10 Best Practices for User Experience in Ecommerce

No matter how great your products are or how successful your marketing campaigns might be, if your website is confusing, slow or difficult to use, you’re likely to lose out on sales.

According to recent reports, 69.57% of online shopping baskets are left abandoned without a purchase being made. If people are visiting your site, but your conversions are low, this could be a sign that your website is poorly optimised for user experience (UX).

To avoid missing out on those all-important sales, you need to be aware of the key user experience factors that influence consumers’ decisions to stay or leave your website. Read on for 10 ecommerce user experience best practices…

What does ‘user experience’ mean?

As the name suggests, user experience simply refers to the experience users get from a particular app or website. Good UX design means that a website is designed to give users a positive experience – leading to more sales.

Ecommerce user experience best practices are the benchmark techniques you can use to make your website an easy, pleasant and intuitive experience for customers.

#1 – Make your website easy to navigate

Consumers are strapped for time and patience, so when they use your store, they need to find what they’re looking for without hassle. There are some simple ways to make your website easy to navigate.

For example, you should ensure that the colours on your website are not too similar, so CTAs and menus are easy to read. Avoid brash colours too, so you don’t overload customers with visuals.

Ensure that you also have clear and accessible menus, so customers can quickly reach the categories they need. Plus, always have a search bar for visitors who want to type in exactly what they’re looking for.

#2 – Keep your CTAs clear and visible

One of the most well-known ecommerce user experience best practices relates to call-to-actions or CTAs. A call-to-action on an ecommerce website will usually be a button that leads customers directly to checkout, so they can make their purchase. To be successful, an ecommerce CTA needs to do several things:

• Be clearly visible on the page. Opt for bold, contrasting colours for the button and text, rather than shades that could blend into the background.
• Be written in plain, jargon-free language. Customers need to know exactly what the CTA does. Clear messages include, ‘Buy now’ and ‘Add to basket’.
• CTAs should motivate the customer to click, so keep them short and sweet.

Ultimately, consumers need to know your CTA button is the place they can finalise their transaction – and it needs to be appealing to them, too.

#3 – Optimise your website to its quickest speed

Website speed is a notoriously important factor for user experience. Research has shown that 53% of visitors will abandon a webpage if it doesn’t load in under 3 seconds. Consumers are impatient, and if your website can’t produce results quickly, they’ll simply look for the products they need elsewhere. There are many ways you can improve your website’s speed, including optimising your code and images, and using website caches.

#4 – Informative and optimised product descriptions

Product descriptions are among the most important ecommerce user experience best practices. They give consumers information about the product and inspire them to buy – plus, they’re a goldmine for SEO.

Copied-and-pasted or jargon-filled product descriptions can hold back sales of an otherwise great product. Your product descriptions should be filled with detail and, rather than merely listing features, should show visitors the benefits of the product.

#5 – Ensure your website is mobile friendly

Many consumers research products on their mobiles, but the mobile conversion rate continues to trail behind other devices. Creating a good user experience on mobile takes much more than just making your website work on mobile devices.

It needs to be optimised for the needs of mobile users, who are frequently looking to make a quick purchase. The gold standard of user experience on mobiles is the ‘progressive web app’, which contains all of the features of a mobile application within a mobile browser.

#6 – Quick and easy checkout

Since cart abandonment is such a big issue for online businesses, it’s key to be aware of ecommerce user experience best practices for a quick and simple checkout.

There are a few ways you can optimise your checkout. For example, time is important to your customers, so use a progress bar to show them how many steps are left in the checkout process.

#7 – Let customers buy without an account

Busy consumers will leave their shopping cart when they see a ‘registration set-up’ process appear – 34%, to be precise.

As important as it may be to get customers’ emails, it can be a dealbreaker for a sale. You can easily recover these sales by offering a guest checkout option that skips the registration stage.

Customers still have the option to register if they wish, and you’ll also still receive their email – perfect for reaching out for registration through a later email campaign.

#8 – Utilise social proof

Customers want to know they’re making an informed choice about what they buy, and they often consider other consumers to be the most reliable source of information.

To provide ‘social proof’, you need to show what real customers think of your products. This can be achieved through adding user reviews, testimonials, user-generated content, and case studies to your website.

#9 – Add your business contact details and live chat

Trust is very valuable in the relationship between brands and consumers, so if it’s hard to get in touch with you, customers are less likely to make a purchase. Keep your contact details in pride of place on the home page, so customers can easily contact you.

Also, as over 50% of customers prefer to use live chat as a support method, it’s generally important to include this as a feature, where possible.

#10 – Use geo-targeting to boost conversions

If you really want to tailor your ecommerce website for a great user experience, then there are more advanced features to improve your website. One of the best features for UX is geo-targeting, which means you can tailor languages, currencies and promotions to particular cities, counties and countries. As this is a more complex ecommerce feature, it can help to work with a specialist ecommerce UX agency to integrate it within your website.

Optimise your customers’ user experience

With ecommerce user experience best practices, you can create a website that’s gorgeous to look at, easy to use, and creates new conversions. As UX techniques become more advanced, including geo-tagging and live chat, it’s good to have a trusted ecommerce UX agency on hand to help you implement these features successfully.

With our 20 years of industry experience, Bing Digital offers full UX auditing, strategy and design – along with 24/7 support for when you need it. We’ll ensure your website is optimised for both mobile and desktop, and provide a user interface tailored to your industry, so you can minimise your bounce rate and boost conversions.

Ready to improve user experience on your ecommerce website? Get in touch to learn more about our services.