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Tips on Building a User-Friendly E-Commerce Site

July 15, 2015

User-Friendly Ecommerce Site

The point of having an e-commerce site is to sell your products online, and the easiest way to do so is to make sure it is easy to use. The people who visit your site are ready to buy, and you don't want to scare them away with a site that is difficult to navigate. This may seem obvious to you but, if you have ever tried to purchase from a site that made you want to scream, online retailers aren’t all paying attention.

If you hope to succeed in the competitive e-commerce world, read on for some practical tips for improving the user experience.

Offer Effective Ways to Filter Products

When you shop online, you typically have some idea of what you want to buy. For example, maybe you are looking for a blue shirt, so you visit your favorite online retailer. While you might get stuck browsing a few other appealing products or promotions on the site, your main goal is to get to the selection of blue shirts.

A user-friendly site will make it easy for you to go to the shirt section and then refine the results by details that include color, brand, style and even size, until you find what you need. You can then sort the results to choose which products you see first: the cheapest, most expensive, top-rated, or newest.

This wallpaper retailer offers several ways to search, and you can even apply multiple filters at once. In the image below, we used the search bar to search "damask," then filtered further by style and by color. This narrowed their selection of over 1400 wallpaper choices down to around 100.

ecommerce-product-navigation

Basically, the process is easy, fast and familiar, which is exactly what online shoppers want. Duplicate that smooth experience for your customers and you will be on your way to having a more user-friendly e-commerce site.

Make the Site Easy on the Eyes

If no one enjoys looking at your site for long, they won't spend much time shopping there. This is why great design is important. Preferably, the design will be unique so that it doesn't remind your customers of other websites they have recently visited.

In addition to having an appealing design, make sure your product images are of high quality. This way, they not only look nice but customers can also get a good look at what they are about to buy and ensure it's exactly what they want.

This not only improves sales and the user experience, it will also reduce costly returns.

For inspiration, check out these award-winning e-commerce websites.

Deliver Informative Content

The description of each product is just as important as the image. Make sure you carefully describe each product's appearance and function so that your customers know what you are selling.

You can see from this example below, each part of this product listing is clear. The title is descriptive, the image clearly shows the product, the price and "add to cart" button are easy to find, and the description is fully filled out. It even describes how to use the product effectively.

ecommerce-product-description

You might even consider allowing customers to post reviews right on the product page. This can help improve sales from people who are normally cautious about shopping online, since positive reviews can increase their confidence in your products.

Potential buyers will move on to another online seller if they lack sufficient information to make an informed buying choice.

Many e-commerce sites lack basic user experience features because business owners try the do-it-yourself route, or ask a tech-savvy relative to build their site for them. Don’t trust the future of your business to your brother-in-law or best friend. Contact Be Locally today for help with creating or improving your e-commerce site.

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