To summarize, you need to test everything on your eCommerce website, especially when it comes to UX. You also need a lot of insight and interaction into how your customers will interact with your site. It’s always a good idea to ask your co-workers, family, as well as friends, and sometimes even strangers to have a look at your website about how they will interact with your website. This will help you tune your website better and design a UX that assists your target audience to interact better with your eCommerce website. Still, need help? Our experts are always here to assist you.
Overview
As an eCommerce website owner, you will always be looking forward to improve the shopping experience for your online customers. However, you might not know where to begin. Let us look at some of the ways to improve the user experience (UX) of your eCommerce website for your online customers. Trust me, these are simple enough for you to implement on your own eCommerce website:
1. Improve your website’s search results for better user experience
According to reliable statistics available, up to 30% of online visitors use the on-site search tool. At the same time, these shoppers also tend to be highly motivated to make a purchase, as they know exactly what they are looking for. Improving your website’s search results makes it easier for your online shoppers to search what they are exactly looking for.
2. Position your search bar effectively
Yet another way of providing a better user experience for your website is to position your search bar in a prominent location. A good place is the header of the page and also on every page of your website. This step will maintain consistency and also make it easy for shoppers to access your product catalog. An example of a well-placed search bar is Amazon, which has strategically placed the search bar of the page where the customers gravitate to.
3. Brainstorm the most likely keywords and search phrases
An experienced designer needs to do some brainstorming in order to understand what prospective customers might enter in the search bar so that they can locate the items they want. Prepare a keyword list and keep it handy. Also research the possible misspellings of your product names as users will tend to browse via touch screen devices such as mobile phones as well as tablets, and these searches will be prone to mistakes.
4. Fine tune your eCommerce website to provide accurate search results
You will also need to provide accurate search results to your customers. It is not right to misguide your users and lead them to products they do not want to buy. Hence, make it easy for shoppers to purchase what they actually want and present relevant search results as well.
5. Improve product photos and product descriptions on your website
Although eCommerce offers several advantages over traditional brick and mortar stores, the key disadvantage that it presents is that it prevents shoppers from holding the real product in their hands. Customers want to feel the product, touch it, and in many cases, even smell it.
Hence, the right way forward is to improve the product descriptions on your eCommerce website and also add better product photography that can get as close as possible to the real experience. Go ahead and capture the product details in a photograph. You can display large product images as well as several alternative photos along with zoomed- in images of product details.
6. Create an easy checkout flow to avoid shopping cart abandonment
Many users abandon shopping carts in the middle of a sale. This is akin to someone shop from a brick and mortar store and abandoning it at the checkout without paying for it. Some of the reasons that cause shopping cart abandonment are presented as below:
- Shoppers are presented with unexpected costs during checkout
- Website navigation of the eCommerce website is too complicated
- Website crashes while proceeding through checkout
- The checkout process takes too long
- The website times out
- The price that is presented for payment is in a foreign currency.
People who are determined to abandon their shopping carts will do that any way. Hence, there is no way to prevent shopping cart abandonment beyond a certain limit. However you can apply certain fixes to reduce the friction that could be caused at checkout.
- Remove unessential fields from checkout forms
- Checkout forms ask for the information you really need
- Optimize the website for mobile checkout – include larger fonts as well a bigger input fields while including clearer call-to-action buttons.
- Let your shoppers know that a process is running in the background once they click a button. This can be in the form of a loading spinner or something similar.
7. Provide better customer interaction features as well and service
Implementing a live chat feature can go a long way to improve the customer interaction and quality of service that you provide to your customers. Include photos as well as call to action buttons that should always link to the product shown. Avoid frustrating your users and let them find what they are looking for.
As part of your enhanced commitment to customer service, you need to pay attention to your user comments, reviews, as well as emails. Have a live chat system so that customers can get in touch with you, especially if they come across something they do not like or would like some more information about a product. Additionally, live chat comes in handy especially if customers want to buy a product but have a few doubts they want to clear. In case some customers turn to social media such as Twitter or Facebook, spare a couple of minutes to read such comments and respond to your users.
In this manner, you will be able to improve the usability of your checkout process, which will directly help you to reduce shopping cart abandonment rates while also increasing conversion.
8. Optimize your eCommerce website for mobile
Today, there is enough statistics out there to show that mobile is the future. It’s the right time to go responsive in the form of responsive design, responsive email, and responsive eCommerce. Go ahead and make your site ready for mobile. Think about how your customers will use their mobile gadgets to search for the products you want them to buy along with using them for routine things such as answering calls, texting messages, or reading their emails. Hence, if they want to purchase a product but cannot find it on their mobile phone through your website, it is most likely that they will abandon the website and go away to a competitor. Hence, it is extremely essential to optimize for mobile especially if you want your sales and conversions to grow.
Summary
Table of Content
- Overview
- 1. Improve your website’s search results for better user experience
- 2. Position your search bar effectively
- 3. Brainstorm the most likely keywords and search phrases
- 4. Fine tune your eCommerce website to provide accurate search results
- 5. Improve product photos and product descriptions on your website
- 6. Create an easy checkout flow to avoid shopping cart abandonment
- 7. Provide better customer interaction features as well and service
- 8. Optimize your eCommerce website for mobile
- Summary
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Minal Joshi is a content marketer at Krish with a flair for eCommerce and Digital Commerce aspects. She is a MarTech fanatic with a knack of writing with which, she helps brands to curate, create, & commence digital brand positioning. Sharing insights via articles, case studies, eBooks, Infographics, and other forms of content creation is what she lives for. Being an ardent traveler, when not writing, you'll find her sipping coffee into the mountains or petting a stray.
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