E-Commerce UX Guide 101: Woo Customers the Right Way
The success of your website lies entirely in the hands of your customers. When that is the case, it has become imperative to deliver them nothing short of excellence. And that is exactly what they expect from you. One of the simplest ways of reaching that expectation bar is by improving their user experience on your site. User Experience (UX) is your customer’s overall experience when interacting with your site and product. It is always better to have a higher score in this regard.
By KEN SMITH
If that is what you have been wondering lately, this blog will put an end to the question, ‘How to improve user experience on e-commerce websites?’ So, without any further ado, let us now delve into the blog and spill some beans on some of the ecommerce UX best practices that you need to follow now.
1: Prioritize Security
One of the best answers to ‘How to improve user experience on an e-commerce website’ is by making security a priority. Now, you might be thinking out loud, how security is related to the user experience. It is interrelated in a big way. Let us break it down to the basics. What does user experience mean? Simply put, it is how a user feels when they land on your site.
Do you not think security is something that would concern a prospect? Would they not want to know whether or not their transactions stay safe? Providing the customers with trust and security is a must. The solution is simple – purchase an SSL certificate for your website right away. It will not only encrypt the information but also ensure that it reaches the right destination.
None of your credit card credentials or passwords will be leaked if you are SSL certified. Now, how do you check if a site having installed an SSL certificate or not? Just look for the green padlock sign on the top of the URL. Further, the URL should read HTTPS instead of HTTP. If you see these signs, you should be assured that you are on an SSL-certified site.
2: Improvise Page Loading Speed
Statistics claim that 40% of the users will instantly churn away from a site if it takes too long to load. Let’s face it, most of your customer base are millennials. The last thing that they have is patience. Would they want to wait till the buffering ends on your site, or would they not look for alternatives? Pumping up your page loading speed is a must if you want your users to stick to your site. You will come across a lot of options online where you can check your page’s loading time.
Some of the free tools include GTmetrix and Page Speed Insights, owned by Google. Make it a point to keep your page’s loading time less than 3 seconds as more than 3 seconds will trigger the customer to get frustrated and leave to some of your competitions.
Think of it this way, the faster your page loads, the higher are the chances that your customers will stay connected, and thus they will want to shop from you more. Eventually, this revs up your user experience in a way.
3: Go attractive with Colors and Images
As the adage goes, ‘It is always looking over talent.’ The same works for e-commerce sites too. When a customer hops onto a new site, they evaluate the site’s worthiness just by its appearance. So, ideally, the homepage of your site should do all the talking about your products and services seamlessly and subtly.
Some of the huge turn-offs include unnecessary pop-ups, banners, ads, and auto-playing adverts. But, of course, you know that a user would want to cross it out, as they are here to shop. On that note, colors, tones, and hues play a big role in pulling a prospect towards too. It is a given that certain colors can induce emotions into the customers, thus allowing them to spend more and stick to your pages too.
And the same trick works out well for images too. Since your customers view your products virtually, they would want to see the object from multiple angles. This will give them a fair idea as to how the look and feel of the product is. Giving them a single image will not be helpful for both the customer and the company. Therefore, pep up on the attractiveness quotient as and when required.
4: Butter-smooth Navigation across the Pages
Searching for a product on your site should be no rocket science. Keep it as simple and minimalistic as you can. When a user visits your site, you want to assist them in finding what they want. You can keep easy dropdown options where they can filter out what they want to look at.
Additionally, you can include your most-used tools and buying guides as well. And while you are at it, make it a point to provide links to return policy, customer service, privacy rules, and shipping charges as well. Placing the search bar right on the top allows the customer to type what they want to find. However, do not club in every subcategory of a product together. A customer will get confused, and you do not want that to happen. Make sure that you put up a navigation menu, too, if the need arises. The purpose of a navigation menu is to get people where they want to go.
Do not forget to use secondary navigation at the top for options like ‘Contact Us.’ You may also want to use the multi-column menu that segments categories and break them down into further categories.
5: Shopping Cart Do’s and Don’ts
You must be aware that a shopping cart menu option is the last button that a user clicks before paying up. This is the most important step, so do not overlook this one. Ensure that you show the total price and the number of items in the left hand of the screen. Link back directly to the checkout page that does not show every detail of the products in the cart.
Make this last step as seamless as possible. Do not complicate the final process with too many questions or steps. If the user has allowed you to remember the address and other details, avoid asking the same question repeatedly to the user. Suppose such details are already auto-saved; leverage that. Have all the payment options viable.
A customer does not want to find their favorite mode of payment – be it cash of delivery (COD) or Net Banking missing. Also, enable the EMI payment option if and when the product falls under that category. You know what works out better for you. Do the math and now what should be your ‘ins’ and what should be your ‘outs.’
6: Enable Virtual Customer Service or Support
A customer may have queries about your products or policies. And you want to help them out as fast as possible. That is when deploying a live chatbot will serve the purpose. They will instantly connect to the customer service team and figure a solution out. Also, they can seek out immediate clarifications on delivery dates and statutes as well.
Chatbots eliminate the need to deploy a real customer support executive and personally take care of the entire customer needs. Further, they can guide a user through to use a particular product or to checkout seamlessly. That way, your customer does not leave half-heartedly as they got their requisite solutions or answers from your page – be it from a bot or a real human.
As their query is resolved without the assistance of a human representative, think of the time you could save there. Instead of doing something that a bot could easily handle, the representative could instead work on something more important. This is the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning in our lives.
That’s a Wrap
Hopefully, this blog has answered your queries on ‘How to improve the experience on your e-commerce site?’ Of these six tips that we just discussed, you will have to see which one works the best for you and which ones need to be ruled out. Following these will help you get on the right track, deliver the best to your users and give the churn rates a backseat. This way, your customers stay happy too, and so do you. What matters, in the end, is the satisfaction of the users.
