March 27, 2024

How to Improve User Experience? End-User Experience Monitoring in Online Stores

Nadya Bakhur

Researcher, Technical Writer

Ecommerce

Top 5 UX Improvement Techniques for E-commerce

Nadya Bakhur

Researcher, Technical Writer

Ecommerce

Top 5 UX Improvement Techniques for E-commerce

From the structure of your online storefront to the details of product descriptions, the user experience (UX) you have built is often critical for making purchasing decisions. Puzzling websites with unattractive designs make users leave and search for better options.

Below, we explain why a strong user experience strategy in ecommerce is critical and provide five small useful tips to improve a web store’s usability. We understand how important it is for companies to remain creative in 2022 to attract attention and turn online visitors into consumers. That is why we’ve updated our article and suggest you the key elements of user experience to enhance.

Introduction: End-User Experience and eCommerce Trends Worldwide

The global online retail market faces immense growth. By 2023, total sales in ecommerce are expected to rise to $6.5 trillion, which is almost double the results of the previous year.

Below you can view the chart created by Statista, showing the actual and forecast volume of the ecommerce market.

To grab a piece of this pie and generate profit, businesses involved in selling products online need to capitalize on attracting new visitors to their websites and online storefronts. Besides, it becomes critical to offer excellent end user experience to retain existing customers through delivering the same quality as ever before.

However, attractive website design alone is not the ultimate solution. Today, constant end-user experience monitoring helps to understand what you need to improve to provide web store visitors with intuitive navigation. The completion of potential shopper goals and overall efficiency of the customer journey depends largely on the user experience.

What is eCommerce UX and Why Improve User Experience?

Ecommerce UX is a term used to define the whole scope of users’ interactions with an online store, ecommerce website, or an m-commerce app through various devices and various screen sizes.

To get an outline of the key benefits of optimizing a web store for handheld devices, check our article M-Commerce Evolution and Magento Mobile App Development.

The two main reasons why we are covering the topic of the importance of digital user experience for ecommerce include:

  • Good UX increases the chance of a visitor-to-customer conversion

A messy, poorly organized brick-and-mortar store would hardly attract potential loyal customers to a brand. The same goes for shopping online.

The better a web store’s UX is and the more clear the ecommerce filter navigation system is the bigger number of customers are satisfied with the shopping process and the more willing they will be to recommend it.

“If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.”

– Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and ecommerce expert.

Intuitive shopping process and clear product discovery keep buyers on your website longer and potentially ready to spend more.

  • Good user experience management helps retain customers and improves your brand awareness

Retaining and increasing customer return rate is one of the most important goals when running an online store. Optimizing the UX according to the needs, expectations, and shopping behavior of your target audience today becomes key to sustaining loyalty.

A web store that is easy-to-navigate and provides seamless shopping and checkout experience will outperform the most sophisticated website design.

How To Improve User Experience In eCommerce?

The recent data collected in Adobe “Digital Trends” report proves the necessity and importance of ecommerce UX. The above chart shows the high position of customer experience optimization with regard to other strategies adopted by organizations for customer loyalty boost.

Still, online merchants question the effectiveness of ecommerce UX and chances of good returns on investments out of lack of knowledge and experience with tools that work.

Below we suggest ecommerce UX best practices to be followed in the first place for customer experience improvement and profit gain.

1. Apply responsive design techniques

Consumers’ behavior has changed with time. Today more and more people are likely to shop through handheld devices. eMarketer’s latest estimates show that the share of sales done on mobile devices makes 70.4% of all ecommerce sales in 2020.

What does it mean for ecommerce business owners?

Applying responsive design best practice is a must step to reach the “smartphone” audience today. It is an opportunity you should not miss. In our article M-Commerce Evolution and Magento Mobile App Development we give the information on what you can do to stay engaged with your customers mobile devices in much more detail.

Pop in there to collect more info on the topic.

2. Add a customer review section

According to Oberlo research, in 2020, 9 out of 10 consumers look through reviews before making a purchase. Consumers tend to trust one another’s opinion.

By adding a dedicated section where consumers can share their opinions on products without leaving your website or providing a customer review template you create a powerful testimonial tool to easily capture feedback.

This is beneficial for both a customer and an online store owner. Customers gain more insights into products and services while web store owners get an opportunity to optimize storefront’s selection according to consumers’ real, genuine opinions.

3. Provide an opportunity to create wish-lists

Cart abandonment was and continues to be an issue and a headache of web store owners. One of the reasons for the customers to leave the check out section without completing the deal is inability to add a product to wish-list. The feature often gets omitted.

The pressure to complete a purchase immediately is not what consumers appreciate. Instead, through adding an item to a wish-list customers gain time to think the purchase over. As a result, the chance of converting a wish-list item into a purchased item increases.

To find out more about the tactics helping to reduce the cart abandonment rate of your online store, look through our To-Do List for Magento 2 Checkout Page with 10 working solutions.

4. Add a filter button

Wide variety of products is hard to navigate without ecommerce search filters. Good filters or other types of sorting functionality will be warmly welcomed by customers in this case. An opportunity to apply filter helps to narrow in on the specific item they’re searching for and find items based on certain features like size or colour.

To make the most out of the ecommerce filters ux you can:

  • Select the right location. No matter if you use a horizontal filter bar or a sidebar, make sure a filter button is easy-to-find and provides an opportunity to adjust the parameters;
  • Choose the best filter design and presentation. Narrow down the choice of filters displayed to the most relevant fields, like price, brand, size, or colour. All of the rest are better to remain present and available but “hidden” behind the “Show more” button;
  • Enable multiple choice. Limiting your customers with one only colour or size option possible would be a bad idea for sure. By allowing them to “tick” several options at once you enable freedom of choice;
  • Show filters currently applied. To deliver the utmost ecommerce filter UX, remind your customers about the filtering options applied at the moment. Successful practices of ecommerce UX suggest using the reminders either right above the product list or aside.

5. Provide impeccable experience to ALL

User and shopping experience of people with disabilities should not go unnoticed. At NEKLO, we believe that absence of limits is the main feature of online shopping. Why not try to win them all?

By bringing a web store closer to shoppers with disabilities you get a new audience that you wouldn’t get through so easily by a brick-and-mortar store.

Meeting all the requirements provided by Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) may seem challenging, but it pays off. The tactic has proved to raise brand awareness and excel competitors. It works particularly well if applied in the ecommerce niche.

Summing Up

The process of improving ecommerce UX on your website influences the way your website’s visitors feel directly. Through a thorough investigation of your website’s or online store’s UX design flaws, you can get valuable insight into the best ways to deliver the feelings of being welcomed and cared for to your customers.

Our specialists can assist you in identifying the ways to improve the UX on your website and help your business grow. Contact us through the form on our website or reach out to Vicky Kurilchik, our sales representative, directly, to get a consultation about our UI/UX website design services and start making your customers happier!