When visiting an eCommerce webpage, a user has two mindsets, either they’re certain about what they’re looking for and they’re going to look for the exact product they want to buy or they’re a little uncertain but still willing to explore their options. In both cases, there’s a user journey that takes place before a purchase of any product. This journey includes a series of tasks usually consisting of price comparison, a variety of products available, reviews on the seller, and the overall user experience from your ecommerce website.
User experience or UX, as it is more generally known in the tech world, is the emotional or psychological effect of your virtual presence on the web. It plays a vital role in determining whether the user journey will be moving towards a purchase from your site or away from it. UXD, user experience design is a term used for web designs that increase the quality of your user’s experience. So, what really enhances your website’s UX and makes it user-friendly? Here are a few dos and don’ts of user experience design for eCommerce websites.
Don’t Go Ahead Without a Proper Business Plan for Your Ecommerce Website
Treat your website as an extension of your business. Go with the same approach you might go for when heading into a business venture offline. Write a detailed business plan for your website. A business plan generally includes your products’ unique selling point, your market analysis, your consumers’ behavior, target, goals and future objectives. It helps to build a website twice as easily because nothing is out of the plan or estimated. With a business plan, you know where you’re going with your digital marketing goals and what elements you have to base your UX on. Like if your audience is young and trendy, your entire website will have a totally different look as to when a site is built for working adults with a more serious and professional tone.
This is where you set the tone, layout, content, and overall appeal of your webpage.
Don’t Underestimate the Power of Images and Video Content
Adding professional, crisp and quality image and video content is always a great idea for any business online but if you’re an eCommerce website, images and video can be twice as effective for your conversion rate. We all can agree about the magical, awe-inspiring effects of product photography, how all those big brands make us trust their products with their shiny advertisements. Professional photos of your products directly generate a desire in visitors, it’s like an introduction to your products, make sure the first impression lasts. Photos are the only way they’re going to get an idea of how good your products look, if you’re a trusted eCommerce website, your products are as good as your photographs.
Besides adding quality to your portfolio, image and video content also prove to be more engaging. You can easily show off your wide range of products in a 30-second video.
Do Make the Layout User-friendly
A user-friendly layout is very important for your website’s overall user experience. You can give your users competitive prices, free and fast shipping, or a wide variety of products but if your webpage is flooded with ads or content, it increases the bounce rate. Make your website easy to explore and search, most visitors may quit if too much content is shown all at once. They may get confused and annoyed. Your web design should promote your featured products instead of overshadowing them. Make it easy to navigate with clear filter and search options, organized content, clear product images, direct payment, and seller information. Many eCommerce websites make the mistake of making their websites too heavy with content right on the first page and focus too much on decorative and unnecessary graphics for aesthetic appeal, this does more harm to a webpage than progress.
The trick is to invite your visitors for exploring with direct search and filter options instead of choking them with all the content right at the start. Feature your best products and keep the page clean and professional. Too much content will increase your webpage’s loading time and require more data which can be a problem for mobile data users.
Do Invest in Professional Services
It is always better to invest a little extra by hiring creative eCommerce designers instead of using templates or cheap solutions for your eCommerce website. Having your website customized is always a better option no matter the nature of your website, for better branding, it is never ok to use cookie-cutter or premade solutions. Many users go through multi-channel user journey before making a purchasing decision. Hiring experienced and creative eCommerce designers will make your webpage compatible with multiple devices. For example, a user might’ve seen your ad on a social media platform on their smartphone, later in the day, while working on their PC they decide to give your website a look and visit from their PC, the webpage should not be lagging or disorganized on either of the devices. Professional service providers include such elements in your web development package.
While customizing, make sure to keep the power of habit in mind. A totally new layout or set of icons may create confusion among visitors. Like how they’re used to look for a little magnifying glass for the search option, using any other icon may result in bad user experience. Make sure you know your customizable elements. There’s innovation in imitation, stick to the basics but still be unique in your own way. Stand out by adding value-creating features in your website that are relevant to your industry like feedbacks, product reviews, multiple currency transactions, live chat with a business representative for product query or complaints, filtered search options and so on.
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