In the entire web page design of an e-commerce site, the first page is the most critical element. But not all WordPress users are successful in designing a dynamic homepage that would take the visitors from their entry point to conversion.

If you have a small website that serves some less direct sale purpose, increasing your conversions is undoubtedly pure. The ultimate formula: inform, appeal to the needs of your visitors, and gain a client or lead! The e-commerce sales are expected to lift from $13 trillion to $45 trillion by the year 2021.

Therefore, it is no wonder most of the e-commerce owners are opting for more tempting and attractive websites to boost sales. 

Well, it's the first page of the e-commerce site because this page is the first thing a visitor comes across while exploring your e-commerce store. Having said this, we don't mean that building an appealing first page is a super complicated or easy task. All it requires is a systematic, well thought and logical design that a professional designer can easily design if given the clear design idea.

In this guide, we will share the top experts' tips to design the first page of your e-commerce site, which is guaranteed to increase your conversion rates. But before we dig deeper into these tips, the first question is; what makes the first page of your e-commerce site so significant to boost sales?

Well, the first page or the homepage of your e-commerce site is the first thing that a visitor instinctively gauges while landing on your site. We all agree with the power of the first impression. The first page of your website sets the tone for the business just like a first impression. Thus, it makes a lot of sense to improve the first-page design and to keep it active.

Designing an e-commerce site is similar to renovating a physical store. You not only greet customers at your store but also want to offer them the best shopping experience. Think for a moment, how would you feel if you have to struggle to find a product/information on a site? Especially, when your site has no person to help visitors find their desired products!

This shows that your first-page design and layout acts like a customer service representative that guides visitors to easily navigate around the site and assist them to take the desired action.

A well designed first-page layout creates a visual breadcrumbs trail that expertly guides your site visitors to discover the offered products/services, effortlessly. The plan of the page also directs the visitors to take the required action while following through to the next step.

The planning of your first-page design helps you ascertain what content to include on the page, what content needs to go first, and where to place it. You can create a useful and awesome first page just by incorporating information without a proper plan. But it has to be logical and methodological so that every visitor can make the most of the layout.

Without further ado, let's forget about the next journey of the visitor (CTA) and focus on the first aspect of their visit. Here are the five experts' tips to make your site's first page more appealing and useful.

Usually, a value proposition is just a brief statement. This statement is found atop the main image on the first page. This could be a sentence or two, a descriptive headline, or a strong call-to-action button. This is enough to communicate to your visitors what you do and what your visitor can get from your store.

A good value proposition usually consists of the following element:

• Headline – shows the end benefit offered to the customer
• A Paragraph or Sub-headline – detailed information about your offerings, why and to whom.
• A Few Bullet Points – listing all the features and benefits
• A Visual Element - display an image or a video to improve your message

However, always remember that for an e-commerce website, less is more. It is recommended to keep the main header uncluttered and straightforward. You can also follow the same layout for the internal pages but without having overlaid text that you may use of the first page as its design element.

Now the most preferred first pages are the ones on which images of products speak for themselves. In other words, there should not be lengthy explanations of the product line. An e-commerce site that has a clear proposition helps in communicating your messages to visitors clearly with no or just a few words. 

Just like every other well-designed website, it is quite logical to design navigation and header that is just simple and right to the point. This helps the visitor to instantly get the sense of what kind of information is available on your site. This prevents them from scrolling down, unnecessarily, to learn more from other homepage sections and value proposition.

Just like you bookmark the frequently or regularly visited websites in your browser, your e-commerce header bar should accomplish the same for your visitors. The primary goal should be to enable the visitor to take a swift action without the need to learn more about your company profile or to fill out a form to get more information.

In other words, all the actions that you wish your visitors to take must be readily accessible in the main navigation bar of your homepage. A good layout is the one that offers a well-organized navigation bar. You don't need to go with an overly simplified design, but make sure that there is no guesswork involved in finding the products. 

As per the research of Baymard Institute, The large-scale usability testing on Category and Homepage navigation shows that when product categories are not displayed clearly on the main site, navigation may cause severe and multiple navigational problems for users. Thus, if you hope to increase e-commerce site sale, your navigation bar must beckon visitors to get right down to business while giving the visitors an instant way to get to the desired part of the journey.

To keep the layout simple and effective, start with some custom videography and photography. What else could be more comfortable for customers than to see your goods in person? This means the more angles, visuals, contexts, and variations you could provide them, the better it will be. 

But one way you can disrupt the whole experience of videography and photography is by incorporating images that are not fully optimized but published on the site. The best way is to keep every image retina-ready.

Even though many e-commerce site owners do not give images much consideration, they create a massive impact on the visitor right away. So play around with quantity, color, text placement, variation, etc. But also remember, what works on one site may not necessarily work for another. Make sure that the images give off a complete sense of sophistication, cleanliness, and indulgence. For this, use pictures that are not only well-framed but also perfectly shot.

For instance, Amazon is a public and massive marketplace. Indeed, it does a great job of displaying only high-quality visuals. Even though the images may seem a bit of a mess regarding the organization, but the platform's popularity and trust help it get away with its image overload quite easily.

While you don't need to create an overwhelming and haphazard layout of ads or products, your images must convey the brand message to visitors. 

There is no tool more powerful than color for web designers. Web designers use different and distinctive color psychology while developing a website. That is to make sure that you are creating the content and layout appealing to the audience while conveying the desired message and style along with representing your brand.

However, if you are running an e-commerce site with the main focus on product selling, color may be an unwanted distraction. You can use colors and capture your audience's attention instantly. Color psychology can be applied both on the first page and on any pop up to make it more attention-grabbing. Also when you use to color with a moving image, it effectively captures the attention such as a limited time offer with a ticking clock is an effective way to show urgency.

Once again Amazon is the most recognized brand that incredibly uses scarcity and urgency to compel visitors to go ahead and make a quick purchase. The only way Amazon successfully pulls that off is by using different colors to get attention. For instance, a simple banner with the high demand product and price is often so severely slashed that customers cannot resist shopping on the same day.

Even though pop-ups are considered annoying as they appear out of nowhere when you are engrossed in exploring the site (often stacking up on each other), if you know how to use them properly, you can easily convert more leads. 

One of the examples is to give a last minute discount as soon as the visitor leaves the page or if he/she abandons the cart. As per experts, perfectly timed and smartly designed pop-ups can easily win you almost 10% clients.

E-commerce sites that publish coupon codes are more likely to convert more leads and generate more sales. In particular, coupon codes increase the likelihood of sales by almost 8%, and among all sales that take place on Shopify in each year's time, at least 17% of them are through coupon codes.

Don't just think of these as Shopify-specific statistics: these techniques work for all kind of e-commerce CMS. The best thing about coupons is that they are very easy to implement on sites. They can be included by using sticky bars and pop-ups. 

To help you further, Hustle is one of the plugins that is well recognized to add this functionality. Hustle is not only a great source to display well-designed and appealing coupon codes, but you may also collect visitors' email addresses as an exchange. 

This way you can offer as many promotions as you like. Again when you incorporate pop-ups, don't forget to play around with different colors. How about a monochrome e-commerce site with an all black pop up to make it stand out from the rest of the sites and to grab attention instantly?

The bottom line is that if you wish to boost the sales by re-designing or improving the first page, you have to make a strong impression in all ways and right from the start. A good design fulfills visitor's needs and easily persuades them to take the required action. 

Also, an effective first-page design offers visitors a trusted and secure place to shop that not only work fast but also gives them the right kind and amount of information to proceed further.

There are a lot of items or tips that can still be added to the given list to make your e-commerce site a lot more competitive. It is simple to understand that an e-commerce site, unlike other websites, does not usually follow the same old pattern just like popular business websites. These sites no longer go with flashy images and substantial white space to present the brand message.

An e-commerce site focuses on selling the inventory of its products or services. This means that the overall design doesn't heavily rely on engaging words but positively appealing visuals.

Have you ever designed a homepage to increase sales? If yes, we'd love to know your experience. Also if you have any other valuable tip, feel free to share in the comment section below!