UI/UX in eCommerce: Major Mistakes & Ways to Optimize

According to reports, 88%^[i] of online shoppers won’t return to a website after a bad user experience. On the other hand, a good user interface can increase the website’s conversion rate by 200%^[ii].

UI/UX is critical for every eCommerce website. It’s what hooks your customers to your online store and keeps them coming back for more.

While delivering quality user experience (UX) is becoming the new norm, it is not always easy to develop a good UX design.

In fact, all it takes is one mistake to ruin the overall customer experience and impact your conversions.

To help you avoid it, here’s a blog post highlighting the basics of a great UI/UX design and the critical mistakes that most eCommerce business owners make. We’ll also discuss some ways to resolve them to help you optimize your conversion rate.

What Is a Great UI/UX Design?

A great UI/UX design is a lot more than just making your website and application look nice. It’s about focusing on users’ needs and creating interfaces and experiences that satisfy them effectively.

UI/UX should also take into account your business goals and objectives and align them with the end users’ desires and values. This helps create seamless end-customer experiences that drive meaningful engagement. A great UI/UX design has the following four elements-

Useful – It must fulfill a need
Usable – It must be easy to use
Desirable – It must evoke emotions
Credible – It must be believable

The very foundations of building a great UI/UX design are based upon your user understanding. And this begins with great user research.

User Research: Basics and Methods

User research in eCommerce is the study of your targeted audience to gain insights into their needs, pain points, values, and interests. This helps in crafting UI/UX that’s user-oriented and gets you tangible results. There are three methods of user research-

Data and Analytics – Check your eCommerce platform statistics and Google Analytics to know which content and pages are performing well and why.

Indirect Feedback – Listen to your customer service team and social media conversations to know how customers are talking about you.

Direct Feedback – Ask directly to your customers about their views on your brand through surveys and interviews.

Major UI/UX Mistakes and How to Resolve Them

There could be a myriad of reasons a user doesn’t convert on your website. They might not be interested in the product anymore, they found it cheaper elsewhere, or they got distracted and confused in the process.

While you may not have control over the first two factors but the last one is definitely reversible. Offering a good UI/UX is the solution to keeping your customers focused on your website and convincing them to buy.

Listed below are the common UI/UX mistakes that are stopping you from achieving that. As promised, we’ve also covered the ways to resolve them.

1. Slow Speed

Website speed helps form the first impression of your store. The ideal eCommerce website speed is under 2 seconds. But heavy content (like high-resolution images and videos) and unoptimized infrastructure can affect the performance of your website.

Resolution:

Reduce your page weight by compressing multimedia and minimizing third-party snippets. Test your website’s speed using tools like PageSpeed Insights to find and fix the causes of problems.

2. Complex Navigation

One of the most common reasons customers leave your website is complex navigation. If users find it challenging to understand where they are on your website and how they can get to their desired destination, your navigation has failed its purpose.

Resolution:

Create a simple and straightforward user path that takes users from one page to another in the most efficient way possible. Instead of creating various search fields, group your products and organize them neatly in a menu that is easy to see and click.

3. Mandatory Sign-up

Many eCommerce websites still force users to create an account. Given the data privacy concerns and efforts required for account creation, the compulsory sign-up option doesn’t sit right with today’s consumers.

Resolution:

Give a guest checkout option to your visitors. Let them decide whether they want to associate for a single one-time purchase or register for long-term benefits. Make sure your guest checkout option is visually prominent and offers a seamless experience.

4. Hidden Charges

Hidden charges are one of the biggest culprits that are eating into your conversions. When users see extra charges added to their purchase during checkout, they are less likely to make the purchase.

Resolution:

It’s simple, be transparent. Do not hide any extra charges. Show them a detailed breakup of their billing amount that includes the product price, taxes, shipping charges, and more.

5. Too Much Data Inputs

Customer data is essential to creating a good UI/UX. But asking for a lot of information that might not seem relevant to the task can annoy your users. It might also prompt them to leave the website without buying.

Resolution:

Reduce the number of input fields in your forms and minimize users’ efforts with the help of prefills. Ask only the required information at first and request additional details later on when the user is committed to the process.

6. Poor Omnichannel Experiences

Customers, today, use different platforms to interact with a brand. From learning about a brand to making a purchase and returns, there’s a whole range of different channels available at their fingertips to reach out to a brand. But many eCommerce websites fail to deliver the same experiences to users on all the channels, thus, resulting in poor conversions.

Resolution:

Adopt a headless commerce approach to provide seamless omnichannel experiences to users across all touchpoints. Treat each interaction or touchpoint (e.g. social media, chatbots, website) as part of a single, frictionless whole.

Benefits of Great UI/UX Design

Optimizing your website UI/UX design with these tips will help improve the conversion rate. However, there are also some additional rewards that you can reap with it.

Higher Lead Generation

Effective UI/UX offers you a competitive edge when it comes to attracting and retaining prospects. The more intuitive and visually appealing your website is, the easier it’ll be to build trust and acquire new customers.

Enhanced Customer Engagement

A good UI/UX design is intentional and helps persuade the user to take a specific action. This facilitates user engagement and moves prospects further down the funnel faster to increase sales potential.

More Sales and Revenue

The ease of use and better customer experience of a well-thought UI/UX motivate users to complete a purchase. This helps fuel revenue growth and enhance your business outreach.

The Final Note

Designing a great UI/UX is one of the most important aspects of building a successful eCommerce website. Being aware of the vital elements and critical mistakes in the process can help you ensure a fail-proof design that wins your customers and sales online.

Need Help in Optimizing Your eCommerce Website UI/UX Design? Contact Us!

References-

[i] Smallbizgenius – Essential UX Statistics
[ii] Truelist – UX Statistics