Designing a health and wellness e-commerce site isn't just about aesthetics - it's about creating a user experience that educates, engages, and converts.
In this guide, we'll explore key design strategies that boost conversions while catering to health-conscious consumers.
Health and Wellness Design Tips for Conversions
Great design is your weapon to attract the right people to your brand. It helps convey the core values of your brand along with establishing trust and reliability in just a matter of seconds.
One needs to fully understand that well-designed information generates an interest even before the information is actually processed.
Think about it, would you buy something from a poor-looking online store with possibly an even poorer User Experience (UX)? Most definitely, no!
So how do you build a UX-friendly health and wellness store that helps maximize sales?
We have divided this design guide into different sections that cover conversion-driven design strategies for some of the most crucial pages on any online store - homepage, product page, navigation, collection page, checkout page.
Health and Wellness Homepage Design Tips for Conversions
Now, we’ll take a closer look at how small yet strategic design thinking for the homepage can make a huge impact on your overall online sales.
- Add important information in the header promo bar
Present the unique selling point of your store here. You could add information about all your new launches, ongoing sales, and free shipping facility here.
Ideally, the header promo bar is displayed in a bright color that catches the user’s attention from the get-go. You can also add a CTA here. The promo bar is usually common to all pages on the website. But, a homepage is where a user usually sees it first.
Here’s an example from Vital Vitamins - they use this important real estate to inform their store visitors they offer free shipping store-wide.
This is a great hook from the get-go because who doesn’t like free shipping? Additionally, for most consumers, it is also a great motivator to complete their online purchases!
- Clear hero image with value proposition mentioned
Every well-designed homepage needs an impressive hero element. This is the very first thing a website visitor gets to see. So, you need to plan this strategically.
Your health eCommerce website should have a clear and high-quality image preferably displaying your products in their full glory. It's best to keep this as minimal as possible.
Apart from the pictures, the copy used in your hero element is also crucial. This is your sales pitch; a one-line sales pitch usually. So, get creative and display your brand’s value proposition in the most concise yet persuasive way.
Here’s an example from the Fitbit homepage -
Alternatively, if not the hero image, you can also have a dedicated separate section on the home page for the same as Hims does:
- Showcase your best-sellers
Statistics show that product recommendations at the right stage of an online shopper’s journey can increase your store conversions by almost 49%.
Displaying best seller products helps direct a user’s attention towards a particular direction. It also helps them make a quicker and better purchase decision. This is a simple design psychology tip to improve your conversions.
Here’s an example from the Yogamere Shopify website -
- Display categories to guide the consumers
Too many products displayed all at once are bound to confuse the consumer. However, a systematically categorized product catalog helps the user make better purchase decisions. This reduces a buyer’s confusion and anxiety tremendously. You don’t want your site visitors to get overwhelmed and walk away.
These categories can be mentioned in the menu bar on all pages of your health and wellness Shopify website. You can take this a notch up by also adding a dedicated section displaying various categories on your homepage.
- Add customer reviews/testimonials
Did you know, that almost 87% of buying decisions are made based on the research made around products; which primarily includes looking into product reviews, ratings, and testimonials?
Social proof can massively impact a consumer’s purchase decision. Add a dedicated section to share what your other customers think about your brand in your homepage.
Cosmix is an Indian brand that makes plant-based mixes. Here’s how they have added social proof on their homepage.
Another way of displaying social proof is sharing what your existing customers are talking about your brand on social media with the help of a social listening tool. Here’s how Levels does it:
- Talk about your ‘science’
Educational content is key for health and wellness websites. It builds trust and positions you as an expert.
Stress why your health and wellness brand is so effective. Consumers of today are well-informed and smarter. They need facts to back any claim made by brands.
This section on your homepage is going to be your star section. This is the section that is going to help you stand out from your competitors. And so, put thorough thought into how you can describe what your brand does in the most comprehensive form.
Your homepage is prime real estate. Use it to educate visitors:
- Feature a "Learn" section with links to key articles
- Add a rotating banner highlighting health tips
- Include a "Product of the Week" with educational details
- Display customer testimonials with specific health benefits
- Use icons to showcase key product features or ingredients
This approach provides immediate value to visitors. It also signals that your site is a trusted resource. Place educational elements strategically without cluttering the page.
Here’s an example from Superfeet -
- Talk about your impact
Consumers subscribe to health and wellness brands with a specific goal in mind. And so, understanding your place in your consumer’s wellness journey is detrimental.
Show them what they want to see. It’s as simple as that. Let the consumer know that your product and/or service actually works. You can add real examples of your previous clients to persuade your new website visitors about your impact.
Here’s how Weight Watchers, a nutrition brand, displays how their clients became fitter after using their services. This lets the user see what exactly they can expect from the brand.
Health and Wellness Collection Page Design Tips for Conversions
We’ve looked into the homepage design essentials - let’s move on to the collection page.
- Smart filtering system
Implement an intuitive filtering system. Allow users to sort by health concerns, ingredients, or dietary needs. This mimics asking a knowledgeable salesperson for advice. It reduces decision fatigue and helps customers find relevant products quickly.
Here’s an example from The Ordinary online store.
- Ability to ‘quick view’/Add to Cart button
In strategic eCommerce design, the number of clicks it takes a user to complete a particular purchase plays a major role in determining the sales through that website. You should try and avoid unnecessary steps that add no value to the overall shopping experience of your consumers.
SugarBear has an interesting feature called ‘Quick View’ that lets you easily add products to the cart without being redirected to a separate product page. This option appears when users hover over their product on the various categories page.
DermaCo has an Add to Cart button on its collection page to easily make purchases. This is extremely useful for shoppers who are just here to restock, for instance.
Health and Wellness Navigation Bar Design Tips for Conversions
Your store’s navigation system is what’s going to help your potential customers find the products they’re looking for. This is one of the most crucial areas of any e-commerce store design.
Here are some design tactics to ensure its built for conversions -
- Clear health categories
Organize products into intuitive health categories. Use common terms like "Vitamins," "Supplements," and "Skincare." This structure mirrors how customers think about their health needs, making product discovery easier and more natural.
Here’s an example from the navigation bar of HK Vitals’ online store.
- Mega menu implementation
Utilize a mega menu for larger product catalogs. This allows users to see multiple subcategories at once. Include popular products or featured items within the menu.
This approach reduces clicks and helps users find products faster, improving overall site usability. They’re also great for search engine optimization because they help users find what they’re looking for.
- Easy-to-use and accessible search functionality
This feature is great for finding the exact product customers need, but it's also helpful if customers are just browsing to see what's available.
Ensure the search bar is easily accessible on every page, so your website visitors can find what they’re looking for with a single click. And if they want to narrow their search, you can also provide filters and categories to help visitors find exactly what they want.
Health and Wellness Product Page Design Tips for Conversions
No e-commerce store is complete without a product page. This is the heart and soul of your conversion funnel.
Let’s take a look into how you can optimize this page for maximum sales in your health and wellness Shopify store.
- Clear product pictures (with nutrition facts)
When shopping online, consumers are bound to be skeptical about any purchase. To aid in their decision journey, it is crucial to use high-quality product photos. Prioritizing your eCommerce product photography will help you boost your conversion rates seamlessly.
Over 90% of online shoppers believe that product photo quality is the most important factor in the eCommerce sphere. In fact, 75% of them base their purchase decisions on the product shots used.
Furthermore, health and wellness Shopify stores should also have a dedicated nutrition facts section if your product requires it. The idea is to provide your users with all the necessary information to help them make an informed purchase decision.
Here’s an example of how Superfeet combines good product photography with benefits added to the visuals on their Shopify product page:
- Summary of product ratings
The best eCommerce product pages have even the tiniest UI/UX elements executed after a thorough understanding of consumer psychology. It's usually the little things that add up to the overall likeability of your online store.
For instance, adding a summary of the available product/service ratings just below the product name helps the user make quicker, better, and well-informed decisions. It saves them time and effort of having to sift through many reviews. This is a strategy that Amazon has been playing on for years and now leading brands on Shopify are too!
Here’s an example from Jacked Factory, an online store that sells health supplements.
- Detailed and honest product descriptions
40% of millennials claim that product content is very important to their purchasing decisions. In fact, 98% of shoppers have been dissuaded from completing a purchase because of incomplete or incorrect product specifications.
If you’re a health and wellness product brand, this is going to be one of the most important sections of your product page. Provide detailed information about the ingredients, benefits, and a general overview of the product.
Consumers of today demand transparency from brands. They want to have access to information about the products that they are utilizing; so make sure you keep the descriptions crisp and clear.
Here’s an example from Binto, a personalized supplement brand:
- Add a separate ingredients section
No matter how well you craft your product description, health and wellness product ingredients need to be mentioned separately. This is important because people do read the fine print when making purchases related to their health and wellness.
This also helps you deliver your value proposition in a different light, showing what goes ‘in’ the products that make them so good for someone’s health.
Here’s an example from the product page of Welly, a health and wellness brand with a focus on products for better sleep:
- Option to subscribe to the product
About 15% of online shoppers have subscribed to an eCommerce subscription service within the past year. The main reasons to do so are convenience, personalized experience, and value for money.
And unlike other domains of eCommerce, health and wellness brands require a longer commitment with the brand to see effective results. This means that consumers will have to keep coming back to you to re-purchase/renew a particular product and/or service.
You can improve the UX of your store by adding a subscription model option. Simply automating the restocking/renewing process will help the consumer tremendously. Add a simple bright-colored button next to the Add To Cart button and you’re good to go!
- Display product recommendations
Prompt shoppers to explore your catalog by suggesting other products and/or services to try out that will complement and help them achieve better results (faster). This is your opportunity to upsell and cross-sell.
Personalization is the future of eCommerce. In fact, over 71% of consumers feel frustrated when a shopping experience is not customized according to their journey.
Your eCommerce product page design should try and incorporate Artificial Intelligence (AI) to boost the overall User Experience (UX) of your website. Product recommendations are a great start to leverage the power of AI and increase your conversion rate. Over 91% of customers claim that they are more likely to shop from stores that give personalized offers and recommendations.
Health and Wellness Checkout Page Design Tips for Conversions
Okay, this is the final leg of your buyer’s journey on your site - and the most crucial one.
How do you go about designing a checkout experience that prevents you from falling into the clutches of cart abandonment? Let’s take a look.
- Place the shopping cart icon in the upper right corner of the page
We know how important it is for you to set up an impressive storefront. You’re also willing to explore different designs for your cart and its placement. But the truth is, ever since eCommerce came into being, online shoppers have been used to looking for the shopping cart icon in the upper right corner of the page.
So when you’re designing your Shopify cart page, start by not disturbing this habit of theirs. Working against muscle memory will only make you lose sales!
- Personalized recommendations and upselling opportunities
When you're designing the look and feel of your health and wellness store, it's important to keep in mind that your customers are looking for ways to make their lives better. They want to know what products will help them reach their goals. And they want to be able to easily find those products without having to search all over the place.
A good design strategy here is to recommend related products to customers when they add an item to their cart.
Here’s an example from SugarBear.
High or ambiguous shipping costs are still one of the biggest reasons for cart abandonment. That’s why you should tackle this aspect in your Shopify cart page design by highlighting it clearly - even if it is free.
You can do this by including an announcement bar that sets the expectation for the shipping costs. If your shipping depends on order location, clearly add a progress bar that indicates the cost will be calculated in the next step.
4. Make sure your main CTA stands out
When a buyer reaches the shopping cart page, they should be presented with two clear call-to-actions: “continue shopping” and “checkout”.
Place these two CTAs on clickable buttons to allow them to be distinct from the rest of the page elements. In addition, also make sure these are colored buttons so that they stand out from the background.
5. Allow easy edit of cart items
Imagine having added different variants of the same product to cart. But when you’re finally making the purchase, you may want to alter the quantities of some, or maybe even remove a few products.
You need to make this as easy as possible so that the buyer doesn’t go from a purchase-ready state to frustration.
One way to do this is to offer a text box next to the product line item. Here you can mention the current quantity, but also offer the ability to click and type in the quantity they want to buy.
Similarly, you can offer + and - buttons around the quantity. That way the buyer can simply click on them to increase or decrease a quantity. Make these buttons easy to click - remember, whitespace is important here and you need to account for fat fingers too!
Apart from increasing and decreasing, you should also give your shoppers the ability to remove items from the cart or save them for later. While we know this isn’t your ideal goal because you want to make a sale, it does impact how well or not your cart page design converts.
Add this ability as a secondary call to action by keeping them in text instead of buttons.
6. Include trust seals and reassuring elements
At the stage of making a purchase, pre-purchase anxiety might result in being worried about transacting online.
This is where trust seals and social proof come in. Include logos of ‘secured by’ certificates on the cart and checkout pages. It is reassuring for the buyer!
Alternatively, you can also include a few media mentions of your brand and customer reviews. As consumers, we’re 80% more likely to trust recommendations coming from those in our network or those we look up to.
Want to Design a High-Converting Health and Wellness Store? We’ve Got You!
Setting up a high-converting health and wellness store design can get tricky. To build and design an impressive store, you need to work with Shopify design experts who understand what you are looking for and have industry knowledge of the changing trends and consumer preferences.
Also read: Why Your Shopify Store Design Is Important to Increase Conversion Rates
We help you bring your ideas to life with Shopify web design, development, marketing, and support services from experts.
Our team of Shopify experts works with Shopify merchants like you to design a store that reflects the personality of your brand and caters to the functionalities you require. Whether you want to revamp your existing design or build a new one from scratch, we will help you create a positive shopping experience on your Shopify store design.
Reach out to us at info@xgentech.net and we’ll help you set up your Shopify store design and implement these health and wellness website tips to get more conversions.
We're working with some leading Shopify and Shopify Plus brands to help them design a great online experience for their customers. If you are a health and wellness brand looking for more design inspiration, do explore these brands:
Learn more about our Shopify experts for health and wellness brands here.
