4 Ways to Boost Your Ecommerce Website Design

Even before 2020, online shopping was a popular alternative to the in-store experience. However, over the past few years, eCommerce website design has been taken to a whole new level.

From 3.6 million registered e-commerce sites in the United States in 2019, that number has risen to 9.5 million this year, and that number is projected to continue to grow. And that’s only in the US. worldwide e-commerce is set to grow by more than 200 percent year-on-year in 2021. As a society, we have reached the threshold of e-commerce and there is no going back.

So now the inevitable question arises. How can you, as an e-commerce entrepreneur, make your website stand out from the crowd?

The key is in the customer experience. And the key to great CX is great design.

Here are four keys to eCommerce website design that will improve your customer experience.

The fewer clicks the better

We’ve all had the experience of making a decision to buy something and committing to the process, only to discover that the process was much more involved than we thought.

Personally, I’ve been on more than one website where I thought I’d hit the final “buy” button only to discover there were more options to sort through before all was said and done. I’m not saying options are a bad thing. Customers love to feel like their purchases can finally be customized to them.

What I’m saying is, if you’ve ever seen a product review that says: “I thought I ordered the blue one, but I got the black one instead,” then chances are there were too many clicks in the purchase. process.

Ideally, when it comes to designing an eCommerce website, there should be as few necessary clicks as possible. This means working and reworking your site’s brand experience design, especially when adding more product options to streamline the shopping and purchasing process.

The number of clicks required may vary by site, product selection, and other factors. Nike sets a good benchmark, taking you from the home page to a successful purchase in seven clicks. Amazon can be ten clicks away. The more pages that have to load, the more clicks that have to be made, the more commitment required from your customer, and the more likely they are to reconsider not only their user experience, but the decision to buy in the first place. .

Optimize your site for search

Here’s another experience I’ve had that you’ve probably had. trying (and failing) to find a certain type of product on an e-commerce website, only to find it linked elsewhere. Why didn’t it show up in my keyword search? What am I missing?

As a customer, it’s an incredibly frustrating experience.

An optimized and user-friendly website search is consistently associated with a better customer experience. Although some research shows that only about 30 percent of customers consistently use site search for e-commerce, that segment is about six times more likely to convert, tends to spend more, and can account for about 14 percent of all business revenue. If you search for something and actually find it, you’re more likely to complete the purchase process. It’s one of those cases where good CX is great for the company.

Some valuable ways to optimize your website search include:

• Put the search box front and center. It’s more common to have it tucked away in the top right corner, but bringing it directly from the center of your site’s header makes it more likely that a customer will actually use it.
• Use a specific but balanced filter system. You don’t want the search results to be too broad or the visitor will have to continue paging through the results. You also don’t want too many options, or the visitor may become overwhelmed. Make sure your visitor can select multiple filters at the same time. they are more likely to lose interest and leave if they have to go through the process for every possible change.
• Include smart search with autocomplete and suggested search terms. I would also recommend including personalized search offers, especially for your returning customers who have created an account with you and about whom you have been able to collect basic information.

Always be available

Ideally, your customer base is wide open. You can get website visitors from all over the country, maybe all over the world, at all hours of the day, seven days a week. Consistent reach is a challenge, especially for a startup or smaller e-commerce brand, but it’s an important factor for great CX.

Fortunately, intelligent bots are only getting better and better, which means you can include a chat agent on your website that handles most interactions with customers, bringing in a human agent when necessary. Apps like Dashly and LiveChat include agents with chatbots; Chatfuel, Pandorabots, and DialogFlow are highly recommended smart chatbot software.

If you’re like me, you use live chat more often, whether it’s with smart chatbots or an actual live agent, on websites to troubleshoot issues or process returns. These are obviously important for a good customer experience, as you want your website visitor to know that you are there for them.

But I would like to emphasize active sales with live agents. making contact from the moment a potential customer lands on the site, making offers, answering questions and offering any assistance needed from start to finish.

Almost 40 percent of customers make a purchase after speaking with an agent, which provides an improved customer experience, so again, this is a key feature of eCommerce website design that benefits not only the customer, but the brand as well.

Availability is a big plus for good CX.

Combining reliability with adaptability

My final tip for improving the CX of your eCommerce website design is to not only be trustworthy; a brand they can trust, giving them the products they want and a customer service experience they know they’ll love, but also being adaptable.

A key component of this, from a design perspective, is asking and taking action on your customer feedback. After all, the site exists to serve them. CX doesn’t mean much if you don’t have customers.

Invite comments, suggestions, questions, and features they’d like to see. it’s also a great way to connect with them on other platforms like social media and generate further investment from them.

Once you get that feedback, act on it by incorporating suggestions that will make the customer experience simpler, faster, and more enjoyable.

Consistently putting your customer experience first builds a reputation for reliability, which in turn will encourage your customers to return again and again.

Remember that your competition consists of literally millions of other eCommerce brands. The products and services we offer as e-commerce entrepreneurs are important, but if we don’t work to create a great customer experience, our customers may not bother shopping with us.

Brands come and go. A key factor in determining success in the e-commerce world is repeat customers, which means the design of your e-commerce website can ultimately determine whether your brand survives.

Guest author:: Janil Jean is the CEO of Logo Design who enjoys writing about graphic design, digital marketing, branding, storytelling, startups, and small business management. He has been featured in Business2Community, Business News Daily, QSR Magazine, AllBusiness.com, SmartBrief, and more. Connect with him on LinkedIn.