Everyone is familiar with ecommerce and a majority of people use ecommerce stores to shop on regular bases. That factor is solely enough for entrepreneurs to be attracted to ecommerce but before you go down that road you must know dos and don’ts of this business. The competition and expectations of online buyers are increasing very fast.
In ecommerce, your website is your first touch-point with the customer. Customers of the 21st century are not ready to give you or your website more than a few seconds to convince them to make a purchase. Since the store owner or a representative is not available, so, the design of your ecommerce store does the talking for you. If your website design is unable to convince or lure a customer to make a conversion, the customer will leave your website period!. Moreover, it is proven by studies that 90% of customer will not return to a website where they had a bad experience.
It takes a lot of hard work and resources to land a customer on your website and there is nothing more discouraging for an ecommerce vendor if that customer leaves without making a conversion. According to eCommerce SEO experts if customers are returning from the landing page without even making a single conversion that bounce rate is not good for your website ranking.
Now let’s discuss some don’ts of an ecommerce UX design that will help you increase conversion rate.
Crowded Homepage
The homepage is like the storefront of an ecommerce website. This is where most of your online customers will land. If you crowd your homepage with unnecessary details and products, customers won’t be able to see easily what they came for and that is something no ecommerce vendor would like. That is why is very important to add only the best of your products and concise details about your company. Use the space available for testimonials as they will help in the conversion and increasing the trust of customers on your brand. Simplicity is the best approach when it comes to designing an ecommerce UX especially the homepage. Some vendors don’t add enough description of the product that prevents the customer from making the purchase. There is a very thin line between what is appropriate and what is extra description if you can find that balance, the results will be astonishing.
Clear Navigation
As you cannot add extra items on the homepage the best way is to spread them categorically on a different page and provide a link of the pages in the navigation bar. It is the best approach to add a new page to your website for every new campaign as websites with more landing pages have more traffic. Some ecommerce websites take it literally and try to add all the categories in the navigation bar crowding the bar and making it difficult for the customer to navigate around instead use a single tab like “Products” or “Categories” and add all the categories under that tab like a drop-down. Remember, if you want to increase the conversion rate, keep the customer intrigued.
Smart and Visible Search Bar
As we discussed that good ecommerce website don’t display all the products on a single page, the customer searches the product in the search bar. Customer must be able to access the search bar anywhere on the website. Another factor to be taken under account is that the search should be able to show what the customer is looking for. Smart search is one of the best features that can help the customer and ultimately the vendor. Smart search autofill the search form according to previous shopping history. Add filters to your search bar to help the customer narrow down the search process. The fewer the clicks the more chances that a customer will make a purchase.
Mobile-First
You have designed a beautiful website for your ecommerce business, hired professional ecommerce SEO services but still, you are not able to make sales or even visible to customers. The reason might be that your website is not mobile-friendly. According to new rules and regulations of Google, websites are being ranked on the bases of them being mobile-friendly. So, when designing an ecommerce website you must take in mind the responsiveness of the website. The reason behind these rules is that more than 50% of ecommerce revenue comes from mobile users.
Complex Checkout
Checkouts of an ecommerce website are very crucial for the conversion rate especially if you are looking to make a sale. Big names of the ecommerce industry like Amazon have ruined it for others by offering one-click checkout option. They know that all they have done to bring the customer to this point and a little mishap will ruin all their effort. I am not saying that by offering a simple checkout method you will be able to stand up to these giants but it is a start.
With the popularity of subscription packages, every website wants to increase its subscribers as it helps in marketing and ultimately increases revenue. But people might not have enough time to fill a lengthy form just to make a purchase and will leave your website. To avoid this issue you must allow customers to check out as guests.
Don’t be shy to show the shipping charges. If you add the shipping charges without showing them to the customer before adding, they might feel bad and you will lose a customer. It is best to show the shipping charges along with the product price.
Online customers expect an ecommerce website to offer many options from language to payment options.Good ecommerce platforms offer at least 10 payment gateways. To make sure that the customer does not leave the checkout without purchasing offer as many payment options as you can. Another very big mistake that ecommerce vendors do is either don’t display the security badges or they are in a very small size that people often overlook them. Make them visible on the entire website especially the checkout pages.
Final Words
Ecommerce is not as simple as 0 and 1. You will make mistakes in the beginning but don’t let that discourage you. Don’t overdo the website especially the design. Make changes with the passage of time. Make it simple and easy to follow and try to make the checkout process as simple and attractive as possible and you will be amazed by the outcomes. Learn from your mistakes and keep on improving your UX.
