Suppose you and your friends wanted to sell some snowboarding equipment online. You didn’t like any of the ecommerce platforms available, so you develop your own. Now imagine that your new ecommerce platform sells superior to anything your snowboard gear. That, in a nutshell, is how Builderfly was born.

Builderfly offers a unique take on ecommerce platforms that its competitors haven’t exactly mastered: convenience. Builderfly is the best platform for stunning and quick sites. This simply shouldn’t imply that the sites themselves can’t be robust, however, the design process itself is simple and takes less time. If you’re looking for snappy and easy—a platform that takes the sting out of the technical details and gives you a chance to concentrate on business management—Builderfly is best for you.

But don’t mistake “easy” for “brainless.” despite everything you still need to put in some effort to build the site you need, and that’s what this article is all about. Below, you’ll find 3 key design strategies that successful Builderfly store owners cited as the most valuable, for beginners and established stores.

Choose the best theme for your site

First and foremost, you have to pick the right theme. Your theme is the backbone of your site and will directly influence the user experience, atmosphere and all-around feel of your site.

Builderfly offers dozens of themes, each with various style variations for further customization. This all-important decision can likewise be one of the most overwhelming, particularly if it’s your first experience with Builderfly or theme stores in general. When looking for your theme, keep these questions in mind:

• What are some ideal features I want for my store? – Do you need normal or large picture displays? Do you need a wide Instagram feed? Infinite scrolling? Different themes offer different features, so ensure you know what you need, or what you’re willing to sacrifice.

• What are my rivals doing? – Take note of what your rivals are doing not just to emulate what works, yet in addition to recognizing what you can improve.

• How do I want to showcase my products? – How your items are showcased is the main consideration for ecommerce, as it contributes a lot to UX. Consider what sort of products you have: tech products that depend mainly on specs don’t need large images, though fashion items are the opposite.

One final consideration while picking your theme is not to stress too much about color schemes and typography as these can be customized later.

Improve loading times

Regardless of whether you’re not using a Builderfly site, loading times can kill your entire business if they take excessively long. Each additional second your page takes to load reduces conversions by 7% and site hits by 11%. Indeed, even outside of the customer experience, faster sites get ranked higher on Google, so improving your loading times helps both your SEO and UX.

While so many different factors can weigh down your loading time, there are ways that can help in general to decrease loading times.

• Compress images– For sure, you need high-quality product images to help sell your products, yet the downside is these take more time to load. Have your cake and eat it too by compressing the images. Free online tools like compressor.io or compressJPEG.com can decrease the file size by around half without noticeably affecting the image quality.

Reflect your individuality

When you utilize a template site-builder you take the risk of creating a site that resembles all the others. Fortunately, this can be avoided with some additional planning. Indeed, it’s possible for your site to stand out from the crowd, even among those who are utilizing a similar theme.

Here are the two fundamental areas where you can let that little light of yours shine:

• Site Photography – By and large, your photography style decides the appearance of your site more so than even the general theme. The way you stylize both promotional photos and product photos can show your unique personality. For instance, a plain white background looks better for professional, traditional sites, while product photos in context (i.e., taken at the park) can add an eccentric flavor that may suit your site well.
• Builderfly Settings – This may not be known to Builderfly beginners, yet most themes enable you to customize the settings for additional personalization. Take full advantage of these options by uploading your very own logos, customizing your typography and color scheme and picking the number of items to display per line. You can even decide how to show your social media buttons.

The best practices for each of these factors vary depending on the customer group, so there will never be one right answer. What’s more, regardless of how experienced you or your designer is, it’s always better to make decisions based on hard proof rather than raw instinct alone. Long gone are the days of “Call now! Operators are holding by!” But while the technology has evolved, the spirit continues the same. Follow the above tactics to bring that equivalent gusto, enthusiasm and influence the modern digital market.

Do you have any questions about designing for Builderfly? We want to hear from you! Share your opinions with us by simply dropping a tweet on @BuilderFly or email us on support@builderfly.com.