Aimee Laurence
Category: Design Tips
It’s not always easy to improve your conversion rates for your e-commerce business. There are so many brands and e-commerce shops out there so setting yourself apart and making sales can be difficult. The overall User Experience of your website or mobile access is a factor that you can control to improve your chances of converting a visitor into a customer.
The best way to increase online transactions on your site is by having an effortless, quick, and attractive user experience (UX). Before building an excellent UX design for your site though, you should establish your objective for your conversion rate (CR), and think about what aspects of your overall UX your customers will love.
1. What’s Your Conversion Rate Target?
As mentioned, the first thing to figure out is a goal conversion rate, so you need to figure out what’s a good one. You may be surprised to know that most studies show the average e-commerce CR is a low 1.94%. That’s a good place to start for your e-commerce strategy goal, and it shouldn’t discourage you if you’re not there yet – these tips below should help you put a great UX in place.
2. Fewer Clicks Means More Conversions
The quicker and easier you can make your e-commerce experience for the user, the best chance you have of making a sale. As per Nicole Darcy, a UX designer at Big Assignments and Academized, “customers who are frustrated because a website doesn’t work, it loads too slowly, or the process isn’t clear, are much more likely to leave the page, or leave you a bad review. A good rule is that the fewer clicks it takes to get to the purchase, the more conversions you’ll get – aim for five or fewer clicks.”
It’s not just that the users get annoyed when they have to make too many clicks, it’s more than that. When you think about it, a long road to purchase leaves them more time to reconsider, to stop and think whether they should save that money up, buy something else, look around some more and so on. All of this can make them give up in an instant, and it’s a matter of seconds really. So, when you design your website, do your best not to allow for too much reconsidering or mind-changing. Just be very straightforward and simple – that’s the best way to go when you want time and customers on your side.
3. Tips for a Better UX
1. Have a Simple Check-Out Process
Studies show that about three-quarters of users abandon their shopping carts each year. That means that users who have decided to purchase your product are changing their minds during the checkout process, and that’s often because of unnecessary complications in this process.
To avoid that happening to you, you need a strategy that will speed up the check-out and registration. One easy way to do this is to avoid asking them to login or create an account – instead, offer a guest check out, or link it with a Google or Facebook login. By shortening the time it takes to check out and reducing the work on the user’s side, you’ll be improving your UX and increasing your CR.
For one, the process can be confusing in itself if it’s awfully long and boring. If a person gets confused by your process, they are very likely to get scared and give up on the purchase. You can also count on the fact that people hate boring long forms. For one, those are boring, as mentioned. And of course, these give customers more time to change their minds, to reconsider and move on from the purchase. Capture them in their momentum with guest checkouts and quick and easy processes.
2. Have Effective Calls-to-Action
E-commerce marketing comes down to convincing your website visitors to purchase your product or service. Often, it’s not enough to have an appealing product, because users will come up with a million reasons not to make a purchase, especially if they have too much time to think about it.
Because of that, one of your top priorities should be to have calls-to-action (CTAs) that stress the importance and urgency of the sale for the customer. Don’t use cliché or boring CTAs like “buy now” because these won’t be very effective. Instead, Olive Cressley, a tech writer at Writing Services and EliteAssignmentHelp, encourages businesses to “be creative and write copy to make the visitors to your website think that they need to act quickly to close a time-sensitive deal or purchase a product that’s selling quickly. You should also consider the placement of your CTAs on your site so they’re very visible.”
Urgency always helps, of course. There are several ways to go here. For one, you can give a discount on the product or provide free shipping, but only for a limited amount of time. Add a timer next to the reduced price and voila, you will convince more people to buy right away, without delays. Fear of missing out on that offer will do the work for you. Of course, you could also say that there is only a limited amount of that product and that soon it will run out. This means that people can’t wait and they have to act quickly to buy the product.
One important thing to note is that you can’t have too many CTAs on one page. The problem with giving people too many choices is that they will end up leaving before making any. One streamlined CTA per page means that they will stay focused. Too many CTAs and they will get confused and won’t click on any of them.
3. Choose a Proven UX Design and Stand Out
There are so many different e-commerce sites out there that it’s easy to base yourself on one that’s proven to be successful. The problem here is that it can become hard to stand out from all your competitors. This is where you should focus on three strategies that have shown to increase conversions and are successful UX designs: branding that’s consistent, a website that’s quick and responsive, and great readability (simple, clear, lots of whitespaces).
It’s easy to use these three strategies as a starting point and then taking it to the next level by creating user stories, customer interactions, and personifying their products and designs. Consider increasing user engagement, images, video, and storytelling because these are all tried and true methods for engaging your customers.
People like simplicity. They always have, but especially now when the market is so saturated with color and movement and all sorts of things that distract them. So, a simple website will do. Think Instagram or Medium. Of course, these aren’t eCommerce websites but they are two very popular sites. Both have that unique, clean design. And users eat it up because it just makes more sense and it puts their focus where it should be.
So, instead of adding pops of color to your design, let your products shine in all of their glory and remove yourself from the background. It should be something of an empty canvas, there only to support your products.
This means plenty of white space as well.
We already mentioned the number of CTAs should be very low. Distractions should be minimal as well.
When it comes to navigation, it should be familiar. Of course, you could be different and your branding might mean that you need to spice it up a bit. But in general, people like to land on a site that offers familiar routes. That way, they feel safe and secure. Plus, they know what they need to do right away. So, don’t confuse them with authentic names for different pages or change the location of your menu. The navigation should be simple and safe for them.
Of course, one of the most important elements of your site is its readability. You need a site that is easy to read and understand. So, the font should be of reasonable size and color. You can’t put the yellow font on an orange background – it’s not readable and it will make your eyes hurt while you read it. In fact, anything other than black letters on a white background or a variation of it will just be an awful choice. Even white font and black background can be painful to read if you look at it too much.
Make sure that you emphasize the important parts of your written content. Create lists, use bold font and italics when you want to draw attention and make sure that you use proper grammar and spelling.
All in all, you can see that there is a lot of work in designing pages that your visitors will love. While the work may be tedious, the payoff will be significant. You are making your customer’s journey easier on the users, and that’s all that matters.
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