Online sales of products and services are known as eCommerce. It offers several advantages to buyers and sellers alike, including ease, lower costs, and a bigger audience.
To achieve success and consumer pleasure, eCommerce also adheres to several best practices. These include building a reliable website, utilizing eye-catching imagery, providing a variety of filters, reducing load times, and instilling scarcity. In this post, we will delve deeper into these eCommerce best practices.
Designing Ecommerce UX Best Practices
Put Function Before All Else
Because showy features divert customers and slow down your website, some of gorgeous online retailers may also be among the worst converters.
- When used needlessly, parallax scrolling can be annoying.
- Automatic picture sliders frequently fail as calls to action and can be slow to load and difficult to read.
- In keeping with their name, ghost buttons frequently appear unclickable and are disregarded.
- Video backdrops can be attention-stealing and increase load times, which will slow down your website.
Create Sales Funnels Instead of Websites
To make e-commerce UX as self-serve as feasible, one of the objectives is to lower rates of bounces, customer support inquiries, and abandoned carts.
The experience must take into account the diverse circumstances of its consumers. Some may be customers attempting to access your About page to find out more about your company. Some of them may be recent clients who are enquiring about your return policy.
However, for many e-commerce companies, attracting new customers through advertising, SEO (search engine optimization), and other scalable advertising methods will take precedence.
- Beginner online retailers sometimes create their home pages and product pages before considering how to increase visitors to them through advertisements, emails, SEO, etc.
- A congruent experience with where customers are starting is designed by experienced merchants after they establish sales funnels that begin with channels and campaigns.
The merchandise page:
- Do not assume that a user has seen the homepage and is familiar with the brand.
- Putting the pricing and call to action right at the top, making it simple for visitors to return and purchase.
- As the user scrolls, explain how the product’s many benefits and use cases support its higher price tag (often, the more specialized or high-end a product is, the more you’ll need to inform the consumer).
- Includes client testimonials as social proof toward the finish line
- and ends with a suggestion for further products
User-Centered Copy Comes First, Followed by Design
You must first comprehend your target audience, their objectives, and your objectives for them before you begin writing. Your copy will fall flat without doing some consumer research to understand their context.
For your marketing:
Understanding whether your marketing is attracting attention or achieving its intended purpose is one technique to enter your users’ heads:
Catching the eye: Imagine a user scrolling through their social media feed, not necessarily looking to buy anything right then. For example, through a video ad or a social network post, pique their curiosity. This passive discovery is a key aspect of social commerce, where integrating social media into the shopping experience can lead to spontaneous purchases and higher engagement.
Embed Instagram feed to seamlessly showcase products and inspire purchase decisions. Utilizing audience segmentation and targeting, you can concentrate on people who exhibit some characteristics that show they are ready for your offer.
Detecting intent: The customer is actively looking for something you have to offer. The search engine queries users enter reflect their aim. To further comprehend this intent and adjust your content’s or website’s SEO, perform keyword research.
For your ecommerce website
Copy creates expectations and delivers on them at every stage of a consistent user experience:
- Your navigation menus’ headings and layout (Home, Shop, About, etc.)
- To create a hyperlink in blog articles, you utilize anchor text (such as “how to begin setting up an online store”).
- Copy for buttons that explain the action that will be taken when they are clicked (such as “Learn more” or “Claim Free Gift”).
- Content on the page above the fold that was similar to the text in the advertisement they clicked on, enticing them to scroll
- Product information that helps the user comprehend everything they “Add to the cart” should be provided on each product page, such as features, sizing conversions, delivery estimates, variants, and options.
Make the User-Friendly Online Stores Navigation
We frequently use autopilot to navigate web pages and the internet in general. We click on anything we feel will satisfy our desires the quickest without carefully considering what we are doing or why.
Because of this, website navigation must be simple for consumers to understand and encompass much more than just the links you put in the menu. You must be able to quickly guide a user’s experience across the website and anticipate needs that they might not even be aware of.
This challenge underscores the role of user experience consultants, who are essential in crafting navigation systems that facilitate intuitive user paths and reduce frustration.
The most noticeable navigation choices are:
- Sticky Search header with the advice to “Find something you’ll love!” (The user’s scrolling causes the main menu to vanish yet the search bar remains.)
- Informational links to the About It Works and About Us pages are included in the navigation menu, some of which can be selected to expand a submenu.
- Users who, whether intentionally or unintentionally, are now using size as a significant factor in their buying decisions can access collections lists depending on size.
Always Take Mobile Devices’ User Experience (UX) Into Account
The purchasing experience on a laptop vs. a smartphone or other mobile device differs greatly. On a smartphone, items are reorganized, the menu for navigation is hidden inside a hamburger icon, and users can navigate, zoom, and slide with their fingers rather than a mouse. Users tap instead of clicking on these elements.
One of the main impediments to online shopping used to be the inability to pay on mobile devices. An unexpected text was all it needed to cause an abandoned checkout because you had to enter your shipping information and payment card information by repeatedly tapping on a tiny keypad.
Users now have the choice of an expedited check where their delivery and payment information is already inputted thanks to the abundance of mobile payment alternatives available, including Shop Pay, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Meta Pay, PayPal, and more.
For Long-Term Ecommerce Best Practice Strategies
It’s crucial to keep an eye on the short and long-term when managing an e-commerce store. You can do it with the help of the advice in this section.
1. Search Engine Optimization
The process of making your website search engine-friendly is known as SEO. The objective is to elevate your website’s position in relevant keyword and phrase searches.
Title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags are just a few of the on-page SEO adjustments you may make to your website (which we also covered in our short-term tactics).
- Changes to the website’s copy
- Planning and strategy for content
- User experience (UX) enhancements
- Structured data increases website speed
On the other hand, off-page SEO covers all of the adjustments you may make to your website. This includes activities like connection-building and participation in social media.
- Link creation
- Content marketing
- Social media participation
- Regional SEO
2. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a form of paid promotion in which you have the privilege of having your ads appear in search results. One of the greatest benefits of this is that there may be a lower upfront cost because you only pay if somebody clicks on your advertisement.
Although Google Ads is the most widely used PPC platform, PPC advertising is available on Instagram, Facebook, and other networking sites.
When managing PPC campaigns, bear the following in mind:
- Ads on your website and in your catalog should be pertinent.
- Your ads should be compelling and well-written.
- You must monitor the conversions you have so you can determine what is effective.
- For discovering the best-performing ads, A/B testing is essential.
3. Content Strategy
The plan for how you will produce and distribute information is called a content strategy. It covers issues including the kind of material you will produce, the frequency of publication and the location of publication.
It’s critical to develop a thoughtful content strategy for two reasons in particular:
- It aids in bringing in more clients and website traffic.
- It facilitates the development of your audience’s credibility and trust.
There are many different types of content, including blog articles, infographics, e-books, and more. The secret is to produce valuable material that is pertinent to your target audience.
4. Retargeting
Retargeting can take many different shapes in e-commerce. But generally speaking, it’s a technique to get in touch with website visitors who have not become clients.
Retargeting online users can be done in a variety of ways. The most popular method is via cookies. When a user visits a website, a cookie is a little bit of data that is stored on the user’s computer.
Cookies are used to track website visitors and deliver them appropriate ads by retargeting companies like AdRoll and PerfectAudience.
5. Email Marketing
Retargeting is generally a part of email marketing, although it deserves to be mentioned separately as an ecommerce marketing tactic.
Building ties with your customers is easy when you use email marketing. Additionally, it’s a fantastic approach to boost sales and brand recognition.
Email marketing can be used in a variety of ways, including the distribution of newsletters, limited-time offers, and product suggestions.
The following are some pointers for managing email marketing campaigns:
- Short and uncomplicated is best.
- Don’t go overboard
- Make it your own
- Put a call to action in
- Test repeatedly
FAQs
How Can I Improve the User Experience on My Ecommerce Site?
To improve the user experience on your ecommerce site, you can focus on creating a user-friendly interface, making it easy for customers to find what they’re looking for, implementing a search bar, optimizing the website for mobile devices, and providing clear navigation throughout the site.
What Can I Do to Reduce Cart Abandonment on My Ecommerce Website?
To reduce cart abandonment on your ecommerce website, you can simplify the checkout process, offer multiple payment options, provide clear information about shipping costs and delivery times, and send follow-up emails to remind customers about their abandoned carts.
How Important Is the First Impression of an Ecommerce Website?
The first impression of an ecommerce website is crucial, as it can determine whether a visitor will stay or leave. A well-designed and visually appealing website can build trust and make customers more likely to explore further and purchase.
What Role Does Customer Support Play in the Success of an Ecommerce Business?
Customer support plays a vital role in the success of an ecommerce business. Providing timely and helpful customer support can enhance the shopping experience, build customer loyalty, and increase the chances of repeat purchases.
How Can I Improve the Conversion Rate on My Ecommerce Site?
To improve the conversion rate on your eCommerce site, you can focus on optimizing the product pages, offering clear and compelling value propositions, providing easy and secure checkout options, and leveraging customer reviews and testimonials.
What Are the Key Elements of a Successful Ecommerce Website?
Some key elements of a successful eCommerce website include a well-designed and visually appealing homepage, easy navigation, high-quality product images and descriptions, a streamlined checkout process, effective marketing strategies, and excellent customer support.
Wrap-Up
E-commerce is a great way to sell online, but it necessitates a few tactics to stand out and get clients. You can build a website that is quick, easy to use, and reliable by adhering to the ecommerce best practices we outlined.
