In the world of eCommerce, there are a few key factors you can bank upon to attract and retain your customers. User Experience, or UX as popularly called, is certainly one of them. Even if you are offering unique or world-class products, all your efforts will go in vain if you do not follow the best eCommerce UX practices for your online store.
According to a survey, more than 80% of users are less likely to return to the site with a bad UX. Isn’t this a good enough reason to revamp your eCommerce store so that you offer your customers an amazing UX every time they visit the site?
However, it is difficult to create one best UX solution that suits everyone but there are some key best practices that can help eliminate the frustrating parts for the end users.
So, without further ado, let’s dive in!
From simple navigation to utilizing user-generated content, let us have a look at key UX strategies for your eCommerce site.
Give your users an experience they deserve.
Generally, all we are concerned about is how the homepage should look, how the product details page should be structured but many of us ignore the most crucial aspect of any website, let alone an E-commerce store, and that is the navigation menu.
What’s the point of having the website if a user is not able to find what he/she wishes to purchase? When they can’t find it, they won’t buy it. As simple as that!
An easy-to-use navigation will ensure an excellent user experience. Here’s what you can do to ensure that you have a user-friendly navigation and follow UX best practices for eCommerce.
It is found that most of the time a site’s bounce rate and abandoned cart is due the complications in the checkout process. All your UX efforts pay off when a user adds certain items to the cart. But imagine if he/she leaves the site because of the tedious checkout process or a compulsory registration? Now, that is really heart-breaking.
It’s a bit tricky to eliminate certain steps in the checkout process though. But remember- More the steps between user and payment, higher the cart abandonment rate will be.
A search option is one of the most ignored functionality of the majority of eCommerce websites. Most users prefer to search the product directly using the search bar. But when they cannot find the product, they cannot buy the product.
The biggest thing that we all have learned during the pandemic is to have empathy. There is going to be an immense amount of emphasis on humanity than anything else. Businesses have realized that they are dealing with real people with real emotions. What better time to start offering a personalized experience to let your users know that you care for them?
A personalized user interface can result in a better user experience. The website can be personalized based on user’s browsing behaviour, previous actions, purchase history, demographics and other personal data.
Although web personalization is a bit difficult and time-consuming task but not impossible. With the help of data collection tools that we have today, creating a personalization shopping experience is not that complicated.
Let’s accept the fact that we cannot sell the products to the users online exactly the way they shop in a physical store. And that is, perhaps, the biggest convenient factor over an eCommerce store. Users won’t be able to touch and feel the product before they buy it online.
So, the best way to describe the product is through the well-photographed, high quality and large images. It conveys the value of the product, in a better way.
Sometimes, the most complete product description can still have few doubts in users’ minds. This is when reviews from other customers will help to answer some questions that users may have. It provides more insights about the products.
Almost 3/4th of the user base prefers to see pictures taken by other customers instead of images offered by the website. Trusted reviews can be the deciding factor for users confused between the multiple products.
magine a user has added a product in cart after spending hours on the website and at the time of checkout, he/she gets to know that the product cannot be delivered to his/her locality. Can you imagine the frustration level?
There are various such scenarios that can affect the user experience and eventually the conversion rate. After all, no businesses like to see abandoned carts.
User experience plays a very important role in a website’s performance. It is a widely accepted truth that the user buys the experience, not the products. The shoppers expect a seamless and frictionless shopping experience all the time.
A great UX drives loyalty, increases conversions and encourages customers to share a positive word of mouth about you. Hopefully, these tips will help you make the essential design changes to your website for a great E-commerce experience to your customers.