Presently, in the year 2017, almost every prominent retailer has an online presence. What is more insightful is that new emerging companies are strictly choosing to only have an online presence. As more customers look towards eCommerce sites to satisfy shopping needs, retailers need to ensure their UX (user experience) design is keeping and converting those customers.
Providing excellent UX to an eCommerce site means extensive research and user testing. For most businesses, in order to achieve this, they will need the assistance of a UX design service. But for now, here are the essentials of UX in relation to eCommerce to keep in mind when making improvements to your website.
What is UX Design?
UX refers to the overall user experience in a website or mobile app. UX is a concept that has many dimensions and refers to a lot of areas that web designers and developers need to keep in mind. Some of the contributing factors of UX include the usability, accessibility, information architecture, visual design, and interaction design.
The goal of UX design, specifically in eCommerce, is to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty provided by the interaction of the website or app. The combination of all the factors of UX need to be thoroughly researched and tested in order to make sure site is providing an overall good user experience.
Although this process could be ambiguous and may seem simple on the surface, it is in the testing and implementation of variables that the complexity of the user experience is exposed.
eCommerce Stores Need to Have a UX Focus
The user experience of a site can have a significant impact on critical factors that lead to the overall success of an eCommerce site. For instance, if you are looking at your data and seeing a high bounce rating or navigational issues, it may be an indication that the site has poor UX.
Designing a website to match the user’s goals of the site will help keep the user enticed on the page and closer to a conversion. Two of the main reasons of a bounce is if the load time for a page is noticeably long or if it is difficult to find the desired products.
The navigational function is also a crucial component to an eCommerce site that needs to be redesigned in way that improves the customer’s journey. For example, if the user is having trouble finding the shopping cart or correctly inputting payment information, it may result in frustration and a loss of conversion.
Being aware of where the user is struggling on the site and then proceeding to improve that feature will have a positive result on the rate of conversions.
Understanding your customers is a key component in the overall success of an eCommerce site. Progressively, more companies are noticing this need and are providing features to help eCommerce stores gain more knowledge of their customer base. For example, Springbot, allows you to use data about your customers in order to more effectively target them and provide them with a great experience to grow overall sales.
Better UX Means Higher ROI
For eCommerce the typical unit of measurement every business goes back to is ROI. Thus, in order to accentuate the importance of UX for a website, relating back to the ROI of UX is critical.
The three main results of UX that can produce an overall high ROI include increased conversions, increased loyalty, and reduced development inefficiencies.
According to Codal, a full stack UX design agency, UX research and design can return a higher ROI than the money saved by skipping the step altogether. One statistic to feature this outcome is that 67% of users are more likely to purchase from a mobile friendly website. The significance of this data point is there is a high correlation between the user friendliness of a website and the rate of conversions.
Having a good UX will also encourage the users to keep coming back to the site. It has been discovered that 88% of consumers are less likely to come back to a site if they have an overall bad experience and 75% of judgments made on website credibility is based on the overall aesthetic of the website.
Lastly, the UX of a site should help reduce development inefficiencies. Through proper UX research and design can an eCommerce site avoid any additional unnecessary work with later developments.
Conclusion
It is when the UX is designed and researched properly that it can help boost traffic and conversions to any eCommerce site.
Customer’s have an array of options to choose from when deciding to shop online. Moreover, users today are trained to look for alternative stores if the current site is creating struggle or a sense of frustration. Thus, it is in the benefit of the eCommerce to hire a UX design company to ensure a good user experience for their customers.
About the Author
Victoria Darling is the Creative Strategist at Codal, an app development and UX design company.
