When it comes to an online website, nearly 88% of online customers agree that they hit the exit button right away if the site has a poor user navigation (this perhaps comes right before the lack of high quality commercial photography); they also accept not returning to the website ever again!
This is where user experience (UX) optimisation comes into play – it can literally retain or repel the majority of your online shoppers.
That said, in this article, we’ll be walking you through our best 4 UX practices to help your business improve its sales pipeline while also getting an edge in the eCommerce race.
Before that, let’s take a look at…
Why UX Optimisation Is Crucial for Your Online Business?
By the end of 2021, it is expected that the number of digital buyers across the globe would reach up to 2.14 billion.
Put simply, with the number of online shoppers increasing by the day, it’s become essential for you to offer each one of them a seamless user experience on your eCommerce website. What’s more, it’s your UX that can make or break the success of your online business.
If you’re still not convinced, here are the top 3 reasons why UX optimisation is so important:
- Better User Experience = Increase in Conversion Rates and Sales
Offering an intricate shopping experience like compulsory registration or lengthy checkout processes can shoo your potential shoppers away. This in turn will only result in higher cart abandonment and bounce rates.
Having said that, creating a simple and enjoyable online experience can make your shoppers stay for a longer time, explore more of your products and services, and finally push them to make a purchase – resulting in higher sales volume and increased conversion rates.
- Better User Experience = Increase in Revenue and ROI
Because of the above mentioned benefit provided by UX optimisation, investing in the same can surely improve your ROI.
Moreover, since profitability is one of the crucial factors influencing your online business’ success, the higher is your sales volume the higher is your brand’s revenue.
- Better User Experience = Increase in Customer Loyalty
A better user experience is what helps generate higher customer satisfaction, which is the most crucial step towards increasing your customer loyalty.
After all, loyal customers are of utmost importance than new leads, since the latter usually turns out to be more expensive to acquire when compared to the former one.
Now that you’ve understood the key benefits of UX optimisation, let’s take a look at…
The 3 Key Elements That Help Improve Your Site’s User Experience
Your online shoppers give the same amount of value to the shopping experience offered by your website as they give to the accessibility and variety of your products.
That said, simply having a visually appealing website won’t do the job of improving your overall user experience. In fact, when it comes to UX of your eCommerce website, it usually boils down to the following three important elements:
- Seamless Navigation
It’s extremely crucial for your eCommerce website to offer a logical yet seamless navigational experience to your online visitors.
To do that, you can include product categories and subcategories on the site to make it easier and faster for your customers to browse through the items they’re looking for.
You could also add breadcrumbs to those category pages to ensure your shoppers can easily click through the products and return within a flash.
- Easy and Quick Communication
A clear and simple communication – throughout your terms and conditions page, product descriptions, and amongst your support staff and buyers – is crucial to ensure your customers understand where and how to search a particular product.
In simple words, easy to understand communication makes for an essential part of your exceptional user experience.
- Simple Checkout and Hassle Free Transaction
An ideal checkout system needs to have only 1 or 2 click processes, if possible.
You need to think from your customers’ perspective and accordingly make changes to reduce the number of clicks throughout their buying journey. This can be done by simply asking them to provide vital data like name, billing and shipping address.
Along with these, the other elements you need to consider include:
- Catchy Web Copy
- Detailed Product Description
- High Quality Product Images
- Faster Load Time
- Multiple Delivery and Payment Options
- Product Filtering and Sorting Options
- Flexible Refund/Return Policies
Our Top 5 Tips to Optimise Your Site’s UX
Optimising the user experience of your eCommerce website might seem like an intricate process, thanks to the different steps that it includes.
However, there are various ways to make the process easier and that’s what we’ll be sharing with you. Go through these tips and start implementing them as soon as possible to offer a user friendly experience to your online shoppers.
- Make the Checkout Process Easier
In order to reduce the number of cart abandonment, it’s essential to offer a simple and hassle free checkout process to the customers.
Having said that, the main issue arises with – how you could try not to pack every important step on one screen and further turn the user experience upside down.
Here’s what you could do:
- Simply the checkout process by saving your existing shoppers login credentials in order to ensure they don’t need to add their personal information every time they want to place an order.
- Add Google and Facebook integration to the checkout process so that your online shoppers can log in using their existing credentials.
- Offer a “guest checkout” option for customers who aren’t comfortable sharing their personal details.
- Optimise Your Product Pages
There are many factors on your website, apart from the checkout process, that can influence your users’ buying decision – one of them is the layout of your product pages.
When it comes to your product pages, it’s essential to present every item that’s there in the best way possible while also offering the necessary information.
In doing so, you can make sure that all your customers are provided with the right information about your product and that they know what they’re spending their money on.
What’s more, you also need to consider elements like the size, colour and other parameters of your products when configuring your pages.
Here are some of the core elements you can’t miss out on:
- Add High Quality Product Images
No matter what industry you belong to – be it beauty, books or fashion – it’s important to ensure that your eCommerce website has reliant and visually appealing product photos.
Since the majority of shoppers base their purchase decisions on the images provided on your website, it’s crucial to make sure they’re of high quality. Here, you could opt for 360 degree product photography as it helps you show your product from every possible angle.
Additionally, don’t forget to add zoom in functions so that your customers can focus on every tiny detail of your product.
- Clearly Communicate Your Products Details
While 360 photography can work wonders in terms of your user experience, it’s equally important to present your products in a detailed way. This means, you need to mention its unique selling point while also telling your customers why your products are better than your competitors.
For that, you could provide them with various information like the features, materials used, production, specifications, etc. of your products.
- Improve the SEO of Your eCommerce Website
Although the majority of online shoppers browse through the categories on your website to find relevant products, there are a few who leverage the search engine for the same.
Put simply, these are the shoppers who are clear about what they’re looking for and are typically checking if you’ve got the product in stock.
This is why the functioning and efficiency of your search engine plays a huge role – it has the power to either offer a positive user experience to your shoppers or to prompt them to leave the site.
To improve the SEO of your site, here’s what you can do:
- Add Product Suggestions
Your search bar needs to offer product suggestions to your customers when they’re typing their query.
This could be based on the products they’ve recently viewed, the same category, products that are on discount or even as per their purchase history.
- Provide Alternate Options on Pages With Zero Results
When your customer lands on a particular product page that has zero results, then it’s your responsibility to offer them an alternate option; make sure the alternative is similar to their product search.
- Offer a Multichannel User Experience
These days, almost every online shopper uses various platforms and devices to shop your products and services. This is why it’s essential to ensure that your eCommerce website is available on every channel by opting for multichannel presence.
This is not only a huge step towards offering convenience to your customers but also an excellent way to improve the overall shopping experience.
Final Takeaway on the Importance of eCommerce User Experience
The extent of the role that user experience plays in your eCommerce website can’t be overstated.
In fact, a high quality eCommerce experience can help you increase your brand reputation and customer loyalty, boost your conversion rate and ROI while also giving an edge in the eCommerce race.
Nonetheless, to offer your online shoppers with exceptional user experience, you need to ensure that you’re providing them with a seamless navigation, facilitating readability and communication, creating a multichannel experience and simplifying the overall checkout process.
