Online stores spend considerable amounts of time and thought on building a website that helps customers buy products with minimum barriers. The customer-centric approach that most businesses today talk about, focuses heavily on offering a superior experience to the user as they shop.
User experience has indeed become vital in determining the success of a business. 70% of online businesses fall through because of bad user experience.
But what exactly does user experience involve and how is it different from customer experience? This article explains its significance in detail along with the key elements it contains and its benefits for e-commerce businesses.
What is user experience?
User Experience (UX) is the outcome of a user’s journey through an online store as they explore and/or purchase a product. It covers their interaction at every touchpoint on the website and spans across multiple disciplines such as content, visual design, usability and so on.
UX requires a thorough understanding of the user preferences, convenience as well as constraints. It entails developing a product/website from the perspective of a user with the objective of delighting them during their every interaction.
Peter Morville, a prominent figure in the information architecture space, analyses user experience through the honeycomb diagram and explains it through the following factors. Let’s understand it in the context of a website.
Useful: A product must be innovative and able to fulfil a need of the user
Usable: It must be easy to use
Desirable: Image, identity, brand, and other design elements must be used to make it likeable
Findable: Websites should be navigable and the object should be locatable to help users find the relevant information
Accessible: The website should be accessible to all users including those with disabilities.
Credible: Users should be able to trust and believe the design elements
Valuable: The website must deliver value to the sponsors and improve customer satisfaction
What are the key elements of user experience?
Here’s a look at the various factors that contribute to building an interactive user experience.
Project planning: This is the first step that includes planning a project (building a website/app) to decide its lifecycle, process, team and all the other factors that will help efficiently execute and manage it.
User research: It studies the target audience to understand their needs, preferences and behaviours. User research can be conducted through methods such as interviews, surveys, observation analysis, etc.
Usability evaluation: It evaluates the ease of a website when users access it and measures the satisfaction level of the audience while navigating through its various pages and categories.
Information architecture (IA): It prioritises the labelling and structuring of all the information to let users quickly move across the website.
User interface design: It focuses on the elements that the user directly interacts with and works towards making them easy to understand and operate while taking any action on the website.
Interaction design: It stresses on using elements and products that make the experience on the website more interactive for the user.
Content Strategy: It plans the approach to communication to make it relevant and useful for the user while going through the products and website
Visual design: It lays out the design for the website to make it aesthetically pleasing and easily perceivable.
Web analytics: It collates, reports and analyzes the data gathered on the website
Accessibility: It emphasises on making the product available for everyone including users who might have disabilities and constraints.
Why is user experience important for e-commerce websites?
Here are five key reasons your business should focus on user experience.
1. UX establishes the credibility of your website and product
If users are unable to access complete information on a website or have difficulty in carrying out transactions there are fewer chances of them proceeding to buy a product. It often raises doubts about the credibility of the brand and business.
On the other hand, a good user experience impacts the perception of the user and helps them trust the product. Moreover, customers need to feel assured to be able to share their private information and details with the website.
75% of users admit to making judgments about a company’s credibility based on their website’s design.
2. UX improves usability for your customers
Users often expect to move from one page/product to another more intuitively than having to look for ways to navigate around a website. User experience makes this possible and helps customers conveniently explore all that a brand has to offer.
Better usability means less hassles and faster decision-making for your potential buyers. 44% of mobile users report that navigating a web page is difficult and 6% complained of difficulties interacting with it.
For instance, when shopping for apparel, e-commerce websites that show the available sizes right next to the product, save the user additional effort of specifically checking availability resulting in better usability.
3. UX contributes to customer loyalty/retention rate
A user that develops trust in a website is bound to return back to the store and eventually become a loyal customer. A good user experience motivates people to shop at your store because in addition to your product they also value the process.
A well-constructed user interface can increase the conversion rate of your website by up to 200% and a better UX design can achieve conversion rates of up to 400%.
Moreover, maintaining a good retention rate is necessary for a competitive age and a good user experience efficiently enables this.
Also read: Customer Centricity: The Hidden Key to a Seamless Customer Experience
4. UX ensures faster checkouts
Just the way it is easier to look for products, it is also simpler to buy them when a website offers a seamless user experience. Cart abandonment has been an issue for every online business and user experience can significantly help work on it.
Last year, almost 70 percent of digital shopping carts and baskets were abandoned without completing the purchase demonstrating how online retailers face difficulty in converting website visitors into customers.
A buyer need not go through multiple pages and fill each one with personal details and information to be able to buy a product. Checkouts should happen with lesser clicks and only with the essential information.
5. UX eases your communication
The communication you use should be easily perceivable to a prospective buyer. Since user experience focuses on content and design that is engaging as well as easy to interact with, your customers are able to understand your brand and product better.
Simple designs, recognisable icons, clear texts, the right use of colours and other similar elements uncluttered your website and makes it easier for the user to discern it.
User experience can make communication not just simple but also interesting. Additionally, interactive media such as videos or well-designed call-to-actions engage the audience and motivate them to further explore the website and product.
Conclusion
An e-commerce business can no longer depend only on its products while selling online. It should also encourage people to buy from it and a good user experience helps achieve it. The process is certainly a long and tedious one but is capable of a lot of customer-related challenges a business encounters.
While you work on improving the user experience it is also crucial to ensure that the transactions are equally simple and hassle-free. Partnering with a reliable solution such as Paytm Payment Gateway that can process up to 3000 transactions per second with 100+ payment sources can be a great enabler in further enhancing the customer experience.
