Top UX tips to increase sales on your e- commerce website

Running a well-rounded e-commerce website is a crucial game and you have to win it all all cost because, honestly, a lot is at stake! The success, sales, and revenue growth of your entire business depends on how well your e-commerce website attracts the customer, delivers your story and converts them into potential customers.

Image source: https://designshack.net

To compete in the ecommerce space, make sure you offer a perfectly executed content marketing strategy, user-friendly design, a responsive websites, and the best SEO practices to make your website stand out amongst the competition. 

According to Nielson Norman Group, the world leaders in Research-Based User Experience there are more than 800 design guidelines to improve the useability of your e-commerce stores. Using even two to three designs on your site, you can greatly improve the outcomes of your store. 

Today we will be talking about the UX design of your store and here is a solid recipe of how to ace your store’s UX design: 

1. Functionality before beauty

According to the stats, first-impressions of an online store is 94% design related which is why you need to find a balance between the functionality of the website and its aesthetic look. There is no doubt that an aesthetically pleasing website plays a role in generating customers but the website design has to be functional as well. 

Avoid using fancy designs and short-term trending designs. Even if you use them, stay up-to-date with the latest trends and manage them accordingly. Practices like using parallax scrolling, automatic image sliders, autoplay videos, video backgrounds, and hidden navigation buttons (though quite fancy) must be avoided to ensure user’s comfort and satisfaction. A good example of functional web design is of Vertty. The website focuses on delivering the product information and images avoiding the use of all other distractions. Also, Bellroy’s website does a great job in keeping the navigation bar on the top prioritising the user’s comfort and website functionality pairing them up with great visual content display strategy. 

2. How about using powerful images and words?

Telegenics marketing believes in showing strength and dedication through the use of powerful images and words, and it turns out that it is one of the successful UX design changes that you can make.

Many different online stores use this technique but farmdrop’s homepage explains it in the best possible way. Their use of high-quality imagery is fantastic. To increase the sales of your e-commerce business, get hold of professional, HD quality, colourful, and perfect size images. Also, make them interactive. A study done by UPS suggests that only 70% of customers are okay with the zoom in ability of the product image. 

Find out such key factors that help in improving the image quality and apply them in your e-stores. Another helpful tip in this regard is to stop using the stock photos that simply jazz up the web pages as they are of no good website conversion. Instead, use photos that offer information and depict the brand’s authenticity and diversity.     

3. Personalisation is in demand

Image source: https://www.retailcustomerexperience.com

Another top tip to improve conversions is to offer personalised suggestions to the viewers based on their past behaviour in order to build a meaningful relation with them. Some simple and easy ways of UX personalization are as follows:

• Starting a personalised newsletter service
• Offering ‘customers who bought this also viewed’ section
• Adding a trending section
• Customised product recommendation
• Extensive customer reviews section and so on

The Gramography website portrays this practise by allowing the customers to log in with their Instagram account so that they can buy personalised products with the use of Insta photos. How cool is that? Giving the e-store customers exactly what they want!  

4. Answer before the users can question 

According to a report, 90% of the customer go to the brand’s website and make an informed purchase without having to get in touch with the customer service in any way. How can you implement this smart UX design tip in your e-store? Here is how to do it:

• Add a precise yet useful FAQ section on your web page answering questions related to common queries like shipping service, return policies, and refund. Try to answer as many questions as anyone can ask about your brand. 
• Add in chatbots to offer prompt customer care service
• Go for the onsite order tracking service so that the customers are in the know of where their product is in the supply chain
• Give richer product description to the viewers

5. Responsive websites are the best websites

Image source: https://bigtuna.com/

Oh and how can we forget the practise of making the websites responsive to different display screens?  You can’t afford to risk sales! And how are they at risk if your e-commerce store is not responsive?

Well, according to eMarketers, in 2021, mobile e-commerce would make up almost three quarters (72.9 percent) of e-commerce sales. Without a website design that is responsive to mobile screens, you cannot expect to make sales through mobile phones because people shop only from responsive and quick loading websites. Thus, invest time and effort, and retest the responsiveness of the banners, images, widgets and other things in your website design repeatedly for best results. 

6. Keep checkouts simple

This tip heavily increases your sales!

Try to keep your checkout process as simple as possible. Remove all kinds of distractions from the checkout process page, keep the required information to a minimal and store it keeping in mind the GDPR. Also, allow guest checkout on your e-commerce website as not many people are willing to share their personal information with the e-stores.  

Conclusion 

So far we have focussed on the user experience design tips of the e-commerce stores that offer a meaningful and relevant experience to the customers. This is what helps in increasing the conversions and sales profit of your store. According to statistics, 38% of online shoppers leave websites that have poor UX design.  To make sure this does not happen to your e-store, follow the tips given above and enjoy the outcome! 

If you need help optimising your ecommerce website, contact us today for advice.

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Author bio: "Bilal Imtiaz is an Online Marketing Specialist with 1.5 years of experience in Digital Media and is currently SEO Executive at Techvando, a leading e-commerce web design and development agency. Over the years, Techvando has successfully delivered projects in Magento, WordPress, WooCommerce, Joomla and other CMS/shopping cart platforms. You can find him on LinkedIn."