Today I will try to share some basic tips on how we can improve user experience (UX) much better on an eCommerce website. We all know that online shopping has become one of the most trending topics nowadays. Along with the rapidly increasing online customers, competitions between eCommerce websites are increasing day by day. Gaining customers and holding them is not an easy task now. So it is quite justified to think all time how we should improve our eCommerce store to make it much more effective and comfortable for our customers. So here I am with my 5 tips on how you can improve it.
Monitoring your website is the main key factors to keep yourself aware of its daily needs. In which, you will found out its drawbacks as well as its positivity. You will also found what exactly your customers are wanting from your website. So being an owner or a developer of an e-shop you will always have to look out for those factors that can increase the satisfactions and make them comfortable on your website. Basically, in other words, you will have to make their shopping experiences much more memorable. The following 5 steps will surely help you in this process:
1) Identify your Customers:
You will have to know who your customers are and what their purposes are for visiting your website. Base on the answers to these two questions, the next work is to do an analytic research of your website. This research is necessary to find out the drawbacks and the plus points of your website. Try to find out the following:
- Do your customers easily getting the information what they are searching for?
- Is the design and navigation of your website is easy to understand?
- Is there any irrelevant content or media that is distracting your customer?
- Is the design of your website is matching the style with most of your customers?
- Which sections of your website getting most hit by your customers? Is there any chance of improvement on those sections?
2) Make your Website more Users-Friendly:
A website is when designed, it is designed by keeping the customers comfort label on the priority list. Because ultimately customers are the one for whom you are making your website. And nowadays lots of shopping sites are launching every day. So if you failed to make your website user-friendly then it may not stand out in the cue. Here are some sections you may concentrate:
- Try to use an easy to use navigation menu. For an example, if you visit Amazon.com, you can check they have a very simple menu. But if you mouse-over to the first menu item called “Departments”, you can see the menu will reveal a sub-menu with all major categories and all are easy to navigate and access.
- Add one Sitemap page.
- Buttons like “Buy Now”, “Add to Cart” should be very clear and easily visible. And off course, if clicking on the button should take the customers directly to the desired page, not in any other section.
- Images of the products should be clear and attractive. Try to show your products from various angles.
- The description of the products should be genuine. Try to highlight the key features of any product.
3) Make your Customers Informed for All:
The most important factor for getting your customers praise is by making them comfortable by providing all necessary information. Try to provide all information clearly; do not hide any key points. For an example, sometimes some eCommerce websites do not reveal the tax rate and the shipping cost until a user goes to the final checkout page. Suddenly increase in the cost on the final checkout page will surely discourage the user from purchasing.
Always try to connect with your customers in a very easy language. Try to keep your terms super understandable for everyone to understand and even your call to actions (CTA) should also be very easy, crystal clear, and very simple to find out by your customers.
4) Try to Attract your Users for Staying Connected:
Whatever your eCommerce site is for, try to add great and attractive content and a unique description, which in return will keep your customers engage in your site for a long time. You can also add your social media tags for insisting your customers to follow your website over there. So you should design your website in such a way that it will help your customers keep them connected to you or you can encourage them to subscribe to your monthly newsletter. Everything should be done as an easily done process. Do not tell your customers to fill forms by providing their personal data or forcing them to fill a form which is too long for anyone to do. Always remember as simpler as your signup process will be, as much easier will be for you to increase your customer’s list for your website will be.
According to Kissmetrics always ask yourself with two designing questions regarding your sign-up page. One is does this make it easier to sign up for you? Or does this provide you a better reason for sign up? If the answers to both the questions are yes, then you can easily understand that you have designed a good sign up for your website. And off course don’t add an excessive amount of constant popups. Because these type of disturbance in a very large amount can push your customers to go out from your website. So, in short, do not push your visitors too much, that they run away from your site instead. So keep this matter while you design your website.
As an example, if you visit BestBuy.com, you can see they will show you a popup to sign up for their newsletter. The signup process is simple; you just need to provide your email address. Also, take a look that the popup will only show once when you visit the website for the first time. After that, it will not show again.
5) Try to Keep “Add to Cart” and “Check Out” Procedures Simple:
The main thing for any shopping site is the “Add to Cart” and the “Check Out” process. Because customers or a visitor comes to purchase their required products and after purchasing they get out from the site. This is a compulsion rule in online shop usability that adding and checking out process should be the most highlighting sections in compare to any other elements.
Buttons for these sections should be very clearly visible and prominent. Adding and deleting product into the cart, modifying the quantity of cart items, easy checkout from the shopping cart, hassle-free signup process and easy payment process can make a huge impact on the conversion rate.
For an example, if you check any product page of StyleWe.com, you can check there is a big and prominent “Add to Cart” button. Once you add any product to your cart, you can easily check your cart from the easy access “Cart Button” placed on the right side of their navigation menu. Just mouse over on that button and it will show a mini cart containing your cart items. Then you can, of course, navigate to the main cart page to modify your cart as per your needs. All steps are very simple and easy to use.
Conclusion:
I hope the above tips may prove to be beneficial for you all. One thing you should keep in mind that online shop and offline shop are more or less the same. There are no rules and regulations. The key is how you will please your customers for purchasing from your shop. You can do whatever to attract any visitors and to convert them to your permanent customers. Just a great design is not the final thing for any website to be successful. The main thing is how the overall experience you are giving to your visitors. So go ahead and try up the above points if you have not done that yet and see the result by your own.
