Design is everything, as Steve Jobs would say. So true, especially when you are in the eCommerce industry and starting up.
Fret not because there are so many "easy to understand" tips that you can use to make your graphic design receive a WOW factor on the net.
You Can Also Read: 6 Web Development Trends for 2023 You Should Know
Why Do ECommerce Businesses Need Graphic Design?
ECommerce is dominating the World Wide Web! You can sell, find, and buy the tiniest items to humongous things online. Anyone can start and take their businesses on the internet and get a lot of clients as thousands of others do, including you!
But if you dare to start your own eCommerce business, what could differentiate you from hundreds to thousands of other sellers?
It is your brand!
Yes, you have read it right.
Mind you, colors, emotions, and content drives most people to visit your website and click that check out button. That means sales on your end.
You have got to be that BRAND in telling people about your business through your graphics. Here are the easy graphic design tips and five free tools that you can master right at your fingertips if you seem lost.
Set your objective straight
Before you start, you should know what your objectives are. One of the eCommerce tips for small businesses is, your purpose should be intelligent, easy to understand, and timebound.
What objectives do you have in mind when you are planning your brand? What do you want your clients to feel when they buy your brand? These are just some of the questions to start making your objective.
Be clear on your way when you are putting up your business. There may be hiccups before, and achieving your objective can lead you to your destination.
Even Coca-Cola sold less than a hundred dollars for the first year. Set your objective in a clear picture, work on it. If it is not doable, then you revise it.
Every business embraces change for the better, but your objective remains the same. Change is okay, failure is inevitable, but you keep ongoing.
Choose your brand color
One of the essential graphic design tips is choosing your brand color. Your reasons may vary. It could be for tax reasons, just as Coca-Cola used red tint to tell the law officers that their container is a soft drink and not liquor. Since soft drinks in the mid-1990s were not taxed, but liquors were. Later, studies have found out that RED color is a trigger color for impulse buyers.
Canva prepared a color meaning based on its psychology in the market and for your graphic design ideas. These are:
- Red: this is also known as the color of passion and love. One well-known company that uses this brand color is Coca-Cola.
- Blue: means reliable and trustworthy. So people who want to buy something reliable choose brands that are blue. Most of them would buy products with a blue brand such as DELL, FORD, and IBM.
- Green: this means life. This is also an exciting color for your brand when discussing prestige and wealth. Brands such as Starbucks, Lacoste, Jaguar have this color. Imagine you are wearing Lacoste. You feel like a million dollars.
- Yellow: this means happy and playful. When you wear yellow, you begin to feel satisfied. Brands with this color are Ikea, McDonald's, and Shell, to name a few.
- Pink: this is also an exciting color for your brand, which means feminine. Romantic and sentimental are the other meanings for this color. Most brands with this color are Barbie, Cosmopolitan, and Victoria's Secret.
- Orange: the meaning for this color is vitality, freshness, and cost-effectiveness. Examples of well-known brands for this are Fontana, Crush, and Amazon.
- White: If you love Apple, you better know that the brand color is white. Steve Jobs loves to design, and it stands out among his competitors, which mainly use gray colors. White also means purity.
- Brown: If you are selling something in line with organic products, then this brand color may fit your graphic design. It means honesty and being down-to-earth. Brands such as Brown Forman have this color in their logo.
- Purple: If you are in a business that connotes royalty, this color may bring your brand in line with all the royalty in the world. Purple means royalty, of course, but it can be mysterious and spiritual. An example of this brand design idea is Cadbury, and the color is rumored that this brand gives tribute to Queen Victoria. Isn't that so royal?
- Black: This color means elegance but can also mean sorrow. The brands well known for this are Prada, Chanel, and Louis Vuitton in terms of grace. Black is also used to show sophistication and formality.
- Multicolor: this is popularly used by Google, which means diversity.
Try to think about which is the best color that suits your brand.
Have your fonts ready and stick to it
Small businesses need to speak loud through their product. You can do so when you choose that font for your brand. It would be best if you had something that could capture your audience simultaneously, speak about the brand and what you want your buyers to feel.
Times New Roman is not a thing of the past or just plain and blunt. It would be best if you had something that could catch the eye. Such as avant-garde used by Adidas or Helvetica used by The North Face. Take time to think about your font. Even FedEx used a lot of time and a lot of experiments before they came up with their brand font.
Take advantage of the use of white space
White space is called a space between the image and the content. Please take it as an advantage because using this allows your visitors to focus on what your products are.
Be motivated by other prominent and successful companies
Read about the accomplishments and the challenges that successful companies have gone through. Things are not easy, but you can do it.
Use icons for your content
Icons are beneficial for your content since it allows your audience to be guided in which things they are going to do next.
Learn the latest design trends
Keep learning and researching what designs are being used in the present. Be flexible on the trends to capture your audience.
Keep it simple and awesome
One of the best eCommerce tips for small businesses is simplicity. Make your graphic simple, readable, and easy to find. Put yourself in your client's situation. Simple does not mean that there is nothing there like a void of design.
The simpler your design, the better. Look at the most successful, well-known businesses such as Coca-Cola, FedEx, and Nike. People behind the brand creation indeed took a toll in making their brand stand out among the crowd.
Here is the catch, when you see their brand, you can tell what they are selling. Soft drinks, courier services, and shoes, respectively. That makes sense, right?
Be creative
Use the resources you have learned and experiment on them. Suppose you can't afford to pay for someone who can make your graphics for you. Remember the graphic design ideas that you just read here. Practice on it, and you might be the next brand on the Forbes magazine front page. Make something that is new but not too complicated. You are trying to sell organic products; you can draw a tree doodle or make your brand stand out.
Tools can help it make it happen
One best eCommerce tip for small businesses is to use the information to make your brand stand out from the rest. One handy tool is a remove bg tool where you can remove your background without hassle. It is super easy that you could get your experience removed in just a count of 1 2 3.
5 Graphic Design Tools You Can Use
Removal.AI - Remove Background from Images Easily
One day, you decide to change the background of your photo, or better yet, you love one of the pictures you took in a restaurant and want it placed in your business, but you do not like the background. Removing your experience nowadays is a no-brainer. This tool can easily remove your location with just two easy steps.
- Step 1: Upload your photo of choice
- Step 2: Click the remove bg button, then voila! Your image is ready. You can download it after.
Canva - Create Awesome Designs
This is a user-friendly tool that you can use in your business. One of the best eCommerce tips for small companies we can give is to learn how to use Canva. It is easy to use; there are read-ymade templates you can choose from with a wide range selection of the topic or brands you want to get ideas from.
It is one of the best helping tools for your business. They also have a blog that provides some learning articles for beginners who do not know where to start.
Here are just some simple steps for you in creating a design in Canva:
- Step 1: Choose a template, whether it be for Facebook outreach or Instagram. These templates are either free or paid. There is a wide selection for your choice.
- Step 2: Choose a font you like and start typing your content. Then, add elements like lines or circles to make your work catchy.
- Step 3: Lastly, download, save or share with your team for circulation.
Don't forget, if all those templates do not fit your style, you can edit a blank template and start from there. Some elements are accessible. Yet, some features are paid but in a very minimal amount.
Adobe Photoshop - Edit Images
You want to give life to your images and better logo creation. Adobe Photoshop is one of the best free online design tool that can boost how your images look like you are in Hollywood.
Here are the steps on how to edit your photo in Adobe Photoshop:
- Step 1: Upload Photo
- Step 2: Adjust images
- Step 3: Resize photos
- Step 4: Add text to photos
- Step 5: Apply design such as photo animation
- Step 6: Add animated stickers
- Step 7: Explore designs you like
- Step 8: Download, save or share
So easy, right?
Adobe Illustrator - Draw Amazing Illustrations
Adobe Illustrator is software that allows you to create book illustrations, icons, and logos, to name a few. If you are an artist wanting to breathe life into your work and share it on the web, then this tool is excellent for you.
This is so intricate that every detail is precise. If your eCommerce small businesses logo is not found in any other templates, you may use Adobe Illustrator to make your graphic design idea come into existence.
Google Fonts - Use the Best Fonts for Your Designs
Google Fonts is a safe tool to choose the best fonts for your brand. If you are unsure where to start, google has prepared a list of topics for you to begin within learning your fonts.
There are about one thousand free fonts in the Google fonts library that you can choose from. When selecting, you must know these terms and their difference: typeface and font. A typeface is what you see, and a font is what you use.
When choosing a typeface, you should include emotions, typeface weight, grade, and width. Just for starters. Here is how you can do it:
- Step 1: Go to Google fonts
- Step 2: Hover over the font of your choice
- Step 3: Click the select button
- Step 4: Download the code
So easy and free. Suppose you have the budget to pay someone to make you a nice font; well, fret not. Google font has over a thousand fonts in store for you.
Conclusion
Last graphic design tip, be you. Take time to know who you are and what you want your clients to feel when they see your brand. You got this, and enjoy editing!
Author’s Bio:
Miguel Davao is a graduate of literature and linguistics and has been writing content for about 5 years now. He particularly writes content on social media, design, photo-editing tools, and content writing tips.
Currently, he works as a full-time writer at Removal.AI – an AI tool used to remove bg from images for social media, eCommerce, web, app development, and marketing automation.