From going to the shop to buy products to ordering everything online, the shopping patterns have changed dramatically in the past few years and the credit for this goes to Digitalization. Therefore, to keep up with the trend and attract customers, every eCommerce business needs to make continuous modifications. 

The key goal of any eCommerce business is to convert the visitor into a customer and steadily generate sales. Though, today’s customers expect nothing less than perfection when it comes to the experience of shopping for a particular product or service. Directing the user towards sales consists of several factors, eCommerce UX (User Experience) design is the most important one. A report by Forbes mentioned that a smooth UX design yields up to 400% conversion rates. 

Ways in which E-commerce businesses can improve their UX design. 

For the user! With the User! 

It is important to keep the target audience in mind while designing the website, as with the changing business genre, the demand of the user also changes. Therefore, the same wireframe cannot be used for an eCommerce business providing fashion products and one selling groceries. 

Online platforms have advanced more and more advanced with time. And the proof for such progress lies in the personalized recommendations and emails we receive on our social media accounts based on preferences and browsing history. Here is a common example of an eCommerce giant, Amazon, which displays similar products at the bottom of a product page. 100% credits go to the machine learning algorithms implemented by eCommerce websites.

Embracing Augmented Reality 

Augmented reality is slowly pacing up and making a mark in the world of eCommerce. AR revolves around allowing the visitors to virtually experience the product so that they can make an educated purchase. An example of such an application is IKEA, it allows visitors to see the furniture virtually, play with the color, decor ideas, and a variety of other things before making the final purchase. 

As a part of UX design, it is important to try and lock all the elements to the screen space, thus ensuring a responsive user experience. It is equally important to make the Augmented Reality experience as simple and neat as possible. 

Include Relevant Filters and Faceted Search 

Filters have become a very important feature in eCommerce and picture editing applications and websites but serve approximately the same purpose of beautification.  

Filters allow a visitor to streamline their search on criteria like color, brand, user ratings, etc. Whereas faceted search enhances extensibility and advancement by adding multiple filters for narrowing down the search from large sets of data. 

For instance, when you add filters such as brand, color, and price range — these are categorized under standard filters. Whereas on the other hand, filters such as occasion, length, features, and fabric are a part of a faceted search. They appear when a specific and exact category of what is needed is selected. 

It is advisable to go for the standard filters, to begin with, as faceted Search can be expensive and requires more maintenance, and needs to be included in later stages in the eCommerce web design.

By focusing on filters, it is important to not overwhelm the users with too many filters and focus on the relevant ones only. 

User ratings are an effective filter that adds social proofing and helps to improve the user experience. So, it is taken under the DO NOT MISS category. 

Call to Action 

Call-to-actions aim to increase click rates and action — it is what leads the customers a step closer to checkouts. When working on a call to action, three things should be kept in consideration: copy, image, and linking.

For example, the home page banners for sale should have “Sale” written in bold, include buttons such as “Shop Now” or “Explore.” Difficult language and long phrases should not be used when designing for eCommerce 

Keep the following in mind while adding CTA’s

CTAs can further include a sense of urgency, which can increase conversions. For example, “SALE. Hurry, only a few left” can be included in the sale banners. 

It is important to use the right colors for the background image such that it matches the website’s overall design and is subtle enough to make the text is visible.

There should be enough white space around the CTAs so that it delivers the message without confusing visitors with cluttered content.

Chatbots accompanied by live human support 

Chatbots are very effective on a shopping website as they promptly answer user queries. For example, a user desires to know in detail about the trending offers or faces difficulty finding something, AI-built chatbots can assist in getting the right information at the right time.

It is equally important to embed live human support as AI still does not have all the answers. In case, a chatbot is unable to process a query, it should be transferred onto live human support to help the visitors speed up their purchase decisions. 

For efficient functioning of chatbots, keep the following points in mind; 

Incorporate live chat and AI chatbots in a single minimizable window on every page of the customer journey.

Keep it concise and conversational. 

The chatbots should serve the purpose and be welcoming. The clickable buttons should be properly linked so that the action matches the user’s objective.

Conclusion 

An impressive eCommerce website UX design will always help to maintain a good conversion rate. Collaborating with a reputed eCommerce web development company or a UX design agency can bring in the required expertise to build a website that matches the market and business expectations. Every business has a very different approach to reach out to its target audience and ultimately, its users should appreciate the experience of interacting with the website.