What is the whole point of having a beautiful website if the user experience or UX of that website is cumbersome, impractical or sluggish?
When it comes to the area of website design, there are some essentials that make browsing a website just so much easier for the site visitors.
Making sure that best practices are addressed in your website will make your site stand out from the competition.
Here, we bring you 7 essential UX practices that should be followed by your website designer to create a good quality e-commerce web design that users enjoy coming back to.
#1 Responsiveness
People are spending more time on their mobile devices compared to desktops and laptops.
Google has also changed its algorithm and now considers the responsiveness of your website design as a metric for ranking.
If a user uses his/her mobile to visit your website and the site has not been optimized for mobile, they are 5 times more likely to bounce away from the site.
With more and more visitors switching to mobile devices with each passing year, it only becomes imperative that your website can adapt irrespective of what screen size is being viewed by a website visitor.
Recommended post: 5 Reasons to create a responsive (mobile-friendly) eCommerce website
#2 Accessibility
Your web development process should consider the users who may have certain disabilities.
A number of visitors to your website may have vision related impairments, including but not limited to color blindness.
One thing that can be easily done to accommodate the visually impaired audience and improve the UX for them is to make sure that all “last tags” are crispy clear.
In addition to this, not using certain colors that will make it hard for those visitors who are color blind to completely absorb the text will make the site more enjoyable for everyone.
This readability aspect is of extreme importance for the UX.
#3 E-Commerce Filtration
Filtering options on your e-commerce website that allow your visitors to search by color, size, category, etc. greatly benefit your site.
By having your web developer add filtering options, your visitors will not have to go through the frustration of having to restart all over again from the home page for each new feature that a product offers.
This will reduce the bounce rates.
Another way of doing this is to add an incremental search option which can anticipate what they are looking for.
Merely improving the filtering options can lead to improved sales figures.
#4 Suggestions From Visitors
Grab the opportunity of polling your regular visitors to get their feedback on what changes they would recommend in the overall design.
It can lead to increased revenues.
Your website designer can use of things like multivariate testing to check what elements are preferred by users and design a landing page that works the best for the visitors of your website.
For example, your visitors may recommend a live chat option that can help them in troubleshooting questions related to your products and services.
#5 Add Call-To-Actions
Call to Actions (CTAs) can increase your conversion rate and turn browsers into paying customers.
However, this is not just all about adding a button that calls for action.
Your audience may respond better to certain images, colors, wording and shapes.
Even making use of the right font can make a difference.
There are some simple rules for you to get started. Start your CTA with an action word and keep it to the point and short. Example: “Learn more” or “Get free e-book”.
Recommended post: Is your eCommerce website answering these 7 important questions?
#6 Use Balanced White Space
It is important to maintain the right balance of white space on your web pages for excellent UX.
For example, when you read, you have text and white space.
White space produces a balance so your brain can easily interpret where to look next on the web page. Web design works in the same manner.
For instance, if some pace is added around titles, it improves the attention span of the website users by as much as twenty percent.
#7 Quality Of User Experience
Be mindful of the basic UX factors in your website design.
Some of these factors are being useful, usable, desirable, findable, accessible and credible.
All these factors and more go in providing your visitors with an excellent UX.
Conclusion:
At the end, the best design practices are drawn from what makes your website an incredible experience for your target audience.
If the visitors to your website genuinely enjoy the time they spend on your website and find it to be of benefit to them, they will spread the word, and this will lead to an exponential increase in your traffic.
The extra effort you put in for the redesign is well worth it so that your website becomes more user friendly.
A website redesign does not have to break the bank to become effective, it just needs to be aimed at very specific needs of the visitors of your website.