With more and more people jumping online to sell something, do you have the next idea to blow them all out of the water? Ecommerce solutions are becoming incredibly simple, but at the same time, you need an ecommerce website designer to engage your customers with an attractive and usable design. Newpath web can give you a hand with this. Usability is a huge aspect of ecommerce design, so here are five hints to how you can improve it.
Easy Navigation
Come on, this is a bit pre-school, right? You got to know from countless experiences online that good websites will have easy to use navigation, while bad websites will have you tracking in loops to get the information you need. Too much information, too many menus and infinite categorisation is going to limit the amount of time users spend on a page, and probably negatively impact conversions too. You might think you’re helping, but you’re not, so just pare it back to about half a dozen header items and less than half that number of sub-tiers in each of them at max!
Straight-Line Checkouts
The worst ecommerce websites are ones that bounce users between carts, suggested items and checkout processes. If you click “checkout”, you expect to have purchased that item within five minutes, max. By trying to squeeze extra dollars out of users with add-ons or making them confirm their items on any other page than the checkout, the user will just leave. You can take people to subdomains or different websites if you want to, but straight-line checkouts are the only way to get users to engage and follow through with their purchase intent. You don’t want to lose a customer at that point in the process, I assure you.
Clear Error Messages
At any point of browsing or purchasing on an ecommerce website, if something goes wrong, you need to tell people clearly and efficiently what’s happened. With clear, direct language about what exactly happened, you can potentially reduce any negative outcome of the error. This is especially critical in checkout processes. People are very protective of their financial details, and if something goes wrong, they want to make sure everything is still secure, and more importantly, that no extra or additional charges were put through. Be clear, communicative and helpful.
Fast Load Times
This isn’t just true of ecommerce websites but certainly is the most applicable. I think we all know by now that a slow website just can’t hold on to customers. As user attention spans become increasingly shortened and fragmented, a slow anything is likely to be quickly passed for something more accessible. While speed is a fundamental issue for all websites, ecommerce relies on speed to keep that customer happy and most importantly engaged with your products. Do you want them to buy something? Give it to them fast and easy.
Search Ability
If you have literally thousands of products for sale, be sure to include some search functionality. If a user is returning to you to find that particular set of leg warmers (what? My legs are always cold), they don’t want to have to go through ten levels of categories (sorry, what category is leg warmers in?). They want to type “leg warmers” and see it right there, straight away. Give them exactly what they want, when they want it, and there ain’t no problems.
Good User Experiences Are Crucial for eCommerce Websites
You can have a crack at building your own little e-shop on Shopify, just fine. You can probably even implement these above points quite comfortably too. But you’ll forget something, I’m sure. As a leading ecommerce website designer in Melbourne, we’re great at building sites for all types of companies, big and small. Visit our ecommerce solutions page or contact us now for more information!