A shopper’s experience using your eCommerce site significantly impacts whether or not they will become a customer. Between discovering products, getting support, and completing transactions, there are many areas where things can go wrong.
When managing an eCommerce site, many retailers miss key UX elements that impact the customer experience. To remove friction and create a revenue-generating customer experience, it’s important to avoid these common UX mistakes.
Broken or Poorly Designed Search
One of the most important components of your site is how it directs customers to the products they’re seeking. Site designers often build their search functionality based on exact keyword matches, and nothing else. This can result in intent-based, semantic, or complex search queries not being returned. If site search capability isn’t fully optimized, you will lose potential customers before checkout.
Solution: Your product search functionality should account for natural language or feature-based search queries, such as “supportive white running shoes under $100” rather than just “shoes” or “white.” With thematic search, customers can browse not just by the product category, but also by its features, if search is optimized to include a wider range of product characteristics. Additionally, when customers are searching for products, you should take advantage of the opportunity to up-sell or cross-sell products to help customers find complementary items and encourage continued browsing on your site. You can do this by providing personalized autocomplete or predictive product suggestions.
Non-adaptable or Non-responsive Design
Most of your customers are likely browsing your site on a mobile device. That’s why many developers take a mobile-first design approach when starting to build a website. Your site should be accessible (and look great) on desktop computers, tablets, and smartphones. With varying screen sizes and capabilities, some site designers neglect to consider the different experiences of using a site on multiple devices.
Solution: The best way to design your site for mobile adaptability is to keep your design simple. Avoid too many pop-ups when designing for mobile; while they can be effective in increasing engagement on desktop, they are more difficult to navigate on smaller screens. Keep in mind that mobile devices have alternative capabilities to desktop computers, such as the “click-to-call" button, GPS navigation, or credit -card scanners. Don’t forget that some users still prefer to browse in landscape mode if they’re using a tablet rather than a smartphone.
Slow Site Speed
Site speed is one of the most important factors of eCommerce site performance, as this impacts whether or not users can access your site. The industry standard loading time goal is about 2.5 seconds. Slow performance can result in frustrated customers and decreased trust. For your site to remain operational with optimal loading speed, there are many considerations that can make or break performance.
Solution: Use caching to store frequent queries for easier access and less burden on your servers. Continuously monitor load times across devices to identify issues that could be holding things up. It’s important to clean up and disable apps, features, unused code, or unnecessary redirects that may be taking up space and causing delays. Optimize design assets like images and videos by keeping file sizes as small as possible, and minimize the use of complex animations to keep your site running smoothly.
Complicated Checkout
The checkout stage is where 70% of customers decide to abandon their carts before making a purchase. Customers abandon their carts for a variety of reasons, including additional costs, too many steps to check out, not enough payment options, and more.
Solution: The most important consideration is your CTAs. Make sure that your “buy” button is large, central, and clear to encourage engagement. Additionally, consider that your checkout screen should adapt not only through its design, but by your customer’s location. Allow for automatic currency conversion and offer as many payment options as possible to make completing a purchase more convenient for customers all around the world. Ensure that customers aren’t surprised by additional fees, offer guest checkout, and remove any unnecessary steps so customers can reach the finish line as soon as possible.
Complex Navigation
Your site interface should be clear and concise, as cluttered navigation can lead to confusion and discourage further engagement with your site. Navigation should be intuitive, and your site layout should be clean and fun to explore.
Solution: Avoid excess menu items, and ensure categories and pages are relevant and labeled clearly. Most customers already know what they’re looking for when they start using your site and often go straight for the search bar to find it. Make your search bar highly visible and interactive, and clearly display the “home” and “back” buttons so customers can navigate your site efficiently.
Weak Calls to Action
CTAs are an important aspect of your site design that is often overlooked. CTAs should be compelling and clear to encourage customers to complete their purchase. They should also be interactive and convey exactly what will happen next. Developers will sometimes display too many CTAs or don’t consider the importance of how they’re designed.
Solution: CTA buttons should be visible and communicate the next step after the customer takes the action. Good CTAs create a sense of urgency and use action verbs to encourage further engagement. It’s important to conduct user testing to see what works and what doesn’t for your site; this way you can truly understand how your customers will respond to your site design.
The Bottom Line
The most important advice to consider when you start a website audit is user feedback. After all, the best way to understand the needs and preferences of your customers is by simply asking them. Conduct user testing to get the full picture of where your site needs improvement and make it easy for customers to share their thoughts. Additionally, make sure you’re analyzing the effectiveness of your UX design by tracking analytics and making adjustments as needed. Finally, for help optimizing your eCommerce site for revenue growth, turn to a strategic partner with decades of experience doing just that. Virid’s unified commerce solution combines our award-winning eCommerce platform, marketAgility, with expert, ongoing support to help you reach your eCommere revenue goals. Schedule a consultation today to get the most out of your UX design and start growing.
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