E-retailers must meet the needs of its customers who are using an ever-changing array of computers equipment to access the web.   With the rise of Facebook and Twitter web designers are rearranging the look, feel and functionality of their sites. And the growing use of video has had a similar impact on web designs.

Hundreds of design changes are made by e-retail web sites every year. Many of the changes have yielded in significant improvement in the conversion rate. The average conversion rate is less than 5% of visitor become buyers. This means we still have a lot to learn from our collective experience when it comes to web design. The fact is that potential buyers are abandoning web site because cannot find fast enough what the merchant is selling, and or the checkout process is too cumbersome, and or because the web site design has no captured the potential customer’s attention. The truth is there are hundreds of reasons why shoppers abandon a web site. The good news is there are also hundreds of design solutions to help fix those problems.

The main problem for designers is to find a design that will play well with the different interfaces and device customers are using. Some devices use a touch screen technology. A prime example is Flash which was widely used to display video and animation. Flash elements won’t appear when a web site is accessed by iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

Designers are eliminating flash and are using HTML5 programming language. HTML5 is an upgrade of the web standard HTML that can render multimedia and graphic content without Flash. By using HTML5 ensures the site will render well on nearly all consumers’ screens, regardless of device or browser. The only problem with HTML5 is that it does not play well with Internet Explorer 6.  The good news is that less than 3% of web traffic still comes from IE6.

The touchscreen adds another complication for e-retailers whose sites use pop-up windows or flyouts to display sub-categories in a navigation bar or more information about product.  On a standard web site, those info boxes appear when the mouse hovers over a particular location, such as a category in a navigation bar. But with a touchscreen you have no mouse. A visitor would have to tap on the category to see the details. How many visitors would know to do this? To overcome this problem designers are now using a series of rollers that the shopper can move with their finger to home in on the product they are looking for.

As you can see there is a lot to consider when the time comes to “remodel “your web site. The bottom line is what worked last year will be obsolete next year. Know the demographics of you clientele and “remodel” your web site to better serve their needs  

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 [Does Your Web Store Need Remodeling?]

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