How eCommerce Companies Utilize User Experience to Boost their Conversion Rates

Published November 28, 2018 by Shirley Lowe in eCommerce
⚡ Updated on April 3, 2019

eCommerce companies tend to care about their conversion rates more than any other product company. Every customer matters when it comes to small drop shipping orders. If you don’t know how to guide your clients to the cart and make him proceed with a purchase, there is no chance to sustain your business successfully.

Of course, some business owners have a terrible looking website and they don’t even know how marketing and conversions work. However, these dinosaurs can make their business more efficient, but they don’t bother.

Today, we want to explain how the best eCommerce companies work with their UI/UX to boost the conversion rates so you wouldn’t be among those business dinosaurs. Let’s dive a bit deeper and take a look at the best practices that may help you grow your business revenue.

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Pages Load Speed

When it comes to user experience, you need to try on the shoes you want your client to walk in. This means that you gotta spend some time on your website and highlight the most annoying things that can affect your decision to buy something at your online store.

One of the most annoying things nowadays is how slow some websites can be. There are so many ways to maximize the page load speed and you’ve got to try them all and find the best solution for your website.

First of all, check your website in the Google PageSpeed Tool, it’s not an ultimate solution, but it gives a lot of insights that may help.

People like to have a smooth interaction with the website. For example, take a look at websites like Amazon and H&M. It actually feels like they had a whole team to make the website work faster. They did a great job. Every step from the homepage to the checkout is fast and makes you wonder why can’t every website work so smooth.

Spoiler: your website can do so too, but you’ve got to dedicate yourself to solving this issue, good page load speed doesn’t come out of the blue.

Easy Navigation

Navigation helps your users be just where you need them to. This means that this is the second most important tool in guiding your user to the cart and checkout.

Try to walk the whole way from your homepage to the final step of the purchase. Does it feel right? Do you feel like you could do it faster and easier? Then you’ve got to work with your UI/UX designer to establish a more understandable navigation system.

It’s not just about the menus. Navigation includes the call-to-action, small signs and pop-ups and other tools that help you keep the situation under control.

For example, if you work with apartments for rent, you need to consider eliminating any unnecessary step that your user may have to perform. The rental industry is very competitive and the company that guides the user to the lease agreement always wins.

‘Stumble Upon’ Discounts

One of the new techniques that eCommerce websites utilize really well is setting the discount triggers that can be activated randomly or depends on a certain event.

There are numerous triggers that you should consider setting up to boost your conversion rates. First of all, you need to make a deep research of how your user interacts with your website from the moment he visits the homepage.

Some clients can stay on the same product page for 10 minutes and more, just because they’re not sure if this price is worth it. That’s a great example of how you can grab their attention and convert this opportunity into the real deal. Imagine that your discount trigger gets enabled in the mentioned situation and users receives a 10% discount if he finishes the order in 10-20 minutes. Studies show that this helps convert more than 70% of those who are not sure about their possible purchase.

You can also manipulate with the hidden discounts and discounts for certain actions. Like sharing something on the social media, participating in your feedback campaign, etc.

Any user will consider it a great user experience when the website can give out discounts just where they need it. Since they don’t understand the technicality behind that, they will feel like a personal approach and that’s what customers value these days.

Storytelling Is Dominating

User experience also depends on what kind of feelings you can evoke in your clients. Storytelling can help you with that for sure. Whenever you work with a new line of products or a new collection of clothing, you should try creating stories behind them.

This is not a design trick and not even a content marketing strategy, it’s more like a general outline for your brand that you can apply. You can create fictional characters that can be associated with your brand and remind people of your products whenever they see it.

Also, personalized stories can help you with targeting a certain audience with a well-known pool of interests.

Testing Is Good

Just like we said when we discussed the SEO and PPC pros and cons, it takes a lot of testing when it comes to user experience.

One of the key things that you should always keep in mind is that you shouldn’t deliver UI/UX updates right away. You need to implement changes step by step and then you’ll be able to see the results and evaluate them properly.

If you change your website user experience over and over constantly, you can fail the conversion rate of your website completely. In this case, you won’t know which update screwed it up, cause there were too many in the last release.

We want you to understand that the best formula here will be delivering one small update at a time. Then you’ve got to take some time to check the reports and see how this small update influenced the user interaction with your website.

In case your update failed, it won’t be so painful to roll back to your previous release, cause the last updates were not major.

Conclusion

We genuinely believe that user experience can influence the conversion rates directly. This may sound old-fashioned, but it’s not just marketing that helps you land sales. It’s more about bringing value to the customer in each and every interaction with your website.

Try to utilize the best UI/UX practices and make some minor changes to the user experience in your projects and you’ll see the first results very soon.

Before you decide to go with this idea, make sure you review the most successful eCommerce website and see how they engage their audience through user experience. Don’t act like the market whales did it just because they’re lucky, they know their score for sure and you need to be patient enough to do your research.

Remember that conversion rates are important for any business that wants to be successful, so don’t get blindfolded by your current revenue, make sure you get the most out of your business.

 

Shirley Lowe is a pro marketer and blogger from Burbank, CA. She is keen on fresh approaches to UX and branding. Shirley also blogs for Landlord’s Tips, and has been featured on RankWatch and REAL Trends.

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