What would you do if you walked into a brick-and-mortar retail location that you thought was high-end and saw items scattered all over the floor and sales people who were perfectly content with the mess in their shop? Would your impression of the store improve if you picked up a piece of merchandise and saw that its price was just $1.00? While you might be thrilled by the bargain-basement price, it’s not likely that your overall experience in the store would inspire you to visit the location again.
Just as first impressions are important, so are second, third, and fiftieth impressions. While that’s true for physical retailers, it’s also true for online stores.
How does an online retailer make its first and repeat impressions on its visitors? Through its website, of course! If your ecommerce website design doesn’t account for the experience users will have when they visit your online store, your business is destined to fail right from the start.
It is absolutely essential for your ecommerce website development process to be 100 percent customer-centric. Whereas shoppers who visit a physical store can touch and feel the items that are for sale, online shoppers can’t. The inability to touch their merchandise already puts e-commerce stores at a disadvantage compared to physical retailers. If your ecommerce web development doesn’t close this gap by providing a pleasant UX design, you won’t be able to compete effectively with your online brethren or brick-and-mortar retailers.
When it comes to ecommerce development, you need to focus on some key elements to create a satisfying user experience that will keep people coming back to your online store again and again. Keep reading to learn what the keys to a successful user experience design are now.
The First Impression
As we stated earlier, the first impression (and every one that follows) is important for e-commerce stores. Users can simply open another tab and shop with one of your competitors, after all. To prevent that from happening, you must ensure that you make a good impression on your visitors every time they navigate to your online store.
To do this, you should spend some time creating a great homepage. To be great, a homepage must provide a value proposition and quickly explain how your ecommerce store is different from the thousands of other stores online. Your homepage should also include simple, easy to find calls to action that start walking your visitors through your sales channel.
When your homepage is done, you should work on your product pages. You need to make sure your other pages meet the same high standards you set for you homepage when it comes to quality and layout or you will lose the benefits of having made a positive first impression.
Collections and Product Selection Tools
You can guide people through the merchandise you sell by presenting it in collections. You may want to create a collection of your best-selling men’s shirts or one for the hottest ladies’ shoes. Alternatively, you may want to create collections based on your shoppers’ past purchases that include complimentary items such as a matching tie or blazer.
While using collections is a smart way to present your merchandise and recommend products to users, it’s vital that you provide the tools they’ll need to get past your suggested items. You need to provide filtering and selection tools so consumers can compare items and choose what they want to buy easily.
Have a System to Bring Users Back
Although it’s crucial for your website to attract new visitors, it’s just as important that your ecommerce web design be successful at bringing people back to your website after their initial visit. This is particularly important if they’ve left unpurchased merchandise in their shopping carts. When consumers put items in their digital shopping carts, they clearly have an interest in buying the things they thoughtfully selected. This means you have a greater chance at making a sale to them compared to selling something to a person who never put an item in their cart. The average verifiable online shopping cart abandonment rate is a whopping 69.23 percent. That startling number demonstrates the importance of not relying on first-time visitors for the majority of your sales. Since it’s unwise to rely on first-time visitors for a significant portion of your overall sales, your UX design must include a system that will effectively bring people back to buy the things they left in their carts. How can you convince users to return to your website and revisit their online shopping carts? You can employ email marketing, share special offers, use social media promotions, host a contest or offer free shipping on purchases above a set dollar amount, to name a few tactics.
Demonstrate Your Credibility and the Quality of Your Offerings
In today’s connected society, it’s not enough for you to tell users that your ecommerce store is the best. Instead, other people must tell shoppers that your online store is the best through testimonials. You can increase the confidence people have in your ecommerce store by providing actual client testimonials on your website. You can also share links to the review websites where your business is listed.
Similarly, consumers aren’t going to take your word for it if you tell them that your goods or services are the best they can buy. They want to hear what people who’ve done business with your ecommerce store in the past have to say about your offerings. And you can give them the chance to see what others have to say about the things you sell by allowing people to rate and review your goods directly on your product pages.
Make Help Readily Available
Even the savviest online shopper may have a question or need help completing a purchase. You need to make help readily available across your website by providing your phone number and email address in a visible location on each of your website’s pages. You may also want to include a chat box so people can get immediate assistance online. If you need help creating a fantastic user experience for your online store, Source Web Solutions, Inc. can help. We’ve worked with large and small online retailers to create ecommerce website designs that continue to provide an excellent user experience today. Learn about some of the clients we’ve helped with ecommerce web development now.