Ever landed on a webpage and got frustrated by the long loading times, 404 pages, and hard to navigate menus?
Your customers might feel the same frustration if your website is not customized enough for a great user experience.
As we all know, e-Commerce is an extremely competitive world especially when businesses are fighting for the same space and online recognition. And in such scenarios, attracting customers and making them keep coming to your brand is an even daunting task.
So what should you do as a business to gain your customer’s attention? A simple way of doing this is to make your customer’s online experience seamless and smooth.
E-commerce user experience is by far the most critical aspect to increase your revenue. Whether you are an established e-commerce business or an online store, an appealing user experience can help you boost your customer conversion rates up to 400%.
Impressive, isn’t it? In this article, we will talk about over 10 best practices to improve the user experience that can help you turn more traffic into sales.
But before that, let’s look at what is a user experience and why is it so crucial?
What is UX?
UX or User Experience is not just about a pretty design but it encloses all aspects of the end-users interaction with the company, its services, and the products. UX involves multiple components working in sync to help visitors easily navigate a site and accomplish their goals in the most efficient way.
Right from the website structure to product details, every element needs to be optimized in a way that the website works fine irrespective of the devices and the screen sizes.
How can UX pave the ways of improving website?
A good User Experience lets your customers easily find the products they are looking for, thus increasing your order value. Your customer’s shopping experience needs to be pleasant so that the customer chooses to stay on your site for a longer time and decides to purchase more.
Before moving further, remember that understanding your target customer’s behaviours and expectations is the key to optimizing UX. By doing so, you can easily make accurate UX decisions.
10 ways to improve user experience
Below we are sharing our ideas on how to improve the website with the help of a good user experience.
- Make it mobile-friendly:
The best way to make your customers return to your site is by optimizing it for mobile. People today prefer websites that are responsive to a mobile device so that they can easily multitask while on the go.
According to the report of Statista, 48% of all web page views come from mobile devices. Also, all new sites are being indexed using Google’s mobile-first indexing. With Google’s crawling, indexing, and ranking systems, you can now utilize the mobile version of your page to rank it for mobile-initiated searches.
- Increase the loading speed:
People while using any website expect a shorter loading time and are likely to quit sites that load slowly. What you can do is to offer a smoother and speedier shopping experience to your customers.
If your website fails to upload quickly, chances are that you are at a high risk of losing your customers. CrazyEgg states that a delay of one second also can decrease your customer’s satisfaction by 16%, thereby making a loss of 7% in conversion.
- Easy-To-Navigate option:
Customers are more interested in websites that do not make them confused. A disarranged website with poor navigation can easily distract your customers. With poor website design, you can lose 37% of your customers.
So, it’s important that you focus on building a website that clearly shows all the offers and services your brand is offering.
- Personalized experience:
Personalize the content of your website to establish a more meaningful relationship with your customers. You can do this by providing suggestions based on prior transactions, helping people find more products of their interest and you can also save the customer’s spot in previously searched content.
- Great product information:
It’s easy to examine products thoroughly before buying in offline stores. However, online stores have limitations in this respect. So, you need to add a compelling and clear description of products along with engaging photography to make your customer’s buying decision stronger. The details need to be comprehensible and visible.
- Create an interactive design:
A simple site might not attract the customer’s attraction. So, you need to be more creative and cater to the consistent needs of your customers with a smooth online experience and interactive design. Some ideas that you can try are including voting, filling out a form, entering a location, and using simple tools like budget calculators, or options like leaving comments.
A CTA can also boost UX and increase conversion rates. The only thing you need to keep in mind is where and how to place the CTA.
- Integrate simple and secure checkout options:
Once the customer finally decides to buy a product, you need to seal the deal as fast as possible. Keep the checkout process less complicated and more secured so that the customers do not doubt your website. Say, for instance, websites with SSL certificates are more trusted by customers.
- Make use of social media:
Be it a compliment or a complaint, people will share about it on social media. Staying in touch with your customers on social media is an effective way to make them feel valued and special. You can connect with your customers in comments or polls. Add an option of reviews to which customers can relate with each other. Reviews can help in developing the visitor’s trust in your brand, clearing their doubts, and thus creating a better UX.
You can also use social media to know your visitor’s likes and dislikes better.
- Implement virtual assistance:
Many customers demand immediacy as well as assistance 24/7. So, you need to be there to resolve any of their issues. The simplest solution is to integrate chatbots and other AI-enabled tools to enhance customer support as well as customer service.
- Acquire trust through transparency:
All successful businesses are constructed on the foundations of trust and transparency, and you should follow the same too. Be real in answering your customer’s queries. Information such as product details, exchange & return policies, shipping & delivery options, hidden costs, etc needs to be comprehended easily. Customers are more satisfied when you live up to their expectations and this further encourages them to continue their interaction with your brand.
Final thoughts
Every big brand knows the importance of a customer-first design approach in order to make the most of the User Experience.
It’s all about enhancing the level of engagement. While UX helps in improving website, other factors such as speed, functionality, simplicity, visual aesthetics, and accessibility matter too.