Succeeding as an Ecommerce Store: Tips to Improve a Website's User Experience
It is not a secret that to succeed as an ecommerce business, it is crucial to ensure that users have a great experience on your site. Websites with poor user experience ratings experience high bounces and low conversion rates. In this article, we will provide you with useful tips on how to improve your website's user experience.
How to Evaluate Your Websites User Experience
There are easy ways to evaluate your website's experience. Some of them are:
- Tracking the number of time users spend on your website.
- Pages with the highest engagement.
- Feedback from customers.
- Amount of conversions.
- Usability tests.
Useful Hints on How to Improve Your Website User Experience
To improve the conversion rate, it is essential that your website provides users with a pleasurable experience every time. To achieve this, we have compiled ten tips.
- Ensure the website is mobile-friendly and responsive.
- Use white space.
- Keep your content simple and do away with unnecessary content.
- Use short paragraphs and make use of bullet points to buttress your key information.
- Try to use fewer words and more captivating visual aids, images, or even GIFs.
- Incorporate strong calls of action to subtly prod your users to take the desired action.
- Keep your pages attractive and comfortable to navigate.
- Increase the loading speed of your webpages.
- Make sure all attached links are distinguished from the text and easy to identify.
- Ensure heavy plugins or images do not weigh down your site.
How Can You Improve Your User Experience?
We have listed useful tips to optimize user experience, now let's look at how you can implement them.
1. Website Design
The first step to achieving a website with an excellent user experience lies in its development and design. The layout of websites must be optimized and responsive to a better user experience. Our tips for a responsive website design include:
Optimizing font size
Your font size must be big enough to be read by users accessing mobile phones. Larger font sizes reduce the need to pinch and zoom in.
Streamlining the focus of each page
Our research has shown that most shoppers access websites via mobile phones. Having too much information on a page proves a distraction for users. Therefore, each page must stick to one keyword as the focus.
Mobile menu
A mobile menu provides an overview of the content of the website. It helps users navigate the site easily. The location of the menu differs on mobile phones and desktops.
Utilize white space
Using white space as your website background makes your text easier to read. For this reason, we utilize white space in the design of your website. Some of the ways white space helps improve your website experience are:
- Gives your website the air of being fresh and modern.
- Around texts and titles, white space can help improve the attention span of your users.
- It allows users to focus on the elements around your web texts.
2. Compelling Call to Action
The essence of a compelling call to action for businesses is one that we cannot overemphasize. The call to action differs across companies. It is a link; for others, it is a button that helps shoppers take the action you desire.
Some great ideas for a call to action are:
- Incorporating a link on your contact page with a form for shoppers to fill out
- Providing options for them to subscribe to your newsletters for more information.
- Adding links on your web pages that grant users easy access to desired information pieces.
- Incorporating eye-catching buttons with vital phrases like "buy now," "contact us" or "download now."
- Attaching scheduling options to encourage fixing appointments.
3. Improve the Speed of Your Website
Websites that take a long time to load are a significant turn off for users and translates into high bounce rates. One way to help increase your website speed is to analyze the backend of your website for coding and related technical issues. Heavy plugins alongside incorrectly written codes slow down websites.
4. Consistent Web Pages
Keeping the basics of your web pages (Heading Style, font size, Spacing, etc.), the same is essential. Drastic changes in the style of web pages may cause users to feel lost and mistrustful of your site. In designing your website, provide your users with beautifully drafted and consistent web pages so that they realize they are still on your website.
We keep all your webpages consistent by:
- Using the same page layout, i.e., Title first, then heading, subheadings, and paragraphs.
- Limiting the length of the contained paragraphs
- Maintaining the same font style and size across your web pages.
5. Website Maintenance
Most sites that are not correctly maintained often display low site ratings. It is, therefore, crucial that even after designing your site, you keep it up to date.
6. Omitting Words That are Not Needed
Most website users do not read web content; they scan through it quickly. Therefore, your website's content must have more information that influences the user's decision and less unnecessary words.
A great way to influence your website users' decision is to use fewer words and more of these:
- Infographics
- Videos
- Images
- Slideshows and GIFs
Benefits of Improving the User Experience of a Website
The benefits of improving users' website experience are innumerable. However, we have listed a few of them below:
- Reduction of the rate of bounces experienced.
- Improvement in user experience translates into an increase in conversion rate.
- Improves customer loyalty.
- Websites with good user experience often have customers surfing for a more extended period.
Conclusion
Improving your website's user experience has excellent benefits for your site. Some of these benefits include increased conversion and a lower bounce rate. We have provided you with useful tips on how to improve the experience of users on your website. Go ahead and try them out.
Author Bio:
Grace P. is a professional content writer at Monify Media who harbors her love for writing and crafting killer social media campaigns. She has worked with top-notch brands and magazines, which shows her professionalism. When she's not typing blog posts, you can find her lounging in her bed or enjoying burritos.