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The Ecommerce industry can be quite lucrative – when done right.
There are a lot of aspects that factor in when creating a successful eCommerce store, including SEO, content marketing and advertising.
However, one of the most important areas you can work to improve your online store’s performance is user experience (UX). No matter what you sell or how unique your products and marketing campaigns might be, all your efforts would go down the drain if your store doesn’t offer users qualitative experiences. At least, that’s what recent findings show – up to 88% of online consumers are less likely to return to an online store after a bad experience. At the same time, another report shows that 77% of eCommerce site owners believe that a site with bad UX is a weakness for their customers.
While there’s no magic recipe for designing the perfect online UX for your specific audience, there are a few things you can try to deliver the best results.
Seamless Website Navigation
In its general meaning, navigation helps you reach your destination without wandering and anxiety. In eCommerce, a well-developed navigation ensures a seamless UX, improves your store’s ranking chances, and increases profitability.
Plenty of components can make or break website navigation, such as the way you categorize your products, the menu type, the homepage layout and more.
Seamless navigation makes the path through the sales funnel more likely. It should be easy for any visitor to switch between the sections, find the products, scroll through the catalogs and product pages, pick something, change their mind, and leave the dead ends. If that’s possible and already convenient for desktop users, it should be the same for your mobile users.
If your mobile users are looking for something very specific, they should be able to find it quickly. That means you have to streamline their journey on your site as much as possible. You can do this by including features like:
- Sticky navigation bars
- Mobile-friendly pop-ups
- Click-to-call buttons
- Click-to-scroll buttons
- Pinch-and-zoom features
Social Proof
People are more likely to purchase from an online store when they see good reviews and ratings. In fact, nearly 72% of them won’t pull the trigger on a purchase until they see reviews. You don’t want prospects who find you online to go search for opinions about your services/products elsewhere. If they do so, they will get distracted, and the probability of them coming back decreases.
What can you do? Create a review section on your site so that people can find what they’re looking for on the spot. If your customers already voiced their opinions and most of your traffic goes on your homepage, make sure you add those reviews there.
Customizable shopping experiences
This practice is likely to continue to grow in 2022, and with good reason. Modern consumers now expect more tailored shopping experiences – perfectly tailored to their individual needs and preferences. Online stores that can provide this type of experience will be more lucrative than those that cannot.
Customizable shopping experiences can mean everything from providing templates or layouts so that people can have more control over the feel and look of the interface to opt-out options when they don’t want to receive holiday-related marketing email emails.
Flawless payments processing
The process of accepting electronic payments for online transactions should be as simple and secure as possible. You may not know much about the eCommerce payment process, but you surely understand the need for a flawless payment processor.
What is it? A payment processor is a secure platform that takes the input payment data from payment and verifies whether that’s true or not. If the payment information is true, and the customer has available funds to proceed with the purchase, the processor then deposits those funds in your merchant account. An example of a powerful payment processor is the myPOS payments platform, where you have everything you need to accept payments and sell on your eCommerce site.
All you have to do is create a merchant account for your new business, install the myPOS application, and you can start taking payments right away.
Chatbots
Chatbots are a simple yet important UX technology that will continue to grow in usage in 2022. Adding AI and Machine Learning chatbots to your online store will provide your users with a more personalized shopping experience without even lifting a finger.
Chatbots are all the rage right now, and with a good reason. They can answer the most common queries, so you don’t have to, offer product recommendations, and even process orders. If you have trouble understanding your audience, learn that more advanced chatbots can even detect customer sentiment and provide critical insights into what is working best for your customers.
On-point product descriptions
It’s an eCommerce UX best practice to emphasize your customer’s perspective when detailing a product. People want to feel confident when they purchase a product. They don’t want to leave the website to search for product details elsewhere. If they can find the product they need with all details included on the same product page, they’ll be more likely to stay and hit the purchase button.
So here you have it, the six most important picks for eCommerce UX in 2022! We hope this post will help you stay on top of your competitors while providing you with some relevant ideas for improving your online store.