Why does an online store need SEO? At first glance, the answer is obvious: to get to the top of search results. Well, not really! Getting to the top is not yet a guarantee of active growth in the number of customers, the number of orders, and conversions of your marijuana e-commerce platform. There are hundreds and even thousands of sites that are at the top for some key queries, but at the same time, they have low conversion rates. Why is that happening? The response is simple — their design is not well-developed.
In this post, we would like to dwell on the importance of the design of an online store and how it affects its promotion and conversion, what UX/UI is, how search engines actually see your site, and what to do with it all. If you own a marijuana e-commerce platform, everything we are going to talk about here can be applied to marijuana web design as well since the basic principle of developing a convenient and user-friendly website can be applied to any niche.
Online store UX and UI
The concepts of UX and UI are about 70 years old, although many still confuse them and use them incorrectly. Speaking as briefly as possible, the concept of online store design should be considered from two points of view — usability and appearance.
There are quite a lot of complicated descriptions of UX/UI design on the Internet that only confuse the user. We have tried to give the clearest, most concise, and most understandable definitions.
What is the UX Design of an online store?
UX stands for the user experience. Its essence is not how the site looks, but how convenient it is for perception. UX design is responsible for the layout of menus, buttons, banners, and other page elements. In addition, UX is a kind of “user path” from point A to point B. The site, thanks to a well-developed UX design, literally leads a person to the target action — ordering a product or service on a particular website.
Accordingly, a UX designer is a design engineer who studies user behavior on the site, delves into analytics, prototyping the site, and then prepares the terms of reference for the UI designer. That is, it creates the logic and structure of the pages.
What is the UI Design?
UI stands for the user interface. These are directly graphic details: the appearance of buttons and icons, animations, fonts, and so on. Everything that users see in front of them on the screen. The key goal of UI design is the aesthetic appearance of the site and compliance with the corporate identity. With its help, accents are created on targeted actions (the “Buy” / “Call” buttons), and emotional responses and user confidence in the company are evoked.
The UI designer actually “draws” various buttons and controls, creates animations, and more. At the same time, a good UI designer should have basic programming skills and an understanding of the principles of interface design, and they should also be familiar with brand design.
If you are working in the cannabis niche, you can check out WordPress Cannabis Website Templates for inspiration and an understanding of what a well-designed platform should look like.
How do search engines see website design?
For a search engine, it does not matter how a particular e-commerce store is designed. But at the very beginning, we have mentioned that UX and UI are important for an e-commerce store. In fact, search engines do not see the design of your site and do not evaluate how convenient and beautiful it is. But they take into account the following factors when ranking:
- The behavior of users while on the site;
- The number of references to your website;
- Its domain authority;
- The content on the site, how optimized and relevant it is;
- Technical SEO parameters;
- etc.
And these factors are already related to the design of your website. Examples:
- The site does not have a responsive web design, and it is inconvenient to use it from a smartphone. Therefore, the bounce rate is increasing, and the position of the site is falling.
- Due to a poorly developed interface and generally low-quality UX design, a user gets confused in the menu and product categories, and cannot understand how to buy a product with a credit card or pay for an order directly on the site.
- The same applies to the outdated appearance of the site: if a user opens a website of an online store with an old design, they have doubts whether this site is valid, the level of trust drops significantly, and the user simply leaves without taking any action.
Final words
If you are launching an e-commerce website, in the cannabis niche or any other segment, it is crucial not to overlook the importance of its design and convenience for users. And it is even unnecessary to dive deeply into analytics. Just think, will you agree to use a website you dislike or find inconvenient? Hardly! Therefore, it is your task to make sure that an e-commerce platform you are going to use for your business will be convenient for your clients who will want to come back again to buy your products and enjoy the convenience of your website.