Steps for Designing a Seamless User Experience for Ecommerce Websites

Marketers and owners of eCommerce businesses have increasingly turned to digital platforms as they seek an enhanced visual and usability experience for their shoppers.

As part of an effective customer engagement strategy, improving the UX design of eCommerce platforms is crucial.

Your business will increase sales and conversions if its eCommerce website design is more eye-catching; this also works to reduce cart abandonment rates.

Attention to UX design principles will place your online business in an ideal position to capitalize on global growth trends and maximize financial returns.

Statista estimates that global retail eCommerce sales hit USD 4.28 trillion in 2017 and are projected to surpass this figure by 2022.
Profiting from the surge of eCommerce solutions is impossible unless customers can be brought in through an attractive, user-friendly, and robust website design.

To effectively engage and advance customer journeys quickly, it's vital that you invest in industry-standard UX design.

This article will outline some of the most crucial UX design pinpoints that custom e-Commerce websites should implement for a better user experience.

Steps for Designing a Seamless User Experience for an E-commerce Site

Ecommerce User Experience's main aim is to understand the customer base and give them an outstanding shopping experience.

Make Navigation to Homepage or Landing Page Simple

Design principles considered best practices for ecommerce UX abound. Although we won't cover them all here, we will highlight a few.

Hick's Law states that the more options given to users, the longer it will take for them to complete tasks. When designing your landing page or homepage, this principle should be your focus.
Avoid overwhelming your visitors with too much information. While you may think you are offering them more choices by adding pop-ups, forms, and links, this actually hinders their experience and slows it down further.

- Quick View of Product

By eliminating unnecessary pages from loading, "quick views" greatly speed up shoppers' ability to locate their perfect product category. Product details should typically appear in a pop-up window above the page being viewed, with links leading directly to product pages with "Add to Cart" and "Save Wishlist" buttons prominently placed above this section.

- Filtering Products

Making decisions can be challenging with so many choices to consider, so introduce filters to help shoppers easily identify the products they desire. By narrowing their choices down and going directly to their desired range of products.

Ecommerce Product Page Layout

Once shoppers locate products of interest, help them gain more information by creating product pages to replicate an experience similar to physical product shopping. Include images, product descriptions, and any relevant details such as this closer examination.

- Create Fantastic Product Images

E-commerce offers shoppers a great way to buy products online, but without being able to physically handle or experience the item itself. Everything depends instead on what shoppers see online; therefore, providing product images that highlight all features is essential. Here is our ECommerce Website Development checklist to make sure that you have an appealing image:

• White backgrounds make product images stand out more and can fit with any color scheme or style, which makes a white one the optimal choice.

• Use large, high-quality images. Pictures sell products, and high-quality pictures are more likely to capture shoppers' attention and help them understand what they are buying. Large images give customers the ability to zoom in closer on specific details of a product's features.

• Include multiple images that depict your product from all possible angles and close-ups for better understanding. It may even be possible to create a 360-degree experience, in which users can physically move around it; VR ecommerce could then follow.

• Utilize video. Videos provide a quick way of disseminating large amounts of information quickly. Use videos to demonstrate the product and offer as many functional details as possible.

• Be consistent. Use images that complement the look and feel of the rest of your website's design across multiple pages, to create an aesthetically pleasing website experience for users. Doing this will keep everything looking neat and uncluttered - the main product image should appear across various sections including product highlights or featured items.

Provide just the necessary product details

Provide complete product information to aid shoppers in making educated purchases. Provide information such as availability in various colors or sizes, dimensions, scale chart, materials cost, warranties, etc, so as to limit questions from potential purchasers and ensure they will complete a purchase decision. The more questions customers can resolve without further investigation the greater chance there will be that they make one!

Ecommerce Checkout Design

Have you considered simplifying the payment processing for your customers in order to increase conversions and sales? Making it simpler, could increase conversions and sales significantly. Here are a few tips for making it easier for customers to pay and thus increasing sales.

Make available multiple payment methods (i.e. Apple Pay, PayPal, debit, and credit cards, as 56% of respondents to surveys expect multiple payment options on the checkout page) without forcing people to register; doing so could significantly lower conversion rates.

Your checkout page should have an intuitive design, providing guests with an effortless checkout experience. (Ideally, the fewer fields users must complete to pay the less complex it will be for users. Reassure users of security and privacy while providing a clear call to action for quick payment plans.

UX Design Solutions that improve functionality

An effective way of discouraging visitors from returning is to overwhelm them with too much information or load your page slowly, both of which can dissuade visitors from returning.

Studies conducted by experts reveal that 47% of users expect a website to load within two seconds or less.

E-commerce platforms with slow load times will succumb. According to experts, an online store making $100,000 per day may lose that much annually if its loading pages take too long to open. Even a one-second delay can cost them $2.5 Million!

Increase Your Load Speed

Slow-loading online stores can drive away customers as people have limited attention spans. According to reports, 40% of shoppers abandon websites if the pages take too long to load; you could experience higher bounce rates and abandoned carts as a result, leading to massive financial losses for your eCommerce store.

Studies have demonstrated that even one second's delay in page load time can result in 16 percent less customer satisfaction and 7 percent fewer conversions, so optimizing its loading speed to create a quicker shopping experience for customers is vital to ensure they come back again and again. You can improve website loading speed by optimizing images and product response times; by investing in web hosting; you may increase its speed by investing wisely.

Build Customer Loyalty and Trust

Offering information such as shipping options, return policy, warranty details, and product offerings can go a long way toward strengthening customer trust and increasing loyalty.

By providing essential details about your purchase, you can avoid an uncomfortable environment and lower your return rate. Free trials have become one of the trendiest E-Commerce Website Solutions.

Display a "Free Trial" offer for limited-time services such as software or training courses.

Make your customers' experience better by offering them the option to try clothes, bedding, and shoes before returning them free of charge if they do not fit their specifications.

Social proofs such as testimonials and customer reviews can help build more trust with your audience and secure more long-term loyalty for your brand.

The UX design of an eCommerce site should include an area where customers can rate services or products and read and submit reviews from other users.

Actively solicit feedback

Surveys of customer feedback are an integral component of business operations. Before any issues arise, businesses should solicit potential customer input via feedback forms on their websites to show they care what users feel or think.

Live chats are another example. Many custom eCommerce websites now include this option to welcome visitors and chat with agents while browsing. It adds a personal touch.

Positioning your brand and customer experience are crucial components of business success, whether your goal is to attract new customers or strengthen existing customer loyalty.
What makes all this special is its lasting and rewarding results over time.

Conclusion

UX design allows businesses to develop user-friendly pages that increase engagement, conversions, and brand image.
Customers visit your website in six steps: identifying it, exploring product catalogs, selecting and comparing items, adding one to their cart, checking out, and finalizing an order.
Custom ECommerce Development providers should take into account customer needs at every step, while maintaining strong branding, easy navigation, and visually striking yet easily understandable menus with clear data representation.
For maximum return on investment, implement these top UX step guide into your custom eCommerce solution. These strategies include brand positioning, optimization of design, showcasing similar products, adding CTA buttons, and providing honest product reviews. By featuring customer testimonials and product reviews, you can increase trust and build loyalty among your audience. Furthermore, ensure a smooth checkout process.