The 5 most common UX mistakes in eCommerce websites
An eCommerce website has a clear but tough goal of creating sales.
Even if you have good website traffic, the ability of eCommerce websites to convince visitors to make their first purchase is still a very tough challenge.
User Experience (UX) is the series of emotions that a user goes through when interacting with a website and, as you might guess, good UX is a pre-requisite for an eCommerce site to work.
Good UX is not easy to pull off, it takes study, practice and a lot of testing; before this area of web development becomes easier.
That is why, more and more, companies are turning to agencies specialized in the development of websites and UX, such as the SEO agency- FN Marketing in Glasgow, to pull together and create eCommerce websites.
In this article, we’ll focus on the five most common mistakes you make when creating eCommerce websites.
1. Poor ease of navigation on the site
For an eCommerce site, like any other website, it is important that visitors easily understand how to move between the different sections and pages.
A good menu should include all categories and subcategories; in fact, the menu is usually the area of the site that is first checked by visitors so they get an idea of the structure of the site and what it can offer. The category pages should give an overview of the products in that specific section and refer back to the subcategory pages. Breadcrumbs are still one of the most useful elements for visitors as it allows them to move between the pages of the site, especially if they landed on the site bypassing the home page.
2. CTA’s (Call to action) not clear or not working
The CTAs are the buttons or textual links through which we take visitors to perform our desired actions. A CTA could be “Download Data Sheet” or “add to cart”. CTAs need to be used at the right time and they need to actually work because clicking on a button that doesn’t work can drastically lower the level of trust in a website.
3. Insufficient product information
Before making a purchase, especially an expensive one, we want to read the product description that we are thinking of buying, and we want to be able to read all the technical points, not just high-level bullet points. We therefore need quality content for eCommerce sites.
Other elements that need to be clearly shown on the product pages are price, availability, a variety of images, videos (if available), delivery options, up to date prices and delivery information plus terms and conditions.
4. Insufficient support and ease of communication between visitor and manager
Depending on product type, good after-sales support can make a difference when we decide to make a purchase. A company that offers after-sales support regardless of the manufacturer warranty can certainly guarantee itself a sale much more easily, even if one needs to spend a little more.
It is also important to offer the ability to directly contact someone in the company. A telephone contact, e-mail and a ‘Contact Us’ form on the site should be the minimum requirement.
5. Not-mobile friendly site
Today, the majority of searches are done via mobile devices. Therefore it is essential that navigation, information, purchase and contact options can be easily performed on either PC and mobile devices. The W3C guidelines are a good help. Testing on different devices, operating systems and browsers before launch ensures a good level of compatibility.
