Skip to content

13 Ecommerce Website Design Tips for Better Conversions and More Sales

Some links on The Justifiable are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Read full disclaimer.

The best ecommerce website design tips for better conversions are not about making your store look more impressive. They are about removing the small moments of uncertainty, effort, and frustration that stop shoppers from buying.

A visitor may like your products and still leave because navigation feels confusing, product information is incomplete, pages load slowly, or checkout asks for too much.

This guide shows you how to design the entire shopping journey around easier decisions. You will learn 13 practical ways to improve discovery, product evaluation, trust, checkout usability, mobile performance, measurement, and long-term conversion growth.

Build Your Store Around the Customer’s Buying Journey

Before adjusting colors, buttons, or page layouts, understand how shoppers actually move through your store. Strong ecommerce design connects discovery, evaluation, purchase, and post-click confidence rather than optimizing individual pages in isolation.

Tip 1: Create a Clear Visual Hierarchy on Every Important Page

Visual hierarchy determines what shoppers notice first, what they understand next, and where they are likely to click. When every banner, badge, menu item, promotion, and button competes for attention, customers have to work harder to decide what matters.

Start by choosing one primary objective for each important page. A homepage may need to guide visitors toward major product categories. A category page should make products easy to compare. A product page should help shoppers decide whether an item fits their needs. The cart should move qualified buyers toward checkout.

Design around that objective.

Your primary headline should communicate the page’s purpose quickly. Supporting copy should answer the next obvious question. The most important call to action should have more visual weight than secondary actions. Less important information can sit farther down the page or behind expandable sections.

Imagine a product page with four equally prominent buttons: Add to Cart, Add to Wishlist, Compare, and Share. The shopper has to interpret four choices. Giving Add to Cart visual priority while presenting the others more quietly reduces unnecessary decision-making.

Whitespace also matters. It separates ideas and gives important elements room to stand out. You do not need to fill every available area with another offer.

I recommend treating attention as a limited resource. Every design element that demands attention should earn its place by helping the shopper understand, evaluate, or buy.

A useful test is to blur or squint at a screenshot of your page. If you cannot immediately identify the headline, key product information, and primary action, your hierarchy probably needs work.

Tip 2: Make Navigation Match How Customers Shop

Store owners often organize navigation around their internal product catalog. Customers rarely think that way. They arrive with goals such as finding a gift, solving a problem, replacing an item, shopping within a budget, or comparing a specific product type.

Your navigation should reflect those mental models.

Keep top-level categories understandable without requiring industry knowledge. A visitor should be able to predict what will appear after clicking a menu item. Avoid clever category names when a familiar label would communicate the same meaning more quickly.

Large inventories may benefit from several navigation paths. You might let shoppers browse by product category, use case, audience, collection, or another attribute that genuinely influences buying decisions. However, more navigation is not automatically better. Prioritize paths that correspond with real customer behavior.

Search deserves equal attention. Place the search field or icon where users expect it, especially if your catalog contains many SKUs. Search should tolerate common spelling variations and return useful results rather than producing a dead end whenever wording differs from your product titles.

On mobile, test navigation with a thumb rather than reviewing it only in a desktop browser. Menu items need comfortable tap areas, nested menus should remain understandable, and closing or returning to a previous level should be obvious.

The practical goal is simple: shoppers should spend their mental energy choosing products, not figuring out your website.

Design Product Discovery for Faster Decisions

Once visitors can navigate the store, the next challenge is helping them narrow a large catalog into a manageable set of choices. Category pages, filters, product cards, and search results directly influence whether shoppers continue exploring.

Tip 3: Make Category Pages Easy to Scan and Compare

A product listing page should help shoppers answer three questions quickly: What is available, how are these products different, and which ones deserve a closer look?

Start with product cards.

Each card should contain the information necessary for a first-stage comparison without becoming cluttered. That usually means a clear image, product name, price, relevant variant or availability information, and one or two decision-making details appropriate to the category.

Those details depend on what you sell. A furniture store might show dimensions or material. A supplement store might emphasize quantity and format. A clothing store may show available colors. A computer retailer may surface processor, storage, or screen size.

Consistency matters. If one product card displays prices differently from another or image crops vary dramatically, comparison becomes slower.

Filters should reflect attributes customers genuinely use to eliminate unsuitable products. Common options include:

  • Price: Useful when customers have defined budgets.
  • Size or fit: Essential where physical compatibility matters.
  • Color or style: Helpful for visually driven categories.
  • Availability: Important when customers need something immediately.
  • Rating: Useful when social proof plays a major role.
  • Technical features: Valuable when specifications determine suitability.

Avoid adding filters simply because the underlying database contains the attribute. A filter is useful only when shoppers understand it and use it to make a choice.

Show applied filters clearly and make individual filters easy to remove. On mobile, the filter interface should not trap users inside a complicated overlay.

A strong category page shortens the path from “I need something” to “this might be the right product.”

Tip 4: Use Images and Product Media to Reduce Uncertainty

Online shoppers cannot pick up a product, turn it around, test its texture, or judge its scale in person. Your visual content needs to replace as much of that missing physical information as possible.

Start with sharp product photography that shows the item from useful angles. The first image should make the product immediately recognizable. Additional images can answer questions about details, scale, materials, packaging, fit, or real-world use.

ALSO READ:  Ecommerce Business Beginner Guide: Build Your Store Step By Step

Zoom functionality is particularly important for products where craftsmanship, texture, labels, components, or small details affect the decision. For fashion, displaying products on people can help shoppers understand proportions. For furniture, an environmental image can communicate scale better than an isolated studio image.

Video can be helpful when movement, setup, transformation, sound, or interaction is difficult to communicate through still images. A short demonstration may answer questions that would otherwise require several paragraphs of text.

Do not let media richness destroy performance. Compress images appropriately, serve dimensions suitable for the visitor’s device, and avoid loading every heavy asset before the shopper needs it.

The gallery itself should also be predictable. Thumbnails, swiping, zoom controls, and video indicators should behave in familiar ways. A beautifully photographed product can still create friction if the shopper cannot easily move between images.

Product visuals should answer buying questions, not simply decorate the page. Before adding an image, ask what uncertainty it removes. That question usually produces a more useful gallery than asking whether the page looks premium.

Turn Product Pages Into Confident Buying Decisions

The product page is where interest becomes evaluation. Your design needs to provide enough information to support the purchase while keeping the next action obvious and accessible.

Tip 5: Put the Most Important Buying Information Near the Main CTA

A shopper should not have to search several sections of the page to understand the basic transaction.

Near the product title and primary Add to Cart button, make the information that affects immediate purchase decisions easy to find. Depending on the product, that may include price, selected variant, availability, expected shipping information, quantity, key benefits, ratings, or return terms.

The goal is not to place every specification above the fold. It is to answer the questions customers usually ask immediately before deciding whether to continue.

For example, imagine someone buying running shoes. They may need to know the price, available size, color, whether the item is in stock, and the return policy before clicking Add to Cart. A technical explanation of the cushioning material can appear farther down the page.

Write call-to-action labels clearly. “Add to Cart” is generally easier to understand than a creative alternative that makes the shopper interpret what the button does.

Variants need special care. Make selected options visually obvious, disable unavailable combinations where appropriate, and do not allow shoppers to accidentally add an undesired default variation.

If selecting a required option changes price or availability, update that information immediately rather than surprising the customer later.

Sticky Add to Cart controls can help on long mobile product pages, but keep them compact. They should preserve convenient access to the purchase action without covering content or becoming an intrusive floating advertisement.

Good product-page design keeps the transaction understandable while shoppers continue learning.

Tip 6: Write Product Information Around Questions and Objections

Product descriptions convert more effectively when they support decision-making instead of repeating specifications that already appear elsewhere.

Start with the buyer’s main problem or goal. Explain what the product does, who it suits, and what makes the relevant features valuable. Then provide concrete specifications for customers who need detailed confirmation.

Suppose you sell a carry-on suitcase. “38-liter capacity” is a specification. Explaining that the interior can accommodate several days of clothing provides context. The best product content usually combines both.

Organize longer information so shoppers can scan without losing access to detail. Useful structures may include short benefit sections, specification tables, size guides, expandable information, care instructions, compatibility notes, shipping details, and returns information.

Do not hide important limitations. If an accessory only works with certain models, say so prominently. If sizing tends to differ from a familiar standard, explain it before purchase. Conversion optimization should increase the number of suitable customers who buy, not persuade unsuitable customers into transactions they later regret.

This approach can also reduce support requests and returns because expectations are clearer before checkout.

When reviewing a page, collect the questions customers repeatedly ask your support team. If buyers frequently ask about dimensions, materials, compatibility, delivery, or installation, your product page probably does not answer those questions clearly enough.

The highest-converting description is not necessarily the longest. It is the one that gives the right shopper enough confidence to make an informed decision.

Build Trust Without Overloading the Design

Customers make risk calculations while shopping online. They want evidence that the store is legitimate, the product will match expectations, their payment will be handled properly, and problems will be resolved fairly.

Tip 7: Place Social Proof Where Shoppers Need Reassurance

Reviews are most useful when they reduce uncertainty during a real purchase decision. That means placement and quality matter more than simply displaying a large review count.

Near the product title, a visible rating can provide a quick confidence signal. Farther down the page, detailed reviews can help customers evaluate specific concerns such as fit, durability, quality, setup, or value.

If your review system supports filtering, make common themes easy to explore. A shopper deciding between sizes may care more about fit-related reviews than the overall star average.

Photo and video reviews can be particularly useful for products where real-world appearance matters. Platforms such as Judge.me can help ecommerce stores collect and display customer reviews, but the design principle remains the same regardless of the software: social proof should answer buyer questions rather than becoming decorative clutter.

Avoid surrounding the Add to Cart button with an excessive number of trust badges, customer quotes, counters, guarantees, and icons. A crowded trust area can make a legitimate store look less confident rather than more trustworthy.

Be careful with unsupported urgency or scarcity signals as well. If inventory is genuinely limited, accurate availability information helps shoppers make a decision. Artificial countdowns and permanently “ending” promotions can weaken credibility.

Trust is strongest when the shopper finds clear evidence exactly where doubt appears. More badges cannot compensate for missing information or confusing policies.

Prioritize authentic reviews, consistent product information, recognizable payment experiences, accessible support details, and transparent policies. Together, they create a stronger confidence system than any single trust element.

Tip 8: Make Shipping, Returns, and Total Costs Easy to Find

Pricing uncertainty creates unnecessary hesitation.

If customers cannot determine whether shipping costs money, when an order is likely to arrive, or whether an unsuitable purchase can be returned, many will postpone the decision until checkout. Some will leave instead.

Bring decision-relevant information forward.

You do not necessarily need exact taxes or delivery costs on every product page if they depend on destination. But you can explain shipping thresholds, show estimated delivery ranges where appropriate, link clearly to return terms, and provide cost estimates before the final payment stage whenever possible.

The cart is an especially important location for transparency. Customers should understand item prices, discounts, quantities, estimated shipping where available, and the expected order total without guessing which additional charges will appear later.

Current ecommerce usability research continues to identify unexpected costs as a major source of checkout abandonment, which makes this more than a copywriting detail. It is a core design issue.

Return information deserves similar visibility. A customer buying clothing, expensive electronics, furniture, gifts, or another uncertainty-heavy product may actively consider the return process before purchasing.

Write policies in plain language. A short message such as “30-day returns; customer pays return shipping” communicates more than a vague “easy returns” badge.

ALSO READ:  How To Start Ecommerce Accounting Without Feeling Overwhelmed

If important conditions exist, surface them before purchase rather than burying them inside lengthy legal text. Transparent stores may occasionally discourage a poorly matched purchase, but they also create clearer expectations for the customers who proceed.

Design Mobile Experiences First, Not as Smaller Desktop Pages

Mobile ecommerce requires more than responsive resizing. Smaller screens, touch input, variable connections, and interrupted browsing change how people scan, compare, type, and complete purchases.

Tip 9: Design Important Actions for Thumbs and Small Screens

Open your store on a real phone and try to complete a purchase using one hand. Problems that look minor on a desktop monitor become obvious quickly.

Touch targets should have enough space to avoid accidental taps. Important buttons should not sit tightly beside competing controls. Text needs to remain readable without zooming, and inputs should use appropriate mobile keyboards when possible.

Consider what happens when a product page becomes long. Customers may scroll through images, descriptions, reviews, sizing details, and FAQs before deciding. Making the purchase action conveniently reachable can reduce unnecessary scrolling, but any sticky controls should remain unobtrusive.

Product galleries need mobile-specific attention too. Swiping should behave naturally, images should fit the viewport, and controls should not interfere with scrolling.

Forms should minimize typing. Browser autofill, sensible defaults, address lookup where supported, and appropriately configured field types can make a substantial difference during checkout.

Avoid desktop interactions that depend on hovering. Mobile users cannot hover over a product card to discover an important action or specification.

Menus should also remain shallow enough to navigate comfortably. Deep layers of tiny expandable items create both comprehension and touch problems.

A practical mobile review should include several common tasks:

  • Find a specific product through navigation.
  • Search for an item.
  • Apply and remove filters.
  • Select a product variant.
  • Add an item to the cart.
  • Change cart quantity.
  • Complete checkout without zooming.

If any step feels tedious on your own phone, assume it will feel worse to someone who has less patience and familiarity with the store.

Tip 10: Improve Speed Without Sacrificing the Shopping Experience

A visually polished store can still feel poorly designed when users spend too much time waiting for it.

Images, videos, third-party apps, tracking scripts, personalization systems, review widgets, fonts, pop-ups, and page builders can gradually make ecommerce pages heavy. Because each addition may seem small by itself, performance problems often accumulate without a clear moment when the site suddenly became slow.

Measure before making assumptions. Google’s current Core Web Vitals guidance treats a Largest Contentful Paint of 2.5 seconds or less, Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less, and Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less as “good” thresholds when evaluated appropriately with field data.

Do not treat those numbers as a design scorecard to chase blindly. Use them to identify experiences that may feel slow, unresponsive, or unstable to real visitors.

Common improvements include properly sizing and compressing images, reducing unnecessary JavaScript, lazy-loading noncritical media, limiting third-party scripts, avoiding oversized video assets, and preventing layout shifts caused by elements loading without reserved space.

On stores using WooCommerce, performance can be influenced by hosting, theme quality, plugins, image handling, caching, and database behavior. On hosted platforms such as Shopify, themes and installed apps can still add substantial front-end weight.

Review performance after installing new functionality rather than assuming an app is harmless because installation was easy.

The right balance is not a bare website with no useful features. Keep features that help shoppers decide or buy, then remove the technical weight that adds little measurable value.

Reduce Friction in the Cart and Checkout

A shopper who reaches the cart has already invested time in your store. Checkout design should protect that momentum rather than introducing new obstacles, surprises, or unnecessary decisions.

Tip 11: Make the Cart a Clear Decision Page

Customers use carts for more than immediately paying. They may review items, compare alternatives, change quantities, estimate costs, or temporarily hold products while making a final decision.

Design the cart to support those behaviors.

Show recognizable product thumbnails, names, selected variants, quantities, individual prices, discounts, and totals clearly. Customers should be able to update quantities or remove products without wondering whether the change worked.

If inventory or pricing changes, communicate the update beside the affected item rather than showing a generic error far away.

Shipping information should appear as early as reasonably possible. If you offer free shipping above a threshold, stating the amount remaining can be helpful when accurate. Do not create pressure through fabricated urgency.

Keep the primary checkout button visually dominant. Secondary actions such as continuing to shop can remain available without competing equally for attention.

Upsells require restraint. A complementary recommendation can create value when the relationship is obvious, such as replacement filters for an appliance. Filling the cart with carousels, bundles, pop-ups, and unrelated offers can interrupt someone who was already ready to buy.

For stores offering options such as Afterpay or Klarna, make financing or installment information understandable before the shopper commits. Costs, conditions, and the next action should not be ambiguous.

The cart has one essential job: let customers verify what they are buying and proceed with confidence. Any element that makes that verification harder deserves scrutiny.

Tip 12: Remove Unnecessary Checkout Work

Checkout optimization often comes down to eliminating work that does not need to exist.

Start with account creation. For most consumer stores, forcing someone to register before buying introduces a barrier at the worst possible moment. Offer a clear guest checkout route when your platform and business requirements allow it. Account creation can be offered afterward, when the transaction has already succeeded.

Review every form field and ask why you need the information. If the answer is “because we have always collected it,” that is not enough. Remove optional information from the primary path or mark it clearly as optional.

Use browser autofill compatibility, helpful validation, and field formats that reduce errors. When someone enters an invalid value, explain the exact problem close to the relevant field. Do not erase previously completed information after an error.

Payment choices should be easy to understand without turning the interface into a wall of logos. Provide the options that matter to your customers and market, then display them in an orderly hierarchy.

Button labels should describe what happens next. “Continue to Payment,” “Review Order,” and “Place Order” are clearer than a repeated series of generic “Next” buttons.

Also test failure states. What happens when a card is declined? What happens if the session times out? What if an item becomes unavailable between cart and payment? A checkout is only as usable as its recovery path.

The best checkout often feels uneventful. Customers know the total, understand where they are, enter only necessary information, correct errors easily, and complete the purchase without learning how your system works.

Measure Whether Your Design Changes Actually Increase Conversions

Ecommerce design decisions should eventually face real customer behavior. A change that appears cleaner or more modern is not necessarily a change that improves purchases, revenue, or customer experience.

Tip 13: Build a Continuous Conversion Optimization Process

Begin with a conversion funnel rather than one sitewide conversion rate.

Track meaningful stages such as product views, add-to-cart actions, cart visits, checkout starts, payment progression, and completed purchases. The point is to identify where users stop advancing.

Google Analytics 4 can support funnel and ecommerce measurement when implemented correctly. Behavioral tools such as Microsoft Clarity or Hotjar can add session-level context through features such as recordings and heatmaps, helping you investigate what visitors appear to struggle with.

ALSO READ:  Best Ecommerce Platform for Beginners: 7 Easy Picks to Launch Fast

Quantitative and behavioral data answer different questions. Analytics may tell you that mobile visitors abandon a particular step at an unusual rate. Session recordings may reveal repeated tapping, confusing validation, or an obscured button that provides a plausible explanation.

Do not change five major elements simultaneously unless you are performing a necessary redesign and accept that attribution will be difficult. Smaller, prioritized experiments make it easier to learn.

A simple optimization process looks like this:

  1. Identify: Find the highest-impact friction point using funnel data, customer feedback, support issues, and usability observation.
  2. Diagnose: Determine why customers may be struggling rather than immediately redesigning.
  3. Prioritize: Estimate potential impact, confidence, and implementation effort.
  4. Change: Implement one coherent solution to the underlying problem.
  5. Measure: Compare behavior across an appropriate period or controlled experiment.
  6. Document: Record what changed, what happened, and what you learned.
  7. Repeat: Move to the next important source of friction.

The aim is not permanent redesign. It is an increasingly well-understood shopping experience.

Avoid Design Mistakes That Quietly Cost Sales

Many conversion problems are not dramatic enough to look broken. The website still functions, products still sell, and analytics still report revenue. The loss occurs through hundreds of small moments when shopping becomes harder than necessary.

Watch for Competing Calls to Action

A common mistake is assuming that more calls to action create more opportunities for conversion.

A homepage may ask visitors to shop a sale, join an email list, claim a discount, watch a video, open a chat, read the brand story, browse new arrivals, and follow social accounts before they have taken their first meaningful shopping action.

Each option can make sense individually. Together, they create competition.

Evaluate calls to action according to the visitor’s current stage. A product-page visitor actively evaluating an item should see buying information and purchase actions prioritized over newsletter promotion. A checkout visitor should not be distracted by links that send them into unrelated areas of the store.

Pop-ups deserve particular care on mobile. An email capture overlay that covers product information shortly after arrival may generate sign-ups while simultaneously hurting product discovery. Measure both outcomes rather than evaluating the pop-up only by its subscription conversion rate.

The same principle applies to sticky bars, chat launchers, accessibility controls, loyalty widgets, and promotional tabs. Several floating elements can overlap one another or consume a significant portion of a small screen.

List every persistent interface element on mobile and ask what happens when they appear at the same time.

Design hierarchy means making choices. If purchasing is the most valuable next action, let the rest of the interface support that action rather than compete with it.

Stop Copying Competitors Without Understanding the Context

Competitive research is useful. Blind imitation is not.

Another store may use a large hero video, unusual navigation, one-page checkout, sticky Add to Cart bar, aggressive product recommendations, or minimalist product descriptions. You can observe the pattern, but you do not know its conversion data, customer demographics, traffic sources, average order value, technical limitations, or internal testing history.

Even genuinely successful patterns may not transfer directly between businesses.

A repeat-purchase skincare brand serving existing customers has different design needs from a store selling expensive products customers research for several weeks. A catalog containing 20 products needs a different discovery experience from one containing 20,000.

Instead of asking, “What is this competitor doing?” ask:

  • Customer problem: What shopper difficulty is this design attempting to solve?
  • Context: Do our customers face the same difficulty?
  • Trade-off: What does the pattern make easier, and what might it make harder?
  • Evidence: Do our analytics, support conversations, or user observations indicate the problem exists?
  • Measurement: How would we know whether implementing the change worked?

This framework turns competitor browsing into useful research rather than design imitation.

You can also study stores outside your direct niche. Sometimes a business with a similar buying process provides more relevant lessons than a direct competitor selling similar products.

Borrow principles, not appearances. The goal is to create an experience suited to your customers, catalog, positioning, and purchasing journey.

Scale Ecommerce Design Without Losing Consistency

As a store grows, new collections, landing pages, campaigns, apps, and team members can gradually fragment the customer experience. Scaling effectively requires repeatable design rules and a disciplined way to decide which improvements deserve attention.

Create a Reusable Ecommerce Design System

You do not need an enterprise design department to benefit from a simple design system.

Start documenting the components your store uses repeatedly: buttons, product cards, form inputs, headings, spacing, promotional banners, review modules, pricing displays, alerts, badges, navigation patterns, and mobile behaviors.

Define when each component should be used and which variations are acceptable.

This makes future design work faster because teams stop reinventing basic interface decisions. It also reduces inconsistencies such as one page using “Add to Bag,” another using “Buy Now,” and another using “Add to Cart” for the same action.

Consistency improves usability because customers learn how the interface behaves. If every primary button looks and works similarly, the shopper does not have to reinterpret the design on each new page.

Your system should remain flexible. A luxury furniture store and a high-volume accessories store may need different information densities and merchandising patterns. The point is not to force every page into an identical template; it is to create reusable foundations.

When adding a new component, ask whether an existing one can solve the problem first. This is especially important when apps introduce their own typography, button shapes, overlays, and spacing conventions.

Audit the system periodically using real storefront pages, not a component library in isolation. Components that appear elegant in a design file may behave differently beside live product data, long names, sale prices, translations, customer reviews, or variable image ratios.

Scale should make your store more coherent, not progressively harder to control.

Prioritize Improvements by Revenue Impact and Customer Friction

You will probably find more potential improvements than your team can implement at once.

Prioritize them systematically.

Start with problems affecting high-intent pages and large numbers of visitors. A confusing payment error affecting 8% of checkouts normally deserves attention before a cosmetic homepage issue affecting a small campaign section.

You can use a simple impact-confidence-effort framework:

Combine analytics with customer evidence. Support tickets, returns, search queries, abandoned checkout behavior, usability sessions, and customer surveys may expose friction that dashboard metrics cannot explain by themselves.

Do not assume conversion rate is the only outcome worth watching. A change could increase immediate orders while creating more returns, lower average order value, reduce profitability, or generate additional support demand.

Measure the business outcome that corresponds with the design decision.

As traffic and order volume grow, experimentation becomes more valuable because small percentage improvements can affect more transactions. But the fundamental method does not change: identify real friction, understand the cause, implement the smallest sensible improvement, and measure what happens.

That discipline prevents your optimization roadmap from becoming a collection of fashionable redesign ideas.

Turn Better Ecommerce Design Into More Confident Purchases

The most effective ecommerce website design tips for better conversions share one principle: make buying easier to understand.

Start with the fundamentals. Give shoppers clear navigation, useful product comparisons, convincing media, complete product information, transparent costs, and a checkout that asks for as little effort as possible. Then make sure the experience remains fast and comfortable on mobile.

From there, measure the complete funnel instead of redesigning according to intuition alone. Find where customers hesitate, investigate why, and prioritize improvements according to evidence and commercial impact.

You do not need to implement all 13 changes at once. Start with the point where qualified shoppers are currently losing the most momentum. Fix that experience, measure the outcome, document what you learn, and use the evidence to choose your next improvement. That process turns ecommerce design from a visual project into an ongoing system for increasing customer confidence and sales.

Share This:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *