Without a great user experience, ecommerce websites are doomed to fail. It’s really important to create a website that not only drives traffic, but is easy-to-use and intuitive as well. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself missing out on loads of conversions that could have easily been made. While many companies neglect user experience, you can make sure you don’t make the same mistake by employing the best practices. To get you started, we’ve compiled a helpful guide that will overhaul complex, hard-to-use websites and turn them into something worthy of your customers’ attention.
Defining User Experience
You’ve spent thousands of dollars getting people to your website, but once they are there, they are leaving before they make a purchase. Why? It’s probably because you don’t have a great user experience. User experience, abbreviated as UX, includes the elements on your website that make a customer feel welcome. You want your UX to be simple, engaging, and convincing as you tell the story of your brand and explain why your customer should press that “buy” button. Beyond being simple to use, your UX should be a reflection of your overall vision. If you are struggling to create better UX for your website or app, don’t hesitate to enlist the help of an ecommerce development agency who will implement the best features and ideas for you.
Quick Ways to Improve UX
1. Make a Strong First Impression
If your customers come to your homepage and are immediately confused, you’ve already lost the sale. Instead, they should land on a page that is instantly recognizable as your brand. To get your point across quickly, keep your homepage simple and streamlined with only two or three main colors. You can highlight important details or use one strong image, but don’t overdo the graphics on your homepage.
2. Create a Pop-Up
While pop-ups asking for information can be annoying, they are proven to work because they can’t easily be ignored. The key is to strike a balance where you can get what you want without annoying your customer. As a rule of thumb, stick to one or two pop-ups during a customer’s time on the website. Usually, one at the beginning and one at the end is a safe choice. Offer something in return for their information — a lead magnet or a discount on their purchase are popular options.
3. Speed Up Your Website
No one has time to sit idly for a minute while your website loads. In fact, just a one second delay can result in 11% fewer page views. If your website is lagging, it’s time to do the work in getting it up to speed. Some ways of improving the speed of your website include:
- Upgrading your hosting provider
- Enabling browser caching
- Optimizing images
- Fixing broken URLs
- Minifying website scripts
- Remove unused Plugins if you are using WordPress
- Cut down on redirects
- Use a CNS
4. Clean Up Your Menu Bar
Take twenty minutes to audit the navigation on your website, starting with your menu bar. Are the categories clear and recognizable? Is there a way to make it easier to get from Point A to Point B? Use arrows or bold colors to highlight important things to click on. Make subcategories if necessary.
5. Include a Search Bar
Often, your customer will already know what they are looking for when they land on your website. They don’t need to spend time clicking around and will want to go straight to the product in mind. To do this, a search bar is necessary. If you don’t have one on every page, you should add one. It will save your customer time and energy, leaving them with a more positive experience.
6. Include Reviews
One reason why customers hesitate to purchase a product online is because they haven’t seen it and don’t know if it will really work. There are plenty of products that look amazing and then when you get them, they fall apart or are poor quality. The best way to clear up their worry is to include reviews of previous customers. Of course, you should hope that a majority of the reviews will be positive. A few negatives are okay, but if you have too many, then you might need to rethink your product.
7. Make a Call to Action
Call to actions are a great way of nudging your customer to actually make a purchase. On an ecommerce website, potential CTA’s include phrases like “Add to Cart” and “Check Out” that urge your customer to complete their transaction. To make these CTA phrases stand out, highlight them in a bright color or format them as a button.
8. Add a Chat Bot
For all the quick questions that your customer might have, a chat bot is a great solution. Chat bots are immediately available to answer questions, plus they gather data from every conversation so that you can better understand your customer’s needs overtime.
9. Include Actual Contact Information
Sometimes a chat bot just won’t be able to answer your customer’s question and they’ll need to speak to a real human. If they can’t find your phone or email address, they will likely give up on the product and go elsewhere. Be sure that you include this information if you don’t want to lose potential sales.
10. Use Geo-Targeting
If your customers live around the globe, then installing geo-targeting is a must. This customization will cater your website to each specific part of the world. You can have your website display different languages based on where people are using the site and even put in different offers and information to target their country.
11. Make Purchasing Easy
The final step in your customer’s journey on your website is checking out to complete their purchase. If your checkout process is spread across multiple pages, you are likely going to lose the sale as it’s too much effort for your customer. Make sure that your checkout process is as simple as possible and all on one page. If you can get it down to a single-click purchase, you are doing something right!
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