5 UX Hacks for Improving Your ECommerce Business Site
When it comes to running a successful ecommerce business, one of the most important aspects you have to think about is your online presence. From knowing how to best use hashtags for likes on Instagram to mastering website design so visitors will trust your business and the products you’re selling, how you look to customers on the Internet makes a huge difference in the number of conversions you make.
That’s why the user experience of your site matters so much–design makes a huge difference when it comes to how successful your ecommerce business is. So if you want your website to look as beautiful as possible, here are some UX hacks guaranteed to work:
1 Make your loading time fast
However good your website is, if it’s going to take a long time to load on a browser, it’s going to turn off most of your visitors. It’s almost 2020, and we live in an age now where no one’s going to be patient enough to wait for your page to load. In fact, according to Neil Patel, 40 percent of visitors will leave a site if it’s too slow, and 80 percent won’t return at all. So if you want more visitors, you have to focus on site speed. Luckily, there are resources out there you can use to test and improve your page’s loading time–for example, this website speed test.
2 Thorough product descriptions
However awesome your products are, and however beautiful, you aren’t going to get anywhere with customers if you don’t have thorough and clear product descriptions. Especially if your customers are millennials or Gen Zers, it’s worth putting in the effort–completing research of products before buying is a large part of the process for them.
In fact, 95 percent of Gen Zers “searching for and reading reviews to enhance and validate their product choice,” according to PowerReviews. So in addition to writing lengthily about your products, you should also provide easy access to positive reviews of your products–and remedy any negative reviews by listening to consumers and changing what you’re offering.
3 Get mobile friendly
The fact is, these days, the average American is spending over four hours a day on their phone–and a lot of this time is going to be spent researching products, browsing through your site to look at images of what they’re considering buying, and even making their final purchases without having to pull out a credit card from their wallet at all. But this can only happen well if your site is designed for mobiles.
In addition to making it easier for your customers to use your site on mobiles, and trust you, improving the mobile version of your site will up your SEO, now that Google is using mobile-first indexing. To learn more about how to optimize your site for mobiles as much as possible, read this article from Moz.
4 Keep your homepage sleek and simple
Sure, we know that you’re passionate about your ecommerce products and that you’d like to inform visitors why from the very first minute they visit your page. But the fact is, if they’re looking at a page cluttered with information when visiting your homepage, it’s going to turn them off. 38 percent of people will stop engaging if the content or layout is unappealing to them–so you need to have a sleek, minimalist look when they first come across your site.
Luckily, there are some great free resources out there–such as wix.com–which allow you to build a site with a pre-set template that looks beautiful to anyone. And if you want to get inspired, check out these great examples of minimalist web design.
5 Rely on user feedback
Especially when you’re selling products–and facing possible negative reviews, whether it’s to do with the product customers expected to receive or when–you’re going to be getting a lot of feedback. And this is, in fact, one of the best ways you can improve your products and service. For example, if many of your customers are young people who are struggling to pay off student loan debts, then offering free shipping on items they usually can be a positive thing–but how do you know if it’s getting you more sales to cover the cost of the discount?
According to Creately, you should “start by mining your Google reviews, social media comments and ratings, and other outlets to see what advice your customers have already offered. If that’s not enough, you can add feedback polls directly to your website or send out emailed surveys using free tools like SurveyMonkey.” Considering that 40 percent of buyers will build an impression of a business within reading only 1-3 reviews, serving your customers well makes a huge difference for your image.
By following these tips, you’ll provide your customers with a great user experience–which means you’ll be well on your way to success!
What UX hacks do you use for your ecommerce business site?
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