For quite some time now, there has been a lot of talk about user experience, or UX for short. In the world of online businesses, user experience plays a huge role.
Just like any brick-and-mortar store owner paid special attention to how their business front is organized, it’s no different in the online world.
That being said, the only difference is that in a brick-and-mortar store, it’s easier to spot if something’s not really working. However, in the online world, it is significantly more difficult to track your user experience, at least without the proper tools.
With that in mind, it’s important to have great web design, and to learn how to track your UX, as well as ways you can improve it. By doing so, you’ll only improve your online store’s conversion and help your business reach success.
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UX Best Practices And Why Is It Important?
The term “user experience” (UX) refers to everything your customers experience when visiting your website. Simply put, a “good” user experience is the one that allows your customers to fulfill their requirements seamlessly.
Now, improving your UX won’t directly result in boosting your conversion rates. But if you ensure that you’re optimizing for both, you can expect great results in the end. That being said, here are 11 best UX practices that will also improve the conversion rate of your website.
Gather Customer Feedback
In any business, customer feedback is one of the most important factors you need to pay attention to. Simply put, your business would never be able to reach success without your customers. So, make sure you ask your customers for feedback whenever possible.
By doing so, you’ll be able to understand better the relationship your customers have with your business. That way, you can easily notice the areas in which your business is lacking and improve them. Aside from this, customers like to feel noticed and relevant. And you’ll be offering them just that by asking them to provide their insight.
Boost Your Site Speed
When running an online business, your website is the face of your entire operation. That’s why you need to ensure that it is designed with top-quality in mind. In addition to that, make sure that you have a quality custom website design so that your website is loading fast enough.
With the overall audience attention span being significantly decreasing, there’s simply no more room online for slow websites. Improving your website speed will result in faster-loading pages, which is one of the easiest ways to improve customer satisfaction. Of course, the more satisfied your customers are, the better the conversion you can expect.
For improving site speed, you can utilize plugins like WP Rocket or WP Speed of Light.
Make Site Navigation Intuitive
Every good eCommerce website should not only enable but also encourage browsing. However, to make this possible, you need to ensure that your website enables intuitive navigation.
Simply put, you need to ensure that your website is easy to navigate and not confusing. Many visitors will come to your site without any clear goal in mind. That’s why you need to ensure that your website offers them a reason to stay.
One of the best ways to do this is to avoid making things overly-complicated. Instead, use layouts consumers are already familiar with. On top of that, add labels for easier browsing. Finally, make sure that checkout and CTA buttons are easy to spot. Using a navigation menu plugin like JetMenu can be useful here.
Optimize For Mobile
Another big mistake online businesses make is not optimizing properly for mobile devices. While it is true that you can optimize your existing website for mobile, you need to understand the differences in browsing behavior on these two platforms.
According to recent research, mobile devices generate about 53% of the entire website traffic. However, desktop searches bring about 56% revenue, which is way more than 32% of mobile searches.
In the mobile world, things need to be kept simple and effective. That’s why you need to make sure your website caters to both audiences if you’re hoping to improve your conversion rates.
For more info on how to optimize website for various screen devices, be sure to check adaptive design vs responsive design differences.
Make Checkout Easy
As every online business owner will surely agree, cart abandonment is one of the most discouraging things. However, it is most commonly a direct result of poorly-optimized checkout forms.
People oftentimes tend to shop impulsively, especially when shopping online. If your checkout process makes it difficult for them to complete the purchase seamlessly, they’ll most likely abandon ship before reaching the “complete purchase” button.
That’s why you need to enable your customers to fulfill their shopping goals as fast and easily as possible. To be able to do so, you can rely on auto-fill options as well as real-time validation.
If you use WooCommerce as your store platform, you can utilize the WooCommerce checkout manager plugin as the best way to customize the checkout process.
Improve Product Page Layout
When looking to buy things online, customers like to be able to learn as much as they can about the product. That being said, they’re not always looking for an in-depth analysis of every single article.
Instead, the information you put on your product page needs to be clear, concise, and – most importantly – relevant. What this means is that you should – first and foremost – include product prices. Additionally, make sure you make it clear if a product happens to be on sale.
On top of that, use other relevant information, such as shipping. Use bullet points to make this section easier to go through. Finally, you can use hyperlinks to offer more information for those interested in checking that out as well.
Promote Special Offers
If there’s one thing customers love, it’s special offers. Any time your business has some special offer, discount, promotion, or anything similar, you need to ensure your customers know about it. The easiest way you can do this is by including this type of info on your product pages.
Additionally, make it obvious that you have some special offer on every page of your website. In the end, remember to re-emphasize this information on the checkout page as well. This will further encourage your customers to complete the purchase. WooCommerce cart notice plugin can be useful for this case.
If offering coupons, coupon plugin for WooCommerce like Smart Coupons will come in handy.
Provide Seamless Experience
When thinking about your UX, you need to account for your website visitors’ entire journey. This means that you need to ensure that you optimize all of your pages for a positive experience. In other words, you need to keep in mind your entire sales funnel when optimizing your website for better UX and conversion rates.
Unless your website visitors feel as though they can seamlessly move from one point to the next, you can’t really expect positive results. Therefore, make sure all relevant information is present on all pages. This way, your visitors can easily find what they’re looking for, ask for help or simply make a purchase – which is the goal.
Implement Changes Carefully
Another common mistake many online businesses make is not implementing changes carefully enough.
If you’ve noticed that a certain area of your website lacks, a normal course of action would be to try and improve it. However, if you don’t approach this process carefully enough, you leave quite a lot of room for mistakes.
That’s why you need to ensure that you first brainstorm with your team about potential changes. After that, your team needs to come up with a wireframe that will mimic those changes.
The wireframe can slowly evolve into a prototype you can test and review before actually implementing it into your website. Otherwise, you may end up implementing a change that simply doesn’t work with your website. This may result in frustration with your audience, which is definitely something you need to avoid.
Offer In-store Feel
For many people, browsing is one of the most interesting parts of shopping. Being able to see the entire offer and learn more about the products on display is what makes shopping fun. That’s why you need to try and replicate that in-store feel as much as possible.
For starters, make sure you include high-quality photos of your offer. If you’re selling clothes, for instance, consider adding photos of those items being modeled as well. This way, your visitors can get a better perspective about the products you’re offering.
On top of that, include reviews and testimonials of your already-existing customers. Since word-of-mouth still reigns supreme, this will only bring more customers your way.
Run Constant Analysis
No matter if you use WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Shopify, Wix or something else, in the end, the only way to actually see if your efforts have a positive outcome is to run an analysis. Many businesses think that this can be done now and again. However, that’s not quite the case. Instead, only a constant analysis will showcase true results.
If you don’t stay on top of this, you can easily oversee some early warning signs. That’s why you need to make sure that you stay on top of your UX at all times.
As previously mentioned, your customers are your business. If they are not satisfied with doing business with you, they won’t mind moving on to the next business. That’s why you need to ensure peak UX that will, in turn, also improve your conversion rates.
| AUTHOR BIO:
Emma is a marketing strategist and web designer. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Emma is a digital enthusiast interested in web design, social media, and anything marketing-related. |
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