Ideal Balance: Branding and Usability in E-Commerce
ANA BÁEZ
For all online stores, it's essential to reflect their brand identity on their website. Branding plays a pivotal role in user experience, as it not only defines the store's perception but also builds trust and differentiates the brand from its competitors. Visual details and brand style are key to creating an engaging online shopping experience. However, it's crucial to remember that design shouldn't override conversion functionality; the most important thing is to ensure the site is intuitive and efficient, thereby transforming visitors into buyers.
In this blog, we analyze the three most common brand mistakes and how to solve them to achieve the perfect balance between branding and conversion. The third tip is the most common:
1. Clear and Visible Calls to Action
- Although branding is prominent, calls to action (CTAs) should be clear and visible.
Stores with minimalist branding often make the mistake of not giving enough visibility to these actions, as the buttons are not properly aligned with the brand's style.
Shopify offers several pre-designed templates, but remember that as Shopify developer partners, we can customize the code to give you greater design flexibility.
It's crucial to use secondary brand colors to highlight CTAs and ensure their placement on the page maximizes their visibility. Ultimately, if you don't have prominent calls to action, how do you expect the customer to complete their purchase?
2. Little text on landing pages
- It's true that customers don't like to read too much, but that doesn't mean text is unnecessary on a website.
In fact, copy is essential for SEO and positioning on search engines like Google, as it improves online reach and visibility. However, it should be short, concise, and use brand-related keywords. Furthermore, copy plays a key role in guiding the customer, explaining what they can expect if they take the action requested in the call to action (CTA).
To maintain balance with branding, it's essential that the text be appropriately typefaced and sized, and that it be positioned in an area that adds "air" to the page, avoiding visual saturation with images.
Remember that, with our support as Shopify partners, you can create original and personalized text templates for your landing pages, setting yourself apart from the competition.
3. Overloading code on the web to comply with the design
Many clients come to Teipe with websites overloaded with code in an attempt to meet design standards: huge logos that affect page margins, unnecessary sections, editorial-style homepages without clear calls to action, disproportionately large images, and unnecessary changes to the structure of product pages. All of this generates excessive code that impacts:
Web Loading Speed
Users tend to abandon slow sites. Pages with busy designs, such as heavy images and too many visual elements, can impact site loading speed.
Confusion in the Message
Excessive visuals and colors distract users from key messages, such as a product's benefits or a special offer, affecting purchasing decisions.
Loss of Focus on Products
If the design is too flashy, the products lose prominence. If users can't clearly see what they're looking for, they're likely to leave the site without taking any action.
Ease of Navigation
An overly complex design can make navigation difficult. If the structure isn't intuitive or is overwhelmed by too many visual elements, users may abandon the site before completing the conversion.
It's essential to be responsible when adding code to Shopify websites to ensure essential functionality isn't compromised and loading is fast. Remember that Shopify is constantly updating, offering new options to improve your site. Contact us to stay informed about the latest updates and how to apply them to your website while maintaining a balance between branding and conversion.
