As a society the love of window shopping is a great experience, You go inside just to satisfy your curiosity and your need to buy beautiful things.
You see shop windows, all the time, and if you love shopping from home then it’s website homepages are the windows online. Many of the places you shop at, you go, due to habit, style, loyalty, price. There are a variety of reasons why you stick to the places you shop at.
Needless to say when you repeat buy from a store, whether on or offline, this makes you become invisible to the shop’s homepage displays.
This is because you are for-filling a need to shop not looking at the shop’s display from a creative business owner perspective.
Don’t close your eyes to the creative inspiration that can help your shop homepage
However, as a creative business owner, you should always be creatively vigilant and jot those ideas down. Even when you are leisurely browsing on or off-line shops, keep your eyes open to new ideas, you can use on your own shop homepage.
With this in mind would you buy from your shop’s homepage?
It’s not a trick question? Its a question you should be asking yourself every time you add, take away or change anything on your homepage.
Did you answer the above question? You need to base your answer on how it looks, and not because it took you ages to create it, sorry.
The customer does not see all the blood, sweat and tears it took for you to get your homepage looking the way it does. All your customers are interested in is the images you used to get them to click through – WAIT –
You do have product images on your homepage, right?
All shops large or small who understand the importance of a homepage | shop window, spend a lot of time, planning, more time creating the perfect visual impact. Your shop’s homepage’s sole purpose is to entice the visitor to delve deeper into your site to look at your other products, with the result of making a purchase.
If you can’t get your potential customer passed the homepage, then they are going to leave. Your layout, design, product images should be bright, clear, focused and be inviting. You don’t have to be a savvy techie to get your homepage looking good.
If you are really having trouble, then get help. Seriously, don’t just give up and settle for images that don’t look professional.
I totally understand that you are a creator, and not a top notch photographer. However, this is part of being your own boss. If you can’t do it yourself, there’s a lot of information available online that can help you get to where you need to be.
If you use WordPress there are some great templates that can help you create an interesting homepage however, that’s nothing if your product images are not spot on. It is better to try an better your images and your layout than to just settle for something that you’re not going to be happy with in the long run.
There’s a place to share certain information
All the following shouldn’t be on your homepage in long paragraph form
- Who you are
- What you do
- How long you have been doing your skill
- What materials used
When was the last time you saw a shop window or online shop you have used with a page of text for you to read? Even bookstores don’t have long pieces of text for you to read, whether online or off-line.
I understand you want to get across the handmade aspect of your business. You also want to get across that your items are unique because you created them. Nevertheless, this information does not need to be on your homepage, it needs to be on your about page, and scattered throughout your blog.
Okay, I’ll let you off and say you can share a few lines of text on your homepage:) But this is merely just to get your keywords onto your homepage, as to work with the search engines. However, even saying that this information needs to be below all your great images. Meaning, whenever it comes to your site, this is not the first thing they will see.
For the object of your customers coming to your site is that they will focus on your great product images.
If you have your products showcased via a marketplace, you don’t get the privilege of organizing how it will be displayed. However, you do have control over how good your images are. If you have images that are not fully reflecting your great products, you can’t blame customers for not wanting to buy.
How to assess whether you should settle for the images you have taken
Think of your images this way. if you were going to use your images on eBay, do you believe people would bid on them?
As human beings, we buy with our eyes. If we see images that make us question what we are seeing you can be sure that those purses and wallets will stay closed. Showcasing your products, you need to really think about your homepage as an inviting visual, that will turn a visitor into a buyer into a repeat customer. Make your homepage count, pull out all the stops and let your homepage shine.
It’s time to step out of your business shoes and into your customer’s shoes
Below are five shop homepages that I want to share. I chose these because I used these places [or similar] to help me redesign my 1st website the 3rd time around, back in the day.
At that time I was struggling to display my product in a visual way that was different from those in my niche. So, what I did was think of items that I found boring. Then I did a Google search to find sites that specialized in these products.
This simple little idea smashed my creative block. Finding inspirational visual impacting shop homepages, allowed me to really look at my product from a completely different perspective.
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Please click through and visit these places, see how they use colour, images size, image arrangement to make up 1 image, product placement slideshows & overall impact.
It’s not about whether you like what they are selling, it’s about how they are selling to you the customer visually. It’s time to step out of your business shoes and into your customer’s shoes. Create a homepage your customer will want to shop at.
Which homepage’s did you like and why?
What would you like help with on your site?
Don’t be shy share and get unstuck 🙂
Let’s get the discussion rolling…
