Even before 2020, online shopping was a popular alternative to physical stores. However, in recent years, ecommerce website design has been taken to a whole new level.
From the reported 3.6 million e-commerce sites in the United States in 2019, that number rose to 9.5 million this year, with numbers expected to continue to soar. And that’s just in the US – globally, e-commerce saw more than 200 percent year-on-year growth in 2021. As a society we have reached the e-commerce frontier and there is no turning back.
So the question inevitably arises: how can you, as an e-commerce entrepreneur, set your website apart from the surging competition?
The key is in the customer experience. And the key to a great CX is great design.
Here are four keys to ecommerce website design that will improve the experience for your customers.
The fewer clicks, the better
We’ve all had the experience of deciding to buy something and embarking on the process, only to find that the process was far more complicated than we thought.
Personally, I’ve been to more than one website where I thought I’d hit that last “buy” button, only to find that there were still more options that needed to be sorted through before it was all said and done. I’m not saying options are a bad thing; After all, customers want to feel like their purchases can be tailored to them.
What I’m saying is that if you’ve ever seen a product review that says, “I thought I ordered the blue but got the black instead,” chances are you’re just buying too many Clicks were required procedures.
When it comes to ecommerce website design, ideally it should involve as few clicks as possible. This means overhauling and overhauling your website’s brand experience design, especially when adding more product options to streamline the shopping and buying process.
The number of clicks required may vary based on site, product selection, and other factors. Nike sets good standards, with seven clicks from the main page to a successful purchase. Amazon can have more than ten clicks. The more pages to load, the more clicks to make, the more engagement is required of your customer—and the more likely they are to reconsider not only their user experience, but their purchase decision from the start.
Optimize your website search
Here’s another experience I’ve had that you’ve probably had to: trying (and failing) to find a certain type of product on an ecommerce site, only to have it backlinked to elsewhere find. Why didn’t it show up in my keyword search? what am i missing
As a customer, it’s an incredibly frustrating experience.
An optimized and user-friendly site search is consistently linked to a better customer experience. While some research suggests that only about 30 percent of customers consistently use site search for e-commerce, this segment is about six times more likely to convert, tends to spend more, and can account for about 14 percent of all business revenue. In a nutshell, if you’re looking for something and you actually find it, you’re more likely to complete the buying process. It’s one of those cases where a good CX is great for the business.
Some valuable ways to optimize your website search are:
- Place the search box front and center. It’s more common to hide it in the top-right corner, but if you get it right below the middle of your website header, the customer is more likely to actually use it.
- Use a specific but balanced filter system. You don’t want the search results to be too broad, otherwise the visitor will have to constantly scroll through the results. You also don’t want there to be too many options, otherwise the visitor could become overwhelmed. Make sure your visitor can select multiple filters at once; They are more likely to lose interest and leave the company if they have to go through the process for every possible variation.
- Integrate an intelligent search with autocomplete and suggested search terms. I would recommend adding personalized search suggestions as well, especially for your returning customers who have set up an account with you and who you have been able to gather important information about.
Be at beck and call
Ideally, your customer base is wide open. You could get website visitors from all over the country – maybe from all over the world – any time of the day, seven days a week. Consistent uptime is a challenge, especially for a startup or smaller ecommerce brand — but it’s a critical factor for great CX.
Luckily, smart bots are getting better and better, which means you can integrate a chat agent on your website to handle most customer interactions, and bring in a human agent when needed. Software like Dashly and LiveChat integrate agents with chatbots; Chatfuel, Pandorabots and DialogFlow are highly recommended intelligent chatbot programs.
If you’re like me, you’re more likely to use live chat — whether with intelligent chatbots or with a real live agent — on websites to troubleshoot or process a return. Of course, these are important for a good customer experience, because you want your website visitors to know that you are there for them.
But I would like to highlight the proactive selling with live agents: reaching out from start to finish to connect as soon as the prospect lands on the site, offer suggestions, answer questions and offer any help needed.
Nearly 40 percent of customers make a purchase after speaking with an agent who provides an enhanced customer experience. So, again, this is an important feature of ecommerce website design that is beneficial not only for the customer but also for the brand.
Availability is a big plus for good CX.
Combining reliability with adaptability
My final tip for improving the CX of your ecommerce website design is not just to be reliable — a brand they can trust, one that gives them the products they want, and customer service they know they will love become – but also to be adaptable.
From a design perspective, the main component is gathering and responding to feedback from your customers. After all, the website is there to accommodate them. CX doesn’t mean much if you don’t have customers.
Invite comments, suggestions, questions, and features they’d like to see – it’s also a great way to engage with them on other platforms, such as Facebook. B. social media, to get in touch and generate another investment on their part.
Once you have that feedback, you should incorporate suggestions that will make the customer experience tighter, faster, and more enjoyable.
Consistently putting your customers’ experience first creates a reputation for reliability, which in turn encourages your customers to keep coming back.
Remember that your competition consists of literally millions of other ecommerce brands. The products and services we offer as an e-commerce entrepreneur are important, but if we don’t work to create a great customer experience, our customers may not want to shop with us anymore.
Brands come and go. The key factor that determines success in the ecommerce world is repeat customers — which means your ecommerce website design can ultimately determine if your brand survives.
guest author: Janil Jean is a top executive at Logo Design who enjoys writing about graphic design, digital marketing, branding, storytelling, startups and small business leadership. She has been featured in Business2Community, Business News Daily, QSR Magazine, AllBusiness.com, SmartBrief, etc. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
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