In the eCommerce field, your online store is the critical touchpoint you have with your customers. So, the experience they have while interacting with your website is the decisive factor in their purchase decision-making. eCommerce UX is under the limelight in terms of the areas eCommerce owners should prioritize to increase sales. Why is it? Which eCommerce UX best practices should you do? Scroll down for details!
Why is eCommerce UX Important?
eCommerce UX (User Experience) indicates the online interaction your customers have with your online store, e.g., when they land on your homepage, browse products, collect relevant information, and decide to buy or drop the cart. It is considered the most important touchpoint of your eCommerce business as it can begin or end the relationships between your store and customers.
A poor eCommerce UX design might have 88% of customers stop browsing and buying products from your store. It leads to a possible 1.6 billion dollar loss as your customers switch to other brands. Meanwhile, a positive eCommerce user experience in your online store can increase the conversion rates by up to 400%. All these statistics shed light on the crucial role of UX for eCommerce in your lead generation, sales conversion, and customer relationships.
How Would Professional UX Designers Improve Your UX Web Design?
We all agree with the fact that UX design for eCommerce has a huge impact on your online business, yet the thing that matters is how-tos. Here are the UX best practices for eCommerce that professional UX designers recommend to enhance your UX web design.
Develop Intuitive Navigation
Intuitive navigation refers to a web interface where online shoppers do not have to question how to get the information they need or reach the page they want.
Your website menu is mainly in charge of navigation, especially since new visitors will try your top navigation menu first. Therefore, you should present all the relevant options, such as products, sizes, and categories, in an easy-to-understand way. Also, you can display popular items or offer product quizzes to personalize product recommendations.
Moreover, you can highlight crucial functions such as a sticky header for search with an appealing CTA (call-to-action). The simple layout of filter options can also ease the visitors’ product browsing as they can find products that only match their requirements and budgets.
Design a Responsive Web
Source: Dynamic Yield
Customers prefer to shop online on their mobile devices, as shown in Dynamic Yield’s report. Mobile platforms accounted for 65% of new users and 74% of returning visitors.
That’s why you should focus on optimizing the responsiveness of your mobile web design. Otherwise, it will drag you down in the competitive eCommerce market.
You can choose themes that include responsive designs to automate the adaptation process to the mobile version. Or you can hire a specialized team to handle this step to guarantee the outcome.
Build Compelling Product Pages
An online store is in charge of introducing your products to more people than the local ones. More than 90% of customers state that the quality of product images and videos is the key factor in their purchase decisions. The impact of visual appearance on your eCommerce sales is undeniable, so you should build compelling product pages with high-resolution images and videos.
It is ideal if you have an in-house team that handles photos and videos illustrating products. Yet, it is not always the case for every eCommerce owner, especially those small ones; hence, you can consider partnering with expert companies for their services of photography and videography at affordable prices.
Create Concise Content
If fewer words clearly depict your message, why should you write long? Everyone loves to get the most helpful information in the shortest amount of time, which explains why your online content should be concise. Reducing word counts will increase the readability of your website.
Hence, it can better deliver key product information, return & refund policies, and the brand’s unique selling points. Customers will have a sufficient amount of information without feeling overwhelmed by the influx of content.
Optimize Loading Speed
Source: Portent’s research
Nobody loves to browse products online while waiting for every click. Portent’s research shows the drop in conversion rate in every loading second increase. Specifically, the conversion rate is nearly 40% at a one-second load time, while the number drops to 34% at a two-second load time. So, you should optimize every aspect of your website, such as image resolution, while eliminating the slow elements, such as parallax scrolling and ghost buttons, to reach the optimal loading speed for your online store.
Set Up a Seamless Checkout
Source: Baymard Research
All the effort comes to the point of customers processing the checkout, so it is safe to say that it is the most decisive step. According to Baymard Research, 17% of US online shoppers cite that the long and complicated checkouts have them abandon an order. Thus, the more smooth the checkout process is, the more sales you will gain.
Besides simplifying the process, you should also present transparency and build credibility, as nearly 50% of US customers stop their purchases due to extra expected costs, and 25% of shoppers do not trust eCommerce sites to create accounts.
For those who manage a click-and-mortar business, you should install supporting software to sync data between your online and offline store, e.g., prices and discounts. It helps you produce a frictionless checkout process, gain trust from customers, and increase conversion rates.
eCommerce UX Best Examples
There is no better way to learn than researching the optimal UI UX design for the eCommerce of every top company. Here are five great examples you can take for reference on how you should design your eCommerce UX.
Pipcorn, an American popcorn store, proves the positive effects of the eCommerce UX best practices we shared above. It uses high-quality videos and images to showcase products, which keeps visitors engaged to scroll down or click to explore more. A clear layout and concise content make it easier to search for products and gather crucial information.
2. Press London
As the products are healthy cold-pressed juices, Press London uses bright-toned colors in a simple layout. Visitors can easily know what and how you will do to find the products that meet your needs, thanks to its intuitive navigation design. The best part is that the site offers you a load of nutrition info on each product with different categories in bullet format.
3. 696 NYC
696 NYC is an online space that those who love Japanese ceramics and pottery would adore. They can browse beautiful products by Japanese craftsmen and designers in minimalistic web design and smooth navigation with every click. The content follows the rules of being succinct to serve only the essential information.
4. Magic Spoon
Magic Spoon specializes in nutritious cereals that make your meals healthy and interesting. Using bright colors with high contrasts and effects in its product photography and illustrative images, the store successfully captures attention and maintains the engagement of visitors to explore its various products. Its simple menu includes About Us, the Homepage, and Shop Now, making the website more friendly to users.
Thesus Outdoor is an online store of environmentally friendly outdoor clothes. It is the ultimate example of how you can leverage a simple and clear-cut design with beautiful images to sell products online. The site makes sure you gain all the critical information in the most straightforward and personalized way, thanks to the quizzes and concise content.
Conclusion
The improvement of your eCommerce UX can be a leap for your online business amidst high competition in the market. We hope the best practices and some examples from real eCommerce websites provide you with insightful suggestions. If you need further support in optimizing the product images and videography on your website, contact us for our experts to create the best for your business’s online appearance.
