E-commerce Essentials: The User Experience

How does the User Experience translate into sales?

In what ways is the mobile User Experience different from that of a desktop platform user?

Here we explore ways to enhance the User Experience and take a look at the best examples from clothing, jewellery, eyewear and footwear.

Harnessing UX

UX designers are in high demand. And for good reason.

For eCommerce platforms the User Experience (UX) is critical to converting sales.

If users have to work hard to find what they’re looking for or to perform a particular task they’re likely to go elsewhere.

Here are four UX essentials:

Know the audience – Know your audience intimately and use this to work out what they’re likely to look at. Think how the user will interact with your material, how they are likely to interact with your platform and how they can easily feedback and engage with content.

Simplicity – Simple designs are not only cleaner for the user but also make it easier for them to process and understand in a single glance. This also means easily accessible content that doesn’t require a lot of scrolling.

Content – Make the most of the space available. That doesn’t mean squeezing in as much content as you can – keep it high quality and deliberate, guiding the reader through with breaks and headings.

The User Interface – Once you’ve designed your platform everything needs to be tested and re-tested, including content, buttons, links, menus etc.

Seeing is Believing

And here are just a few examples of brands being applauded by the eCommerce experts:

Abby Seymour Jewellery – Their website is light and ethereal, containing the bare minimum. They also have a useful sizing section to help with the tricky issue of jewellery sizing and to limit the need for refunds.

Greats Clothing – A referral button that helps customers spread the word, amazing photos and a snippet from their Instagram feed.

Shwood Eyewear - The option to view the product from the front and side is a really nice touch, as is their product filters and navigation.

Soludos Footwear – They show you what the shoes actually look like on real feet, rather than as abstract photos.

The Challenge of Different Platforms

It’s not just computers, these days people are buying more items on their mobile's than ever before. And this presents a unique set of challenges.

As Saucelabs explains….

Firstly, you need to make sure it doesn’t crash otherwise users are unlikely to repeat their attempts.

Secondly, you need to make sure users aren’t stuck on ‘go slow’ which means testing how the app performs when content is unavailable or slow arriving.

Thirdly, battery draining mobile apps are a big no, no, meaning designers need to adequately test power consumption.

Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, the user needs to be able to easily navigate around the app, text needs to be easily readable and the right size, and the number of clicks to find a product and achieve a sale thoroughly tested.

What websites and apps have you used recently that really hit the mark? And which ones had you running for the door? We’d love to hear from you.

Email us your thoughts.

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash.