The best way to understand the user experience of a website is to put yourself in the shoes of your customer. Conduct a user research so that you know exactly who your customer is and consider their thoughts and feelings when viewing your website and reading about your business and brand.
The first few things you should keep in mind when looking into the ux design of your website are: Does it grab your attention? Is it easy to navigate? Does it make you want to stay longer than five seconds?
These are all things to consider from the user’s standpoint. Good user experience is a key selling point that can convert a visitor into a customer. A user-centered design can make sure your customers are getting a quality experience that encourages purchasing.
At Genius eCommerce, we know the importance of user experience in an eCommerce website, what it can do for your business, and how it can influence purchases and activity. This is who we are and what we do and we want to share our expertise, tips, tricks, and updates with you.
Today, I will present a few tips on improving your eCommerce site’s user experience for customers:
Use White Space – Many people think that white space can make a website too boring and leaves valuable space without any content. It can be widely considered a waste. However, white space can actually be good for user experience. If you leave white space and allow your text to breathe, it makes a website feel more open, modern, and clean and can increase user’s attention by 20 percent. However, there is a way to leave too much white space, so work on finding an appropriate balance.
Optimization for Page Speed – The last thing users want when they click to your website is to wait for the page to load. If the page doesn’t load within a few seconds, you likely have already lost business before the customer even saw the home page or desired destination. Compressing images is just one way to reduce the size of files so a page can load faster and keep customers happy.
Calls to Action – To effectively get people to go where you want them to go, you need to use calls to action that prompt purchasing. This isn’t just in the wording. Use colors and designs on buttons that draw in users and get them to act. Of course, words are important as well, so you want to be convincing and persuasive without being pushy.
Differentiate Hyperlinks – There may be times when you are posting content that includes links that you would like the user to visit. When you do this, you need to make sure the links stand out and are different from the rest of your text, so underline and color links differently. Also, avoid using one or two-word hyperlinks that can easily get lost and make your links longer to help them get identified.
Image Usage – Images are an important part to the user experience because humans are such visual creatures, so we are naturally drawn to photos. The important aspect of using photos is the connection you can create by using your own photos as opposed to stock photos. Using stock photos can damage trust with potential customers and create a bad image for your business. Using your own photos helps to express your business and brand and establish a connection with a customer.
Quality Headlines – Headings carry more weight when it comes to search engines than the body of text, so you want your headings to be carefully constructed. This is a great place to focus on keywords and target words that your audience may use in searches. You can also give these headings a great visual design that jumps off the page and captures your audience, so get creative with the heading design as well.
Consistency in Pages – Once you establish a design, you need to keep it consistent throughout all pages. Heading sizes, fonts, colors, buttons, even little details like spacing and photo choices should remain consistent. Making too many changes from one page to another can confuse a user and lead them to click away or bounce from the page.
Catch Errors – One thing you need to be aware of is page errors like 404s. Search engines will still recognize and promote these pages even if they are not functioning properly, and while you want a search engine to work to push your pages higher in search rankings, a result that leads to a 404 error will create a trust issue with a user and instantly lead them in a different direction. Avoid that kind of judgment from users by keeping up on your pages and any errors.
Responsive and Mobile-Friendly Web Pages – Your website needs to function well in general, but with so many people on mobile devices and tablets, it is necessary for you to have a responsive design that fits all devices and make your website mobile-friendly so it is easy to read and navigate on a smaller device. Google is now starting to rank websites based on how mobile-friendly they are or if they are optimized for mobile, so this is more crucial than ever.
Were these tips about creating great user experience useful to you? There is more where that came from with Genius eCommerce. This is who we are and what we do, and we continue to stay up to date so we can provide the most recent tips, tricks, trends, and updates in eCommerce. Check out the Genius eCommerce blog for more.
Send us a message or leave a comment; we’re always happy to answer questions you might have about your eCommerce store.
