E-commerce websites are in need of a face lift if they’re going to be a success, with visual hierarchy often being the modern design that helps guide users from browsing to checkout. Visual hierarchy is the arrangement of elements on a page that help visitors naturally see the most important elements first. It uses principles like size, colour and spacing to control the flow of information across the page.
In this guide, we will explore how visual hierarchy helps to evoke emotion in e-commerce, helping to grow your business as you generate more sales. Continue reading to find out more.
Three Levels of Emotional Design
Visceral
Your customer’s immediate reaction to aesthetics can determine whether or not they end up completing a purchase. You’ll see the benefits if you have polished typography, generous whitespace and balanced spacing. These can help to evoke feelings of calm and professionalism, making customers loyal to your brand.
Behavioural
How the customer feels when using the website is very important, as an improved experience will encourage customers to purchase your products. Clear pathways and putting the most logical information in the right places will reduce friction, so shoppers feel empowered through understanding more about the product.
Reflective
The lasting emotional attachment formed with the brand will help customers keep returning to your brand over and over again. You need to have a streamlined design that is instantly recognisable and makes customers more aware of your brand.
Key Elements of Strong Visual Hierarchy
Colour and Contrast
When you have high-contrast elements on a website, it immediately draws attention and encourages customers to browse through your products. Your choice of colour can help you to better highlight focal points on the screen, such as using white and black to create different segments that makes information seem more important.
Using a bright, contrasting colour exclusively for specific buttons on your page, such as the “Add to Cart” button makes it pop against a neutral background. This call to action will help to turn customers into conversions.
Typography
Organised text structures scannable content, so customers can better categorise the information and understand it quickly. You can use large bold H1 headers for product titles, medium H2s for benefits,and regular body text for technical specifications. Not only does this provide a strong visual hierarchy for customers, but also has many SEO benefits like better crawlability and rankings on Google.
The primary paragraph content also needs to be optimised. It should be highly legible, consistent in size and feature standard weight.
Whitespacing
You don’t want to overwhelm your customers with information, as this can deter them from browsing through your products or learning more about your brand. Empty space can help to isolate content, making it seem more important. It can prevent cognitive overload and create a premium feel, which will resonate with modern customers.
Luxury products should be given the most space on your page to make it feel more exclusive and high-end. This can help promote it to customers, increasing the chance of them adding it to their cart.
Alignment
When you group related items together, it implies that they have a relationship. This can make customers think that they need to purchase both items, as it creates a logical mental map. You should place product reviews, star ratings and price tags close together too, so the buyer connects social proof with costs instantly. This element of trust can be crucial for customers keeping a good relationship with your brand.
The grid strategy is effective for this. You can use horizontal and vertical lines to anchor elements on the website. This creates predictable layouts and establishes relationships between items.
Reading Patterns
Web users tend to read through pages in predictable shapes, so you can plan out your content to follow these shapes as you match the natural eye movement of humans. Use an F-Pattern for text-heavy pages like blogs, as this is how humans will naturally read content. Whereas, Z-Patterns are great for landing pages. You can place your logo in the top left and the checkout icon in the top right to achieve this.
Busy shoppers looking for specific data on product details pages will use the spotted pattern. For this, you can make prices, discount badges and star ratings bolder and larger so they pull the eye in immediately.
Final Thoughts
Visual hierarchy is one of the most powerful website design techniques you can use to encourage users to browse through your products and complete a purchase. When you have individualised products on your page, such as personalised gifts, you need an approach that showcases these as your main items. Separation with white space is the best way to do this by giving your specialised products the most room to draw the eyes of customers.
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