The more you can make people have a good time on your site, the more likely they are to come back. Optimizing functionality is important for any website, but it’s even more important if you have a store on your site. E-commerce website user experience helps you take the right steps toward a great on-site interaction for your customers. This guide will help you do that.
We believe functionality to be a critical component of holistic SEO, which involves optimizing all areas of your website for search engines and visitors. This may cost you consumers and have a negative impact on your website’s search engine optimization.
Find the right audience for your e-commerce website.
These investigations are conducted prior to the website’s design. You must know how to build a persona for your ideal consumer and those who will purchase your products.
Examine the user’s path and search intent. Do your prospective consumers prefer the greatest price or to read reviews before buying? Do you need to consider cultural differences? These factors influence your shop’s homepage design. Do you need to promote sales? Are you targeting a niche? If so, make it plain right away. If one of your goals is to deliver the greatest value, the sale banner should be the most visible thing on your e-commerce site. However, if you are selling high-quality items, you should concentrate on feelings and emotions. You may use bigger graphics and highlight key product advantages.
Homepage optimization
Have you ever examined your online store’s homepage? Most likely, you chose the WooCommerce theme your designer recommended and implemented the options. While most of these themes are well-designed and user-friendly, they may not be the ideal fit for your target demographic. That’s why you need to think about how to design your homepage in the best way. After you find your ideal customer and target audience, you need to present the brand and grab the attention of the visitor with the homepage. As you check similar websites like yours, think about what the best way to do that will be. Think about what your visitors will like and how to pique the curiosity of the customer with that page.
Homepage call-to-action
Your homepage should direct visitors to your items. Your homepage should be designed for the user, not for SEO. That implies your homepage needs a killer call-to-action. One of the most common SEO problems we find is a poor CTA. Here are some helpful strategies for creating that CTA:
-Make the button visible. Choose nice colour which will be likeable for the theme colour or the same.
-Don’t utilize ghost buttons.
-Write active content, so your button says ‘Buy now’ rather than ‘Submit’.
-Reduce clutter.
-Avoid sliders.
You can add hero image, it’s viral and all it’s about it came with nice mood.
After welcoming the visitor to your website, direct them to your product pages. First, let’s optimize your internal search and category/landing pages.
Internal searches on your e-commerce website
Internal search is the primary navigation option for your online store, and it should be optimized to the fullest extent possible. You’ll note that larger businesses and online retailers place a high premium on internal search. The explanation is straightforward: if someone can readily locate the goods they’re looking for, they’re more likely to purchase them!
Along with refining the internal search feature, you should ensure that your search result pages are focused and provide an excellent overview. You must display the price and, if applicable, an ‘Add to Cart’ button beside the product’s name and image. Additionally, a comparison feature will be beneficial if, for example, you own a store that sells smartwatches.
Options for filtering
Following the search query, online clothes stores enable filtering by size, occasion, and color. Filtering options such as these, or sorting by price or availability, aid your visitors in rapidly locating the goods they’re looking for.
Optimization of category pages
Category pages may be even more critical than product pages, as they are the primary entry points for buyers. Additionally, they provide clients with the ability to select and compare, similar to your internal search result pages. While your category page should be treated similarly to other pages for SEO purposes, it is far more critical for shop usability.
Several points to bear in mind include the following:
- Assign a valuable piece of information to the page—preferably at the top, but not so far down that it crowds out the products. This material serves as the glue that holds your products together and is one of the reasons a potential buyer landed on this page. Even if they only scroll to the product lists, they will enjoy the additional information (and Google certainly does).
- Additionally, list all additional categories, or at the very least make them accessible via a drop-down menu, especially if you have a large number of categories. Rather than displaying them all, it makes more sense to make them accessible with a single click. However, if your shop has fewer than ten categories, list them in a sidebar or footer menu.
- Avoid hiding the call-to-action button on product listings. Include a button.
- The product image included in the listing will assist the visitor in clicking, purchasing, or comparing an item. Utilize high-quality photos that accurately depict the product.
- Optimize the product title by including the SKU. Along with the SEO benefits, individuals searching for specific products—such as that one specific Lego set they wish to purchase—will appreciate it.
- This indicates the availability of a product. Nothing is more infuriating than discovering the product you’re looking for only to discover it’s sold out when you reach the purchasing cart. Rather than that, add a remark to the category page listing.
- Another critical component of e-commerce usability is optimizing your landing pages.
Landing page optimization
A landing page is a page where your visitors end up when they follow a link from outside your site, for example, search engines or social media. Landing pages on your online shop should be optimized to evoke a particular reaction from the visitor, such as buying a specific product.
Focus on one product or product bundle and optimize that page to guide your visitor to the purchase—in other words, welcome them. Make sure the customer feels safe paying by setting up HTTPS on your site and adding enough trust signals. Add social proof in the form of testimonials, so your visitors will understand why your product is so good and why they need it.
We strongly recommend using headings and images to deliver your message, as this helps a lot, particularly for buyers scanning your landing page. Make sure these deliver the right message to your visitors.
And because we’re discussing e-commerce website usability, we can’t forget product pages.
Product page optimization
Make your product page as informative as possible. Product pages must be optimized for SEO (read more about Search Engine Optimization here), for example, by utilizing Schema.org product data. Because when a visitor lands on that page, you must encourage them to make a purchase.
What you can do:
–Create scarcity by offering a limited number of things. You can entice visitors to buy.
–Contribute ratings and reviews. Social proof facilitates comparisons and establishes trust about your ecommerce website is very important.
–Is it available or not? Make that apparent, as it will aid in managing visitor expectations.
–Add both to your cart and to your wish list. Individuals may be hesitant to purchase immediately for financial or other reasons.
–Use various photos of the goods. Compensate for the customer’s inability to pick up the goods and examine it from all angles by including more than one high-quality image.
–Offer bundles of products. Purchase this and that, as these things complement one another. As a sales promotion, you may give a discount on that bundle.
–Free shipping, or free shipping on orders exceeding a specified value. It’s a thoughtful gesture and another reason to do business with you.
–Related products. Customers may spend more money if you show them more products.
–Demonstrate the product in action. People will be more receptive to your message and understand why they require your product if you add video how it works.
CTA
As with your homepage, your product page should include a compelling call to action. This is typically the “Add to Cart” button. Keep distractions to a minimum, keep the content actionable, and utilize the appropriate color. Additionally, if possible, provide a review near that button to reinforce that sense of trust. More information about calls to action may be found here, as well as information about button design.
Optimisation checkout
Just before closing the sale, gently guide the buyer to the payment page. Add a progress bar to show them where we are in the checkout process. For an e-commerce website, this is super important in order to build trust and provide a good user experience.
At the outset of the checkout process, you should ensure that you provide an overview of the goods the user is about to purchase. Naturally, this is identical to the cart overview. There are a few suggests here:
- Even a modest photograph of the goods can reassure the soon-to-be purchaser that the correct item is in the basket.
- Prices include not only the price of a single item, but also the quantity and overall cost.
- Additional fees, such as shipping, should be no unexpected fees after the cart overview.
- payment alternatives, only to inform the consumer with their payment possibilities on your e-commerce website.
- Security indicators, such as the green padlock and address bar on SSL sites, as well as maybe additional badges such as Trustpilot just under the cart overview.
- A purchase made by a guest
- Additionally, you should ensure that a guest purchase is feasible. For many, the need to register for a one-time offer is a deal-breaker.
Abbreviations
If you need to collect information other than an email address, keep the form as brief as possible. Consider handy features like as a checkbox to validate that the delivery and invoicing addresses are same, rather than requiring clients to enter their information again.
Payment
Facilitate payment by partnering with a reputable payment provider and providing simple payment choices. These will vary according on the shop’s location and clientele.
Abandonment of shopping cart
There are several reasons why visitors may abandon your website without purchasing anything. They may even add items to their cart and then abandon it. In our piece on shopping cart abandonment, we discuss the factors that contribute to this, including:
-I wanted to do further research.
-Was found such product on lower price.
-I will wait sale of this website.
There are more causes for mobile carts, such as slow loading speeds and a bad design that makes it difficult to traverse a website. Investigating this can help you improve your online store and maybe enhance your sales.
Finally, a delighted consumer will exit your online store after an efficient shopping journey. Now, ensure that you maintain a positive relationship with the consumer. There are a few further steps you can take to ensure this occurs, this will help you to reduce e-commerce website cart abandonment.
