Tips to Improve the User Experience of Your eCommerce Website
Ecommerce now makes up well over a quarter of all retail sales within the UK — and in the coming years, that percentage is set to rise to a third and even beyond.
That’s good news if your business has an eCommerce website, but the explosion in online shopping also poses some challenges. In 2022, nobody needs to be convinced to shop online. On the other hand, modern shoppers don’t just expect, but also demand, a clean, smooth, and intuitive eCommerce experience that makes it easy for them to buy everything they intended to (and sometimes more).
Ecommerce offers one of the most significant opportunities in today’s economy. Still, to take the success of your eCommerce website up a few notches, it’s crucial to place the user experience at the core of your strategy. These tips on optimising your eCommerce website’s design and development features will help you get there.
Invest in Responsive Web Design
The rise in smartphone use has made our lives easier — and that’s reflected in UK customers’ online shopping habits. The majority of UK-based online shoppers at least want to have the option of making purchases on the eCommerce platforms they use via their smartphones. In a survey led by Google, fifty-nine per cent of consumers indicated that they decide where to make online purchases by judging how mobile-friendly an eCommerce website is.
Mind you, people continue to shop on their laptops and desktop computers, too.
How do you ensure that your eCommerce website looks equally good and functions just as well on a tiny mobile phone screen as it does on a large monitor? The answer lies in responsive web design, which relies on coding to resize websites automatically based on the user’s screen resolution. This feature of web design in Southampton greatly improves user experience across all devices.
Make Fast Loading a Priority
Because this tip almost speaks for itself, we’ll simply remind you that delayed loading can easily make the difference between a conversion and a bounce — or a visitor who runs away from your eCommerce website to find a competitor that does offer the speed they demand.
Offer a Simple and Smooth Design, Free from Distractions
As creative web design packed with funky lettering, playful cursors, asymmetric grids, and bespoke illustrations are exploding, and many business owners feel pressured to show their creativity and uniqueness through their eCommerce websites, too.
Although there is certainly room for creativity, you want your customers’ focus to be on your products — not your website. By designing a consistent but simple and intuitive user interface, you allow your customers’ shopping experience to be smooth. That, in turn, leads to more sales.
Include Videos
It’s often said that a picture can tell more than 1,000 words — but is that enough? Regardless of what your eCommerce website offers, customers are more comfortable putting a product in their baskets and then checking it out if they can get as close as they can to feeling like they have physically interacted with it.
Including videos that showcase your products allows your potential customers to evaluate the quality of your products in 3D. Research has shown that product videos improves user experience and causes your profits to soar!
Make Your Checkout Options Intuitive
So, you have a beautiful and intuitive eCommerce website where your customers easily find what they want — and place it into their virtual baskets. You’ve done everything right by showing your customers what other products they might be interested in, and before you know it, their basket is filled to the brim.
You’ve all but guaranteed a sale.
What happens when your customers make their way to the checkout page, though? If it’s clunky, overly complicated, or you don’t offer the payment method they prefer, the products your customers choose will continue to languish in that basket.
Simplified and intuitive checkout should be one of your top priorities, especially if you find that more customers place products into their baskets than make it through checkout. On a related note, be transparent about the payment options you’ve enabled, and keep in mind that most online shoppers in the UK actually prefer PayPal over credit cards.
Once they’ve checked out, you’re hoping that your customers will return. Make it easy on them by offering the convenience they have grown accustomed to, and be sure to store their info for future visits!
Prioritise Your Customer Service Approach
When you shop in person, you’ve always got the option of turning to another human to ask questions about the product you’re interested in, to ask when an item will be back in stock, or to return a faulty product.
An eCommerce website should offer the same high-quality customer service to maximise sales. Do you think about ways to take your customer service to the next level? Make sure your contact information is easily visible everywhere they look. See how you can improve your response times. Think about implementing a live chat option if you haven’t already.
Offering excellent customer service is one of the most important things you can do to improve the user experience on your eCommerce website.
How Your Ecommerce Website Can Benefit from an Improved User Experience
Enhancing the user experience ensures that your potential customers get the convenience they deserve — making it much more likely that they’ll become actual customers who return to your eCommerce website time and time again.
Many of the steps you take to make your eCommerce website more user-friendly also do wonders for your SEO. That, in turn, means you’ll have more traffic and more customers to enjoy your improved user experience.
The idea that placing the customer at the centre of your business is the key to your success is not a new one. Getting there is simply a little different now. If you believe that your eCommerce website could be even more successful, reaching out to a professional web design company that can make your vision a reality should be your next step.
