just starting or aren’t raking in enough profits yet.

6: Optimize your product pages for conversions

You’ll communicate your product’s value to your customers on the product page. On this page, you’ll answer key questions, address their concerns, and help them decide if your product is a great fit for them. Long story short, this is where you make a sale. As a result, it must be up to scratch.

How to create product page content

First things first, what makes up a high-quality product page content? Effective product descriptions, high-quality images, product videos (if possible), and so on.

You’ve probably heard that you should create detailed product descriptions. But, this isn’t necessarily true since it depends on what you’re selling. With T-shirts, for example, there’s little need to go into too much detail. However, if it’s an electronic, some customers want to know specifically what makes it up.

Focus on features, not just benefits

Let’s say you’re selling a cotton crew-neck T-shirt. Instead of saying ‘100% cotton’, you can say ‘Soft fabric that feels great on your skin’. That aside, when writing detailed product descriptions, ensure you include bullet points to make them scannable.

According to research, site visitors only read about 20% of the text on a webpage.

So you need to highlight what would matter to them.

Improve your product gallery

Add high-quality images of your products to showcase them in detail. If you have variations, ideally, add multiple images per variation to give customers a complete view of the product from different angles.

Also, you can add a product video, if possible. You don’t have to host this on your website (which could slow it down). You can post it on YouTube or Vimeo and paste the link on the product page.

7: Streamline the checkout process

We mentioned that the product page is where you make a sale. Well, the checkout is where the sale is completed, and you get rewarded in revenue. It is also where you’re most likely to lose a sale.

Research by the Baymard Institute reveals that the shopping cart abandonment rate is at 70%. Most of this happens during the checkout process.

To increase your conversion rate, you’ll have to optimize your checkout flow. There’s no other way around it.

How to streamline your checkout flow

This entails eliminating anything that could slow down, distract, or frustrate your customers as they check out. You can do it by:

Including a guest checkout option. One study found that 19% of shoppers will abandon their carts if a site requires them to create an account. Mandatory account creation before a purchase is a major checkout friction point.

Nike’s checkout options

To prevent customers from dropping off at this point, ensure you allow customers to check out as guests.

Removing unnecessary fields and steps. Extra fields like separate street numbers in the checkout forms just give customers more work to do. You can remove what you deem unnecessary so that they have an easier time checking out.

Offering multiple payment options. Credit cards alone won’t be enough, so add popular mobile payment options such as Google Pay, PayPal, Amazon Pay, etc.

You can add trust badges here, for example, an SSL badge, to show customers that their payment information will be safe on your website.

8: Integrate with social media

There’s a lot of hype around selling on social media, and rightly so. A huge portion of customers use social media to find and research products before buying (82% according to Marketing Scoop).

Social media platforms have evolved to support ecommerce. Recently, Instagram and TikTok released shop versions of themselves. Customers can discover products, browse the catalog, and complete a purchase within these platforms.

With social media integration, you can bring your business to social media, and also bring social media to your business. Let’s focus on the latter.

How to integrate your ecommerce site with social media

The most obvious way to do this is to add social sharing buttons on your products. Which could work exceptionally well if your product is trending. Another way to do this would be to use a UGC platform, such as Flowbox.

Flowbox aggregates social media posts of your products and allows you to display them on your site. You can use this to show happy customers enjoying your product.

Finally, you can allow customers to sign in using their social media accounts. This is a convenient way to complete a step some customers find frustrating.

9: Make your ecommerce site search engine friendly

Did you know that more than a third of all product searches happen on Google? Many customers turn to Google to find new products. As such, you must make your site visible on search engines through SEO.

You can do so much to improve your ecommerce site SEO, and it all starts with keyword research. So first, grab a keyword research tool like Moz Keywords or Ubersuggest and identify the keywords you want to rank for.

After getting the keywords you want to rank for, spread them out in your headings, product descriptions, and meta descriptions.

Keywords aside, you’ll also need to:

Add ALT text to explain your images to search engines.
Boost your site’s speed and performance.

We’ve covered all this and so much more in our SEO Checklist for Ecommerce guide. Be sure to check it out to dive deeper into how to improve your site’s SEO.

10: Ensure customers can find help when they need it

Customers could run into issues as they browse through your site. For instance, they could have trouble finding a specific product or be unsure about your shipping and returns policies.

You’ll want these customers to easily find the help they need when they need it. The good news is that there are several ways to do this. You can:

Add an AI-powered chatbot. Your customer service staff can’t be on call 24/7. But an AI chatbot will be there whenever customers need help. You can use it to handle basic customer queries, but forward the advanced cases to human support.

Best Buy’s bot assistant

Add FAQs to return policy pages and the checkout page. Include the common questions past customers have about your returns, checkout, etc., on these pages. This will save customers the time they would otherwise spend reaching out to your customer support staff.

Most importantly, ensure that the links to your contact pages can be easily found. One way to do this would be to include a ‘Need help? Contact Us’ link on areas of your site you feel some customers could struggle to understand or navigate.

11: Explore ecommerce merchandising

Merchandising is when you strategically display and promote products to grab your customers’ attention and get them to buy these products.

It is an effective selling technique mostly used by brick-and-mortar stores. For example, you’ll see clothing stores put clothes on mannequins and do window displays for them. This is meant to capture the attention of potential customers walking down the street.

Merchandising is meant to improve your customer’s shopping experience by helping them discover products they might like easily. When they do, they’ll likely buy more.

You’ll be glad to know that you can apply the same principles to sell more in your online store.

Ecommerce merchandising strategies

As mentioned, ecommerce merchandising is all about product presentation to improve customers’ shopping experiences. Throughout this guide, we’ve touched on how you’ll need to write effective product descriptions and have high-quality product images.

This is all a part of ecommerce merchandising. That aside, you’ll also have to present related products to save customers a trip back to your shop page once they’re on your product page.

There are different ways to do this depending on the type of related product:

Product bundling. This is when you offer multiple products as a package deal and with a discount to sweeten the deal. For example, a themed gift basket containing several products (chocolates, candy, a teddy bear, etc.).
Cross-selling. With cross-selling, you present a product that goes well with what a customer is interested in. For example, a laptop bag to go with a laptop.

Adidas cross-selling on the product page

Upselling. Here, you present a more expensive, higher value product that can substitute for what a customer is interested in. For instance, a watch with leather straps to replace one with rubber straps.

All of these have one thing in common: if a customer adds them to their purchase, your average order value will go up.

12: Monitor and improve your online store

Closing our list of the best practices for designing an ecommerce website is monitoring and improving your online store. Monitoring your ecommerce site’s activity will inform you if the best practices you’ve implemented are actually working.

It will also reveal any problems in your sales funnel that you can fix to get more conversions. The bottom line is that this is something you can’t afford to fix.

Use Google Analytics to keep tabs on your website

There are many tools you can use to monitor your website, but we highly recommend Google Analytics. It’s the most complete web analytics solution in the market as it provides useful information on your website’s performance and how customers are responding to it.

Source: AgencyAnalytics blog

With Google Analytics, you’ll have access to the following information:

Specific information on your customers. Including their demographics and the devices that they use to access your site.

How your marketing campaigns perform. You’ll see click-through rates for your ads, their costs, and how many conversions they bring in.
Site speed. How fast your page loads or responds to a customer’s request.
Other ecommerce data. Such as sales, revenue, product performance, etc.

With this information, you’ll be able to identify the areas of your site that are lacking. Also, you can identify opportunities you can make use of to get more sales.

Optimize your ecommerce business with the best ecommerce web design tips

Building a successful ecommerce business starts with having a well-designed ecommerce store. Knowing what to focus on to create the best ecommerce website design can be challenging.

In this guide, we’ve covered 12 of the best ecommerce website design tips to help you build an online store that sells. We’ve walked you through why they’re important and the strategies to get them done.

We hope that you can use them to inspire your next ecommerce site optimization process. Get ahead with these ecommerce web design tips to create a well-designed ecommerce website.

Article by Bogdan

Co-founder & Head of Design, Bogdan has a passion for everything that works great and looks awesome. Guilty for most of the UI and UX around this place and for the product roadmap.