They say first impressions last a lifetime. As an ecommerce business owner, you’ll want to derive the greatest consumer lifetime value (CLV) from your shoppers. If you turn them off to your brand with a poorly designed site, that CLV is zero!
Below, we will discuss how to optimize your e-store’s web design and user experience. It all starts by seeing things through your customers’ point of view. So, what do shoppers really think when visiting your ecommerce site?
If your website loads slowly. Research shows over half (53 percent) of your visitors will abandon your site if it takes more than 3.5 seconds to load. Don’t let slow load times kill your sales. Speed up your load times by compressing your images and removing any unnecessary plugins. It also helps to leverage robust cloud ecommerce software to manage your site. This ensures your ecommerce store is easy to scale, while retaining speed and usability.
If your website is unusable on mobile. An alarming 40 percent of users will ditch your site in favor of a competitor after a bad mobile experience. This could include slow load times, tiny text/images, broken pages or small checkout buttons. Do your best to find a cloud ecommerce platform with mobile functionalities.
If your images are hard on eyes. We’ve discussed compressed images, but we haven’t touched on shoddy images. Ecommerce shoppers put a lot of trust in your images. It’s their only way to experience their potential purchases aside from the product description. They can’t hold your merchandise, or try on a pair of pants, because they are essentially window-shopping through a screen. Make the path to purchase easy for the shopper. Use HD photos from multiple angles.
If your color scheme is overkill (or underwhelming). You should take every opportunity to brand your website. This includes establishing a set of brand colors (three minimum, five maximum) and using those colors throughout your site. This gives your e-store a consistent look, which can improve consumer satisfaction. Who doesn’t want a vibrant website to scroll through? You’ll also want to include your brand colors on all social media, emails and perhaps even your delivery boxes.
If your most important pages are hard to find. What are your most important webpages? Where are they? If you don’t immediately know the answers to these questions, you need to rethink your website strategy. Your most important pages are “About Us”, “Contact Us”, “Checkout” and “FAQ” (if you have additional Shipping Information pages, these should be included). Basically, anything that functions as a quick reference for consumers. Put these pages in your top navigation and make them simple to find.
If your products are totally disorganized. The same goes for your product pages and categories. If your navigation is complicated and clunky, you will lose customers. Try grouping your items logically. Selling clothes? Categorize merchandise by gender first, then by tops and bottoms. Offering cosmetics? Classify your products by use rather than color. If you aren’t sure where to start, send customers a brief questionnaire rating your usability.
If your checkout pages are clunky and difficult. When your checkout page is slow to load, confusing or unusable, you will kill your sales and drive up cart abandonment. Provide a clear path to checkout for your prospective buyers. This includes cutting unnecessary functions that could distract a shopper (such as ads or redirect links). You should also keep the number of pages to a minimum. Shoppers hate loading multiple pages to enter their personal, financial and shipping information. Fit all of this on one page.
If your site fits any of the “ifs’ above, you don’t want to hear what shoppers really think when they visit your ecommerce site.
