Redesigning a website can be as tiresome and problematic as creating a new site altogether, if not more so. The problem has more to do with the front-end (User experience and User Interface) than fixing a bug in the CMS backend. The situation is even worse when it comes to eCommerce websites.
Many eCommerce websites miss the mark with UX/UI aspects of the redesign process, and some actually end up worse than before the redesign.
We want to help your eCommerce website design stand-out in 2018. The following tips will help you in any ecommerce redesign project:
- Use Direct Marketing Information on the Homepage
The attention span of the average website visitor is 10 seconds. If they aren’t hooked within 10 seconds of visiting your website, you are already missing them.
The best way to mitigate this problem is to sell as quickly as possible; right from the homepage. Gone are the days where selling was limited to only the “shop” or sales page section of your website. Today, everything from the website’s header to the footer are creative locations to sell. That’s why you should use call-to-actions throughout your website.
- Simplify The Checkout Process
After a prospective buyer has added an item to their cart on your eCommerce website and is ready to place an order, the next “logical” thing to do is to have them create an account or log in to their registered account. Some eCommerce websites even bar you from adding an item in the first place unless you are logged in.
Yes, you want to gather data about the buyer. But, what do you do when a prospective customer just wants to buy and not to have an account? At that point, you risk losing the sale while attempting to get a user’s registration.
Registration on your eCommerce website should be as simple as logging in via social media or simply entering their email. If possible, you can allow guests to buy and register later.
- Use High Quality, Zoom-enabled Images
As an online shop, the closest a customer can get to see your products is to have great photos of them. It is important to ensure that you are using the highest quality photos available for each product.
Similarly, important is implementing technologies that enable the customer to zoom in and out of the photos to have a near-reality experience with your products. You should use multiple photos of a product taken from different angles.
- Use of Alerts to Offer Coupons and Promo Codes
If you have a special discount for new customers, returning customers or customers that meet a specific requirement, they should be displayed as early as possible, probably on top of the products or services page.
Also, there should be clear and specific inscriptions on how to redeem these coupons such as “Use 20NEWOFF To Get 20% Off New Orders”. These types of offers will surely convert many visitors and help you get new customers.
- Display Customer Reviews Correctly
If you have reviews from previous customers who have bought your products or services, you want to display them to win the trust of new customers, as well as gain some social currency from them. Reviews work as social proofs and customers trust reviews as much as personal recommendations.
The issue now is where and how to display the reviews. One great place to display customer reviews is immediately below the product description. They should ideally come along with photos, names and short information about the customer.
- Make It Easy to Reach You
What is the point of buying from a shop that you can barely contact or connect with? You don’t have to limit your active email addresses and phone numbers to your contact page.
You want to make your phone number appears right at the top or on the footer of the page and add “tap to call” or “click to email” features so that mobile users can call or email you respectively should they encounter any difficulty.
- Employ Sorting and Filtering Capabilities
You obviously don’t want your customers to go through several search results pages to get to their desired item. Help them with a responsive and user-friendly “filter” and/or “sort” section at the top of the search results page to help them find what they seek as fast and easy as possible. Sorting by price and filtering by product categories are two must-have features for any ecommerce site.
- Add “Recently Bought” And “Recently Viewed” Sections to the User Dashboard
Some customers may buy the exact same item over and over again. Save these customers some time by not forcing them to search for the same item each time.
A section for recently bought items and recently viewed items can be added to users’ dashboards so that they see these items immediately when they log in to begin their buying process.
- Allow Shareable Wishlist’s and Ordered Items
It’s likely that most of your customers will have discovered your website by chance. Why not make it easy for these “by-chance” customers to refer you to their friends and loved ones on social media?
By enabling a user-friendly shareable Wishlist or ordered items feature to work immediately, when an item is added to Wishlist or bought you get a free marketing opportunity within your customers’ network.
- Think Mobile
Hopefully, you realise the need to make your eCommerce website mobile-friendly. You really don’t need an expensive mobile app to think and go “mobile”. A well-designed responsive site should be enough.
By thinking mobile, you should be minimising content that may be “irrelevant” or can be hidden for mobile users and focusing more on how to make them buy from you with ease.
Putting it all together, we hope that you have learned some useful UX/UI tips, tricks and techniques from the above list that you can implement in your eCommerce website to increase sales and reach more customers.