Jonathan Beckman the Founder of Apptourage said that “User experience will replace price and product as the key brand differentiator”. You may have the best product in your market but if you don’t make it easy for your client to make a purchase then you’re most likely leaving money on the table.
UX design is the art of making the customer experience on your website as smooth as possible. A great User experience helps your potential client navigate through your website, find its ideal product, and make a purchase within a few effortless clicks. On the other hand, a bad user experience confuses your customer, leading to a high bounce rate and a lost sale opportunity.
In this article, we will explore together 6 best practices to enhance your website’s user experience and improve your conversions.
1- Use a prominent Call to Action (CTA)
A CTA is one of the most fundamental aspects of a successful e-commerce page. An effective CTA should be prominent. You don’t want to use a CTA that blends in with the rest of your page, meaning that it should be designed with a color in contrast to the background.
Put your CTA in a commonly used placement on the page so that it won’t be difficult to spot. Also, make sure to stick to standard wordings such as “Buy now” or “Add to cart”.
Additionally, keep in mind that many CTA’s may confuse your prospect on what should be done next. Therefore, it’s better to stick to one CTA per page. Another best practice, mostly used with mobile devices, consists of using a CTA that stays visible while scrolling the page, removing the need for the customer to scroll back to find it.
2- Don’t complicate the checkout process!
Have you ever added a product to a cart, and started the checkout process just to abandon it due to the endless fields you had to fill? You’re not alone! In fact, the average cart abandonment percentage is 76%.
As an e-commerce manager, you are in the business of making a purchase as easy as possible. And what’s worse than losing your customer at the very bottom of the sales funnel?
To improve your checkout process, make sure to:
- Stick to short forms that don’t require too much information.
- Reduce the number of pages that the user needs to go through to enter his credit card information.
- Consider offering multiple payment options such as Google Pay, Apple Pay…etc.
- Use a progress bar indicating where the user stands in the checkout process.
- Avoid requiring registration in the checkout process.
3- Provide your customers with a live chat feature
In a brick-and-mortar store, a customer can ask the store owner questions to help find a product or to know more about its characteristics and what would best suit its needs. Unfortunately, the customer doesn’t have this luxury online.
To reduce the gap between a physical and a virtual experience, be sure to provide your customers with a live chat option that allows people to chat with an expert online to help them find and choose the right product for their needs and preferences.
If you can’t provide live chat, consider developing a chatbot to answer the most common questions your customer may have, or provide a comprehensive FAQ.
4- Make navigation easy and intuitive
You don’t want your customer to break a sweat just to find a product. The process of exploring and researching products must be smooth, intuitive, and geared towards helping your customer perform his desired action with the least amount of fraction.
Improve your navigation by making sure to use:
- Negative space in your design and an easy-to-read font with a reasonable size.
- A color palette that is consistent and easy on the eye and a prominent search bar.
- Breadcrumbs to help the user identify where he is in the hierarchy of the website.
- A menu bar that can be expanded with submenus directing to important pages.
5- Leverage analytics tools to better understand your client
Instead of spending hours doing the guesswork, you should be using online tools that allow you to understand your customer’s journey.
Google Analytics for instance helps you identify what pages your client is the most interested in, what pages he exits from, what buttons he’s clicking (or not clicking), and the time he spends on each page.
Another great tool is Hotjar, which provides you with a heatmap of where people are clicking and what they are ignoring. Hotjar also helps you see how far people are scrolling and at what level they are leaving the page.
6- Prioritize a mobile-friendly UX
Ensuring your website is mobile-friendly for mobile devices is no longer a luxury, it’s a MUST! The user experience on mobile devices should no longer be an afterthought. Many prominent companies are now prioritizing a mobile-first design approach and relegating their desktop websites to a secondary position.
With the small mobile screens, the need for scrolling increases compared to desktop, making it imperative to carefully consider the content you present on each page.
You can experiment with hiding certain sections or elements or texts that are not very necessary to your users. Remember that less is more, so embrace a more minimalist approach by cutting any excess of graphs, links, and pop-ups.
Conclusion
The process of improving your user experience is iterative. You should be constantly experimenting with different methods and analyzing the data to identify what resonates with your customers. Investing time and resources in crafting the best possible experience means making shopping an unforgettable experience that surely will be rewarded in the long term.
Sources:
- 10 Best Practices for eCommerce UX
- Ecommerce UX: Design Strategies and Best Practices for 2023
- Paving the Path to Purchase: E-commerce UX Best Practices
- 15 Ecommerce UX Best Practices to Explode Your Sales
A propos de Samir SOLAI
Spécialiste en marketing digital avec 5 ans d'expérience en SEO, E-commerce, Facebook Ads et Web analytics. Je suis actuellement inscrit en Master 2 commerce électronique à l'Université de Strasbourg.
