Mobile e-commerce can be termed as the future of ecommerce; however, desktop sites are your digital gold mines. For engaging your consumers or shoppers, improving your product value, and unlock more revenue, you need to master some of the best UX practices.
In eCommerce, UX encompasses a significant role in seeking customers’ engagement from the moment they land on your page until they purchase a product. You must execute various satisfying ways to provide a great user experience. Also, you need to ensure that the users get everything they are looking for in an accessible manner. Try to make their journey as pleasant and rewarding as you can.
Before we explain some of the best UX practices to make your online business a great success, have a look at the significance of UX designs.
Why is UX design important for your eCommerce site?
Do you know that a UX design can make or break your eCommerce site? A great experience can influence your users to purchase, boost confidence in your company, and forge long-lasting relationships with your brands. On the other hand, poor eCommerce user experience can lead to a confused site visit, low conversion rates, dissatisfied customers and resultantly high bounce rate.
So, what to do then? Design any way you like? Absolutely not!
This is primarily because good UX design is focused totally on the customers insight on buying. Your need to eliminate that friction from the user experience and offer a comfortable buying experience.
Don’t feel confused as the UX designing experts have already done the research on how to eliminate that friction and what are the best UX practices. When you integrate outstanding UX design with best practices into your eCommerce site, you can expect to see the result what you aspire for.
Boost sales for your eCommerce business by following these top 10 UX practices mentioned below:
1.Use clear and projecting CTAs (Call to Action)
Calls-to-action is termed as the most essential key to eCommerce success. These will help your users navigate your site effortlessly and highlight all those products on your site which you want your users to discover. So, for that, make sure that your CTA will be good if it:
- Looks clickable and stands out from the rest of the page
- Evidently communicate to the users what happens next and where
- Persuade your users to take action (like ‘shop now’ or ‘add product to cart)
CTAs are the most potent tools but can also be overwhelming; otherwise used too much.
Focus on keeping things simple and streamlined: by paring down the number of CTAs on each site page, you can keep your customers engrossed in finishing the specific task you want to complete at the moment in the user journey.
2.Drop the Idea of Forcing Your Users to Register
Allowing users to checkout as guests, is one of the finest and most trusted UX practices. While forcing the customers to create an account, you may trigger unnecessary friction in the purchasing process. This decreases the chances users will complete their purchase.
According to research, one out of four customers abandon a purchase if they’re forced to register with any eCommerce site.
3. Switch to More Mobile-Friendly designs to Make it Make User-Friendly
The count of mobile users is higher than the number of desktop users. They tend to view your eCommerce sites differently than desktop users. Mobile users usually look for something peculiar and quick on their phones.
So, the UX must be focused on shortening and streamlining the mobile user’s journey as much as possible. Adopting some of the things below, you will find a desirable result.
- Click-to-scroll buttons
- Pinch-and-zoom features
- Pop-ups adapted to the mobile experience
- Click-to-call buttons
4.Make It Accessible Without Hassles
Good UX design is proposed to be suitable for everyone. Think of the 8% of men who are colourblind; though that is a small percentage of the population, it equals millions of men. By meeting easy accessibility standards, any eCommerce site holder can increase the number of visitors who can interact with your product or site.
Ultimately, it’s about empathizing with your audience. Check its level of accessibility with some of the evaluation tools available while you design your site. Or seeking experts’ advice is also a feasible option.
You’ll be offered a complete list of changes to improve your accessibility.
5.Use High-Quality Product Images & Strong Descriptions
One difficulty that eCommerce sites’ UX designers always faces is bridging the gap between the online and real-world shopping experience until virtual reality takes off.
A brick-and-mortar store gives an objective view and tries options. Users like to see and touch products. A pretty good feel of the product a customer is about to buy makes them convinced.
However, the online shopping experience lacks this feature to offer. That’s where excellent and original photos with public reviews and ratings help.
The product photos at your eCommerce website should be of high quality (think high-resolution images within good lighting).
Put as many different product elements as possible with shots from different angles. Close-up images of its texture and all possible measures to generate a natural feel.
Photos can only provide essential information. Your customer would be more interested in exploring more about it and need straightforward, well-written product descriptions. These will convince them that your product is the right fit.
6. Use Precise Navigation Tools
Straightforward and consistent navigation from page to page can make a huge difference in how people experience your site. A sticky header is essential, which is a navigation bar that stays in the same place at the top of the screen from page to page.
As there is a massive count of buyers with behaviours and expectations from over a decade of using internet products, so they need things accordingly. Your user will expect and love to find a search bar at the top of the page, organized drop-down menus leading to landing pages, and a log-in button.
Similarly, at the bottom of your page, users expect some brief company information, contact info, and links to the career pages.
7. Keep colour under control and make it simple
White space is what the human brain likes the most on a website as it helps brains better process information and cuts intellectual load. Though it may be enticing to create complex designs with fancy animations, ultimately, it’s best to keep UX design simple, easy to understand, and quick. It is better to avoid coloured backgrounds or messy text boxes.
Keeping the text minimal, simple, and detailed images is beneficial for all. Consider creating detailed mock-ups to boil your webpages or applications down to the essential design fundamentals in the early stages of design.
8. Don’t Forget To Present Customer Support
All these processes may help you provide a built-up eCommerce user experience that your customers will love. But providing an excellent customer support experience for the time when problems will arise really boosts your site’s UX.
Live chat has the highest user satisfaction rates regarding eCommerce customer support. Building a live chat support feature can be a good investment for your eCommerce UX. Make your customer support contact information a projecting part on your homepage. Also, present an in-depth and easy-to-find FAQ section to offer your users the essential information they might be looking for.
9.Streamline Your Checkout Process
An awkward lengthy checkout process is a reason users abandon online buying. Users tend to skip shopping if the checkout process takes a very long time or they cannot disclose important information.
But don’t worry! Luckily, there are loads of methods you can accept to optimize the checkout process:
- Use clear progress pointers (like numbered steps or stages) during your checkout flow so that users know the length of the process.
- Use short forms that undeniably indicate optional vs essential information.
- Enclose the checkout process and remove distractions to keep users focused on finishing their purchase.
- Provide clear information about shipping costs open (this is a big one—over 70 per cent of users said they leave the checkout process when they encounter hidden charges like shipping fees.)
The ‘checkout as guest’ is a superbly effective way to boost eCommerce conversions.
10.Hug the User Experience Personalization
Personalization is always beneficial, and why not! Some of the most recognizable eCommerce giants have functioned to personalize the eCommerce user experience in super effective ways. It includes tracking the customers’ preferences and observing their purchase histories to provide a list of ‘recommended products’ or to demonstrate the items that ‘customers also bought.
These personalization features help users find their desired product quickly and hassle-free. And they can convince customers to accomplish their purchase.
Designing trends fluctuate nudge, but best practices are forever. When you put the user at the frontrunner of your design, you’ll create a product that your user wants to use.
If you find your user satisfaction declining, go back to these UX best practices and ensure you’re getting the basics right before digging into more advanced techniques.