Building user-friendly websites is more important than ever. Ultimately, it will support your client’s efforts to maximize profitability and establish a positive brand reputation. To accomplish this, you need far more than just a clean layout. What’s considered user-friendly is a bit nuanced and can change based on the market. It’s not enough to implement a responsive, mobile-friendly layout and call it a day. Making a site truly user-friendly requires some thought and planning.
According to research, 74% of people will return to a website if it’s mobile-friendly, but just because a site is mobile-friendly doesn’t mean it’s user-friendly. While there are certainly overlaps, they are different factors. A website can be mobile-friendly without being user-friendly. For instance, you could build a visually polished mobile-friendly site, but if your navigation menu titles are confusing or irrelevant, it won’t be user-friendly.
What makes a website user-friendly is more than just a layout that looks good on a smartphone or tablet. The user experience also plays a role in how user-friendly a website is to visitors. For instance, the site structure should facilitate intuitive navigation and take user preferences into account. It should also be free from distractions and intrusions.
In other words, it’s not only about the ability to use a website, but how easily users can get what they came for without being confused or encountering problems.
A user-friendly e-commerce website will be a smooth experience from start to finish for all visitors, whether they’re just browsing, comparison shopping, price checking, or making a purchase.
Even if you aren’t being held responsible for your clients’ results, or you’re using a platform like Shopify that doesn’t allow extensive customization, they will judge your design services based on their success. To help your clients succeed, follow these tips for designing effective, user-friendly ecommerce websites.
A great way to keep visitors happy is to make their experience easy each time they visit the website. According to Google’s research, 58% of smartphone users feel more favorable toward companies when their mobile websites remember their preferences on return visits. This is easy to do when users have an account, but not everyone wants to sign up. People are inundated with too many accounts to keep track of, and many will avoid signing up at all costs.
However, remembering a visitor’s preferences and settings is a must, whether or not a user has an account. This includes remembering the contents of each visitor’s shopping cart. Many people put items in their cart as a way of creating a wish list and they come back months later to buy. Unfortunately, some ecommerce sites only hold items in a user’s cart for a few days. By the time a user visits the site again, their cart has been emptied and they have to start over. Sometimes they’ll give up and buy from a competitor. The longer you allow people to keep items in their cart, the more likely your client is to get the sale.
Upselling is when you offer someone an additional item or some kind of upgrade while they’re in the process of purchasing something. It could be a 2-for-1 deal, a discount on a more expensive item, or an upgrade to the existing purchase. For example, a customer purchasing a pair of work boots might be offered the opportunity to buy socks at a 50% discount compared to the retail price. Or, a customer purchasing the lowest tiered subscription might be given the chance to upgrade to the highest tier for a 40% discount.
Research shows that upselling can increase sales by up to 30% on average, but 37% of marketing professionals don’t use upsells at all. If your client isn’t using upselling, they’re leaving money on the table. It’s much easier to sell to existing customers, and that’s why upsells are so effective. In fact, according to data sourced by Forbes, existing customers spend 31% more than new customers, and the probability of an existing customer making a purchase is 60% - 70% compared to new prospects at just 5% - 20%.
You may not be in charge of making marketing decisions for your client, but if you’re in a position to program upsells and cross-sells, especially if you’re building your client’s shopping cart, it’s worth suggesting.
This particular point is one that causes division among users, businesses, and marketers. However, the truth is that requiring registration to buy is a barrier to sales.
Naturally, businesses want to collect as much information from users as possible for marketing purposes, but forcing users to register an account isn’t necessary for that purpose. Your client will already get their name, address, and email address from their purchase. The only additional purpose account registration serves is to facilitate administrative functions more easily, like support requests and returns. In this regard, requiring customers to have an account is useful, but many people just don’t want to register.
For 20% of website visitors, being required to log into an account to make a purchase is a deal breaker, and this practice will cost your client sales.
If your client hasn’t given you specific directions to require account registration to make a purchase, don’t assume that’s what they want. Talk to them and get a direct answer. If they don’t have a preference, and there’s no pressing reason to require an account, skip the requirement. If they tell you to require registration, it’s worth recommending some more research before they make that final decision. Explain to them what you know about required logins being a deterrent. If they still insist on requiring accounts for purchases, you probably can’t change their mind.
The tricky part of creating a good user experience is that it can be somewhat subjective depending on the target market. It’s subtle, but even the words you choose for the navigation menu can make or break good user experience. For instance, menu labels can be crafted intentionally to build rapport with your client’s market, which will enhance the user experience.
Say you’re building a website for a company selling an alternative health device/system and their main market is existing, licensed medical practitioners, like chiropractors, naturopathic doctors, acupuncturists, and massage therapists. They will get traffic from regular people looking for information related to the services and devices they sell, but since those people aren’t the target market, the site should not be tailored toward their needs.
For example, using common medical terminology in the menu titles will deter the average person, but it will appeal to licensed practitioners. It will make the average person feel excluded, but that’s also a benefit because they aren’t the target market.
The more you appeal to the target market, the easier it is to make a sale. If you create a user experience that accommodates people outside your client’s market, your client will be at a disadvantage in their industry. You can appeal better to a market by speaking directly to them. Doing this will inevitably alienate people outside of that market, but those within the market will be better leads with a much higher lifetime value.
You’ve probably seen some ecommerce websites that display results in a grid, and for each item, you can preview every variation without having to click on the product link. This is extremely useful because it helps customers narrow down their options more easily. They won’t have to open ten different product pages just to preview all the variations. Being able to eliminate options right from the search results or even the home page saves a lot of time and effort.
The less time users have to spend figuring out what they want, the smoother their experience will be with that website. This is especially true for users on mobile devices because unlike a desktop or laptop, tabs aren’t as easily accessible. The fewer pages your customers need to open, the better.
There’s nothing customers hate more than being signed up for newsletters they don’t want. People are inundated with newsletters, many of which are nothing more than spam. To maintain a good user experience on an ecommerce website, you never want to sign anyone up for a newsletter automatically. Just because someone buys from your client doesn’t mean they want to receive marketing emails.
If a client doesn’t specifically tell you to automatically add customers to their email newsletter upon making a purchase, don’t set it up that way. Always give customers the option to sign up on their own during the checkout process.
When you’re setting up web forms, require each customer to manually check the box that will sign them up for your client’s newsletter. Don’t keep the opt-in box checked by default and make the user uncheck the box. Many people will overlook that and get annoyed when they start getting emails. This is a good way to get your client reported for spam, which can eventually cause them to lose their email marketing account.
If a client asks you to program their sales process to automatically sign everyone up for their newsletter, talk to them about why that’s a bad idea and how it can deter people from completing their purchase and can prevent them from returning to the site. If your client is set on doing this anyway, at least include a message on the purchase form that they will be automatically put on the client’s email list.
Support for purchases and pre-sale inquiries should be easily accessible directly from the main menu with one click. If your client is running a help desk, discussion forum, or similar software, people should be able to submit tickets easily. The second they click on the support link, they should be taken to a page that makes it clear what they need to do to request help.
Certain support needs should be self-serve. For example, if your client sells software that requires a license, like WordPress themes, customers should be able to change the URL for their registered license. Don’t require them to create a support request for these small tasks because it will be frustrating for them to wait for a response.
At the end of the day, the site you design will impact your clients’ profitability at a fundamental level. Set them up for success by creating websites with user-friendly experiences tailored to meet the needs of their target market. The better experience their customers have, the more likely your clients will be to refer your services to others.
Whether you build ecommerce websites for small businesses or well-established brands, prioritizing a user-friendly design is essential for you and your clients’ success.
.svg)
