5 Tips To Improve Your Customers User Experience

In the current economic climate and social distancing, more and more people are reliant upon online shopping and eCommerce Solutions to get their necessities. As such, it's more important than ever that your online store provides your customers with a good user experience.

5 Tips To Improve Your Customers' User Experience

1. Mobile Friendly Design

In our 21st century society, more and more shoppers are choosing to buy products online on their smartphones. With the current social distancing measures in place, and people not leaving their homes, it's essential that you reach your customers on their preferred device.

This means that you need to ensure that your website is optimised for mobile friendly design. This means, important information should always be kept at the top of the page in plain text, making it easy for the customer to read. Additionally, you should test your website on devices with small screens, ensuring that the information displayed is easy to read and understand no matter the screen size the user is using.

2. Improve Your Checkout Process
You could have the best product pages in the world, but if your checkout process is confusing and difficult to use, you're going to miss out on sales. First things first, it's crucial that you provide as much information as possible without being difficult to understand. This could be done via a simple to understand, 3 step progress, such as shipping info, payment details, then finally the review and place order page.

It's also highly advisable that you add a wide variety of payment methods, especially methods of paying that are often used on smartphones. This includes payment methods such as PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Wallet.

3. Optimise Your Website Navigation
First things first, it's important that you don't try to reinvent the wheel. Instead, look at your competitors' websites and see what they do well, then work to do it better. For example, familiar navigation options such as segmenting your products into things such as type or design. It's also a good idea to use subcategories under multiple categories; this keeps things neat and tidy, without making it difficult for the user to access them.

It's also important to enhance the site speed, after all if users have to wait a long time for a page to load, it's understandable that they will want to look elsewhere, for a better online store that works faster. According to research from Hubspot a delay of 1 second translated into a 7% reduction in conversions, additionally usability factors like load speed directly impact customer loyalty, clearly demonstrating the importance of site speed to the user experience. After all, the better your website performs, the more satisfied the user will be. One way that you can alter your web design to improve site speed is to say farewell to parallel scrolling as this design choice has a serious impact on the loading speed of your website.

4. Embrace Minimalist Web Design
Like anything else in life, it's important not to overcomplicate things, the KISS principle is very appropriate with regards to eCommerce solutions. One way that you can Keep It Simple Stupid is by embracing minimalist web design. This makes it very easy for the user to interact with your online store and complete their purchase. You could achieve this through hidden navigation,which is a style of design that places user experience above all else. Navigation tools fade into the background, only appearing as and when they are needed.

5. Use High Quality Images

When shopping online your product images are one of the main ways that you communicate value and quality to your customers. Similar to how physical stores must have tidy and attractive store shelves with product on display, online store must have high quality images to clearly show the customer the product that is available for purchase.

One great way that you can improve your customers' experience on your website is to enlarge your images. For example, Skinner Auctions (of Antique Roadshow Fame) increased their images from 250 pixels across to 350 pixels and this resulted in 63% more users starting the bidding process, and 329% more site visitors completing the process and placing a bid. This means that the larger image helps customers remain excited about the product and can motivate purchases.

Enhance Your Website's User Experience With Assistance From The Advansys Web Design Team

Thanks to over two decades of experience, the Advansys team have the skills and talents required to design and develop websites that are fast loading and functional; catering to adiverse range of retail businesses, including jewellery, cosmetics, food &drink, and more.

We're also highly experienced in the world of digital marketing; our team can help you to better interact with your customers and build stronger relationships with them. We can also provide Search Engine Optimisation services to help you rank higher in search engines, including an in-depth analysis of your entire website.

If you're interested in any of our eCommerce services, get in touch with a member of staff; we'll be happy to assist you with your enquiry and answer any questions you may have. To speak to a member of our team, please call 0118 380 0201, our lines are open Monday to Friday 9 am to 5:30 pm. Alternatively you can send your questions to us by email at sales@advansys.com.