Designing eCommerce sites for established brands

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

November 6, 2007 [5090 views]

In this session (for the Art Directors in Stockholm) we will discuss the ‘big picture’ of ecommerce and then look at some tips for designing retail sites for a range of clients.

The big picture

Let us start by introducing ecommerce using the same introductory lecture as given at Kingston University

Questions

1. What are the best stores you have used online?
2. How have the designers helped the visitors become customers?
3. How is the design connected to the offline brand of the company?

Designing for existing brands

1. Understand your client market
2. Learn to work within their brand
3. Recognise that high value brands to not simply want to sell
4. Allow people to see, touch and explore the items
5. Add decision support tools to help customers find what they are looking for
6. Add more information than is normally available offline
7. Show people what is in stock
8. Create 360 degree customer service that fully integrates with offline
9. Think about your VIP customers
10. Recognise that visitors will take different routes to your site and through it
11. Allow people to engage with and buy from your brand (again and again)
12. Provide visitors with ways to keep in touch beyond buying

What would be different for a new brand?

1. They have existing no brand recognition
2. No one is looking for them
3. Marketing (and perhaps search engine marketing) will be important
4. Customer trust is key especially for high value products
5. Address customer fears directly (security, privacy, availability, delivery)
6. Remember that the brand experience starts before the home page
7. Need to build reputation (difficult and slow)
8. ‘Remarkable’ features of the site may help build reputation

Common mistakes

1. Ignoring the power of search engines
2. Assuming that all customers enter through the home page
3. Failing to link online and offline. Recognise that customers move from one to the other.
4. Assuming that customers will buy on their first visit
5. Faults and surprises put off the customers

Different types of products will require different types of site

1. Fashion: build the brand as well as allow customers to shop
2. Books: guarantee rapid delivery (to compete with Amazon)
3. Food: make regular shopping very easy (remember what I have bought)
4. Cameras: provide very detailed specifications and allow comparison
5. Software: allow electronic fulfilment
6. Tickets: allow customer to print

What do you think?

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