7 User Experience Tips To Consider When Building An E-commerce Site
The internet has turned the world into a flat place, and based on that, the distribution of opportunities are no longer limited by geographical boundaries as people and businesses in Africa and Asia can make seamless communications with those in the United States, Europe or elsewhere. This flattening of the world has also given rise to new economic opportunities, and one of these is eCommerce.
In 2020, when the global pandemic hit the world and forced world leaders to declare states of emergencies and resort to complete and/or partial lockdowns, the need for a way to get essential items delivered to people without having to go to a physical mall created a spike in demand for eCommerce solutions. According to Statista, in 2020 alone, over two billion people purchased goods or services online and global e-retail sales surpassed 4.2 trillion U.S dollars worldwide.
The eCommerce space is a growing space and is enjoying increasing adoption. However, building an eCommerce site is not enough, finding ways to differentiate your business from the competition in your field and give yourself a competitive advantage is key to prospering in this space. One of the ways businesses can differentiate themselves from the competition in their field is by creating exceptional user experiences for their users that makes them not just buy from you, but make repeat purchases, and even go as far as convincing others to come on board.
In this piece, we’ll be sharing seven things you should consider when creating exceptional and better user experiences for your eCommerce users.
7 Tips to Create Exceptional User Experiences for Your eCommerce Users.
1. Page Load Time
Very few things have the capacity to damage the user experience of your eCommerce website like slow page loading time. The longer it takes for a page to load, the more disinterested and likely site visitors are to close the tab and look for someone else offering your service to patronize. According to statistics, most mobile users will leave a site if it takes more than 6–10 seconds for it to load. In fact, even Google has said that slow page loading time can have a negative effect on the SEO ranking of a site.
2. Checkout Process
All things being equal, one of the major reasons you visit an eCommerce site is to make a purchase. However, if after committing to a purchase, and putting your items in a digital cart, you still have to go through a rabbit hole of sign ups, filling forms, and in some cases being redirected to another page, that alone can have an adverse effect on your user experience. According to Sleeknote, an average of 69.57% of all eCommerce shopping carts are abandoned halfway without completely checking out.
One major focus all eCommerce operators should consider is how to shorten their checkout process — making it as simple and as fast as possible. This may involve reducing page redirection or even sign ups, and making the process of placing an item in the cart to final checkout happen with the least amount of clicks as possible.
3. Checkout Options
When people want to finally make a purchase on your site, it is important to give them as many options as possible to account for all kinds of users. The more the payment options available on your site, the less the chances of ostracizing users do to their lack of certain payment methods.
4. Discoverability
The easier it is for users to find things on your eCommerce site, the better it is for them, and the better it is for you. Imagine walking into a mall and spending minutes jumping from aisle to aisle manually trying to find a specific product. Creating such an experience on an eCommerce site has grave consequences. If users have to waste time looking for items on your site, they’re more likely to close your tab and go to a competitor with a better page layout and in some cases, never return.
Making goods and items easily discoverable on your site is a step in the right direction in regards to creating a better user experience. One of your key design goals could be to make your information architecture so succinct and your product arrangements and filters so well done that your users will have very little reason to use the search button (still put a search button).
The extent to which goods can be easily discovered on your eCommerce site will go a long way in improving your websites user experience.
5. Photography
Ideally, people aren’t seeing your product in real life, and helping them get a better view of how your product looks like through exceptional photography will go a long way in both increasing the trust users have of your product, and conversion rates altogether.
Clear and vivid photographs of the products you market well displayed on the pages of your site will go a long way in improving the user experience of your site, and promoting user conversion.
6. Mobile Responsive Web Design
According to Bigcommerce, 34.5% of all eCommerce sales occurred via mobile platforms in 2017, and an estimated 54% is expected through mobile platforms in 2021. When building an eCommerce site, you must design a mobile experience with responsive web design that allows users to be able to access your website seamlessly through a mobile browser.
7. Keep Your Site Updated
Nobody wants to see available on a product, and make a purchase only to be told it is out of stock, make sure the site is consistently updated with the right information and content to make it easier for your users to properly navigate and use your site.
Keeping your site constantly updated with the right information will also go a long way to improve the SEO ranking of your website and help your site perform better on Google’s search engine ranking.
Conclusion
Building an exceptional user experience into your eCommerce website will go a long way in improving the chances of your business prospering and being able to stand out among the competition.
