5 Ecommerce UX Principles for Creating a Successful Website
The market is currently wide open for online retailers. Especially if your website has made the best use of these five UX ecommerce tips that support strong lead conversion and buoyant eCommerce sales.
The time is ripe to grow your eCommerce venture. Due to shifts and changes caused by lockdown, buying online has become both practical and preferable to hundreds of thousands of consumers. Many digital marketing and retail pundits predict that people won’t switch back to traditional buying habits post-pandemic. Which is good news for driving traffic to your eCommerce website.
However, turning those page visitors into completed sales is a whole different story. One that hinges on using the best UX ecommerce for strong lead conversion.
The importance of your UX (User Experience) can never be underestimated. Get it wrong and potential customers click away in an instant. Get it right, and you can grow your online business in a measurable way.
1. Easy navigation
Ecommerce website visitors want to find what they searching for quickly and easily.
It sounds simple enough. For effective UX, website visitors need to find what they want quickly. However, the larger your product portfolio and the more complex your website is, the harder it gets to create intelligent website navigation.
A handy rule of thumb is a 3-click process. Arriving on your website, users should be able to find their potential purchase in no more than three clicks on buttons, tabs and links. When testing navigation on your website, keep in mind that visitors may not start from your home page!
Also, website navigation best practice involves consistency, clarity and relevance. Have you built in a simple and intuitive search system, and are you using drop-down menus and your headings in a way that’s logical?
2. Product descriptions and images
One of the most important UX ecommerce tips to take away from this blog is ensuring your product description is clear, precise and informative.
How you display products on pages is crucial to UX. One of the most common web design mistakes is to cram in text and images. For example, products in all shapes and sizes, with lengthy descriptions and keywords galore!
The problem with that is overkill. Site users want to see their potential purchase and its benefits to them in a blink.
Keep product descriptions succinct, high impact and easy to visually scan. Use only well-chosen high-quality images.
Also, consider your product hierarchy. This is how you categorise items to help with clarity and navigation.
For example: Chilled foods – diary – low-fat yoghurt – damson and plum yoghurt.
3. Showing credibility and value
Social Proofing your ecommerce site will help increase conversions. Customers want to understand the product quality before purchasin.
This UX ecommerce tip for online retailers is all about the quality of your Content, and the way it reflects your brand. You must push strong brand statements (or Unique Selling propositions) hard. As well as using ‘value-added’ terms.
There is no better way than adding value and credibility to your ecommerce site than promoting ratings and reviews. Many users will check out customer reviews, before making a purchasing decision, this is called Social Proofing.
Proving you are the expert in your field and believe in the value of your product comes with strong tone of voice. Is it a low-fat damson and plum yoghurt like all the rest, or a delicious fat-controlled yoghurt made from British plums and damsons? Is a blue ladies shirt, or a smart-casual women’s shirt (royal blue) suitable for all occasions?
4. Checkouts: user friendly and for guests too
Allowing your customers to check out as guests can increase your conversion rate and reduce cart abandonment.
So, site visitors find you in a search, then instantly see the product they were interested in, described using its benefits not just its attributes. Then, your smooth navigation takes them quickly to your transactional page.
This is when many eCommerce ventures experience high numbers of abandoned shopping carts.
To improve your UX, manage consumer expectations on delivery costs and timescales from early in the buying process. Also, make sure your checkout process is as simple as possible and user-friendly, with a strong passing reference to your security and privacy commitment.
One of the biggest UX mistakes is to require registration at checkout. Guest checkout options can help capture more sales!
5. Short form fields
Gathering the important information with a short form field will reduce friction between the site and user. Long form fields deter users who don’t want to provide unnecessary information.
Our final UX ecommerce Tip is one of the best ways to boost overall experience on your site – and grow sales – is to place an unmissable and frictionless lead generation form above the fold (the top half of the page).
This is a clear call to action, that enables site visitors to engage with you instantly, to ask questions, register or carry out some other action that’s important to them.
Just as the rest of your content needs to be minimal and compelling, so does this form.
Keep the ‘fields’ short and easy to populate. This can be vital to having a responsive website, which potential customers can interact with on any size screen. Short form fields are far quicker to complete, and therefore attract more of a response.
Is there a pattern, to UX principles for eCommerce?
Looking at the main ways to improve UX, there is a common trend. They revolve around direct and clear web designs, including effective page layouts and Content with power. Mobile ecommerce also comes with its own set of principles, read further on how to optimise your mobile ecommerce.
