For you to be effective and succeed in the cut-throat e-commerce industry, your web design should, and must, be multifunctional. This about it as a house—it needs a strong foundation, has to protect its inhabitants from the harsh elements brought about by outside factors, must provide a comfortable living space, must provide ample storage, and also must meet the basic needs, among others.
In other words, your e-commerce website needs to be designed to lift user engagement, improve user experience and acquisition and also help retain consumers.
It’s a marriage between psychology and science to create an artistic way of building your empire. To create an engaging and interactive user experience, your team must focus on varying elements that target directly your audience.
Below are 8 steps to help you refine the user experience of your users.
Put emphasis on user types, not on buyer personas
Buyer personas have been specifically designed to align with ad copy and marketing messages.
For example, you don’t have to know exactly what “customer Danny” particularly wants or likes or what his pain points are in order to create the ideal UX.
However, you need to know your target user types and how they shop or browse your e-commerce site, what type of device they use and how they use or what they think of your products. Create your engaging web design based on those user types segments instead of the buyer personas.
Design your site with Fisher-Price in mind
When refining UX, design your site with large, simplified elements, clear copy and actionable directions that even a child can easily understand. In other words, you should aim for something that seems like the user is interacting with life-size Fisher-Price toys.
This works perfectly well with any other device, specifically with mobile experience where larger design elements make for easy navigation.
Create a simplified experience
Contrary to what many believe, you should embrace white space and make sure your interface is kept clean, simple and direct to the point. But you must remember to keep users feel engaged immediately.
You should make them feel that they’re invited to fully explore your website and discover on their own your best-sellers, your seasonal products and what basically your business has to offer. What you need to avoid is making them feel that they’re forced into doing something or having them play hide-and-seek because of the cluttered design elements with too many options.
Sometimes, simplicity is always key.
Your feelings aren’t always spot on
Just because you feel, or think, your site looks good and has somewhat passed when put through its paces in a test environment doesn’t mean that it has attained perfection. How your team of professional and skilled designers view the UX might be far-fetched than what the actual customer would see or feel your design for the very first time.
Hence, you need to test the experience, always, with outsiders. In fact, there a hundreds of services online that you can use to test the UX of your sites with actual, real, customers.
Their responses, comments and activities will be recorded as they interact with your site or app. Then, you can review their feedback and make the necessary changes in order to improve UX.
Design with a limited real estate in mind
Every time you create a new UX for your consumers, make sure to consider how it would look or function on mobile. It should be mobile-friendly and make navigation as smooth as possible for users without having them zooming in and out.
To guarantee a better UX, design for mobile use first to ensure compatibility and a more overall engaging and successful UX.
Don’t forget to integrate social
Social proofing your site goes a long way at improving conversions and engagement with prospective users or consumers. By doing so, you’re making it easier for your target audience to promote your products, interact with other consumers and also possibly contribute content such as reviews and their thoughts.
Include customisation features
Users will feel more at home with your site by personalising their UX. It will also make the experience more engaging.
Offer customisation options where users could choose, say, their page’s layout or pick out specific dashboard elements if you have an online community. This will encourage them to come back to “their own space” in your brand.
Provide a personalised experience
Directly ask consumers their feedback while they’re still on your site. This will make them feel valuable.
How?
Consider an exit intent survey asking them to answer a few short questions about their experience with your site. Then, use these data to further improve UX and increase your consumer pool.
Final thoughts
People, in general, are engaged in different ways, with some responding to certain types of experiences or content. It’s up to you tailor consumer needs and match it with your products. You need to understand your target audience.
Above all, always Test . . . Test . . . and test some more to have the perfect and successful web design that adheres to improving UX.
