As the e-commerce industry matures, online shoppers keep upping their expectations of what constitutes an ideal e-commerce user experience. Today we will show you 6 e-commerce UX upgrades that are trending right now and bringing in results for many current brands. Consider implementing one or more of them to move more of your users toward that checkout page.
What e-commerce UX is and isn’t
Sometimes “user experience” gets confused with “user interface.” That’s an easy thing to get confused about, since both have to do with what a user sees and does when visiting your store’s website. But they are separate disciplines in developer worlds even though there’s some crossover.
One simple example of the distinct-but-related pair is the words appearing on the page. The font used is the UI, while the actual words used are the UX. The font is visual, while the words themselves contain the important messages. Your site’s theme, style and colors are all part of the UI. The words leading to and on the buttons themselves are the UX, calling them to action.
Here, then, are some UX upgrades to up your e-commerce results. The first is a blend of UX and UI strategies.
1. Minimalist design
The best designs for many brands (unless you sell hardware parts) have a very minimalist look. Minimalism is a popular look now in home furnishings, and it’s also popular for websites. This is created on several principles of both UI and UX, working together to draw in the eye and the brain.
To get that vibe going, try these strategies.
- Minimize site clutter. A crowded page makes it harder to find that “Add to Cart” button.
- Cut down on the number of fields in your forms. Aim for the minimum required information (first name and email only, in many cases).
- Allow for guest checkout. This is minimalism applied specifically to the UX. Sometimes a user may even have an account already, but doesn’t want to go through password resetting to make a quick purchase. Give them a faster, easier checkout experience right on your page.
- Include a lot of white space.
- Use high-contrast color schemes.
2. Chatbots
Chatbots have become the standard, as busy customer service staff can’t always be there on demand. You can program chatbots to answer your most frequently asked questions, or to steer them up the chain to a human for follow-up. Chatbots are a must-have marketing asset for many types of businesses today, and a preferred strategy for e-commerce UX.
Some chatbots connect directly with Facebook Messenger, one of the most popular texting apps in the U.S. Facebook’s shopper surveys show that a majority of online shoppers feel positively about communicating through Messenger with their favorite brands, and are more likely to make a purchase.
3. Motion graphics & animation
Dynamic product images such as GIFs or animations provide a better e-commerce UX because they simulate being able to see the product more like in real life. Add colors and sounds to make the experience even more vivid.
This doesn’t mean abandoning your standard high-quality images. But motion graphics are a lot better at capturing a consumer’s imagination.
Customers get excited when they see these. And excitement is an impulse that drives shoppers to convert.
4. Friction-free checkout
Make it as easy as possible for shoppers to pay for a purchase. Rather than forcing them to create an account on your site, going through multiple pages and form fields, remove the frictions with integrated payment processing options. Google Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal and Shop Pay are among the leaders in payment processing, securely storing a user’s payment data and ID so they can check out instantly right on your page. Other credit card companies are also entering this crowded field of options. These methods not only give customers options but make check out a breeze from any device. For merchants who participate in Buy on Google, there’s no commission and no fee for payment processing.
5. Voice shopping optimizations
Voice search is here, and its use is growing. If you have a voice search option on your website, it can even improve your store’s SEO performance.
This is because when sellers implement voice features on their site, they also collect new keyword data, as voice queries are often phrased differently than typed ones. You can use these keywords on landing pages, blogs, product pages, and ads.
But you needn’t add voice technology to your store’s website to take advantage of the steady advance of voice-based shopping searches. You can also optimize for products searched by voice on Google or Amazon’s Echo. (See below.)
6. Highly accurate product descriptions that match any shopper’s criteria
One of the biggest fails in UX is not providing enough information on the product to help a shopper make a purchase decision. Solve this by giving them everything they’re looking for, the way they asked for it.
Shoppingfeed’s proprietary ProductGraph technology optimizes product descriptions with millions of potential keyword descriptors using machine learning and AI principles. So no matter how oddly a shopper phrases their question, your products will surface high on the results list. The Google Assistant and Amazon’s Echo will typically return only the top three results for any voice search. Ensure you get top-tier rankings with a search-optimized product feed service for a product list that will stay far more visible (and error-free) than with random attribute tagging you do yourself.
