Magento is a powerful ecommerce platform with seemingly endless customization possibilities. However, because of Magento’s deep customization capabilities, it is often easy to get overwhelmed, especially for beginners. Plus, if you are working with a professional designer, it is easy to have your project grow to unmanageable proportions unless you have a solid plan for what you want. Here are some general design tips from professional Magento designers to help keep your project on track.
Plan Your Site Design
What are you trying to do with your website? What sort of features do you want it to have? What sort of shopping experience do you want to provide? How many stores do you want to build? Are you catering to multiple languages or will you just have a single language site?
Do you want to use a pre-made site template, or do you want a site design made out of scratch? Pre-made site designs are much quicker and will take less time and energy, but the design may end up looking generic or resemble another site. If you think about these questions ahead of time and discuss them with your designer if you are working with one, you can figure out what kind of timeframe you are looking at and better plan your budget.
It also helps to craft a site map and a simple graphic layout for how you want your site to look. If you aren’t sure about these things, you can discuss them with your Magento designers.
Designing an Attractive and Intuitive Site
You definitely want a site that looks good and professionally designed, and the site should be easy to navigate. You want your visitors to stay and look around, and a good-looking site that is well organized gives off the impression that the rest of your business is well put together too.
There are several things you should think about. First is your Magento theme. What sort of budget do you have and what kind of timeframe are you hoping for? Take a look at your theme’s documentation and the CSS file (or have your magento designers do this) to get an idea of what your theme will require. Image dependent themes take a little more time than themes that rely more on CSS. The theme’s documentation will provide information on site setup and customization, so you can get an idea of the process ahead as well. If you have the time and money, going with a theme that is resource-heavy can net you a unique, great-looking site if you do it right. Though if you are short on funds, a lightweight theme will prevent the project from going out of control. You can still get a nice-looking site with fairly little resources.
Also think about your site navigation and where your information is going to go. Is navigation clear and intuitive? Do you have a directory that is constantly available that lets browsers get back to a certain page, or get to another one fast? Is all the necessary information readily available to your visitors, such as shipping and return policies, contact information, and FAQs?
Finally, use only high quality images that look professional and accurately depict your products and services. Use professional photography if possible, or at the very least, pictures that look good to everyone you show.
Hire a Professional
If you keep these basic guidelines in mind, you’re well on your way to good design. However, if you don’t have much experience with a platform like Magento, consider hiring professional Magento designers. Magento is the type of program that is built especially for designers and developers. The program is highly complex and technical, but the right talent can build an incredible website with its tools. Coalition Technologies provides some of the best website designers and developers in the industry. If you want to give your visitors a truly memorable experience, give our Magento designers a call. Call us today at 1-888-993-7639 and we’ll give you a free quote.