UX Mistakes in Designing E-commerce Websites (and how to fix them)
Last updated on September 15th, 2023 at 11:03 am
Have you ever come across a website, application or webpage that left you puzzled, confused and frustrated? If yes, then you have encountered a webpage in which there are severe UX design mistakes. E-commerce is one of the biggest trends of the 21st century. Amazon, Limeroad, and eBay are some of the most successful e-commerce websites in the world right now. Looking at their success, a lot of web developers and UX designers are heading toward this field. However, the success rate is not high as many e-commerce websites go out of business in their first few months. Their failure is due to a lot of factors. One of those factors is mistakes in the UX design of the e-commerce website. Therefore, we have listed some common mistakes UX designers commit:
A Poor Shopping Cart Design:
Your shopping cart is one of the most significant components of your e-commerce website. It needs to be efficient and flexible enough to provide its users the freedom to add multiple products and to revise the quantities or other specifications about those products, and it needs to remain transparent at the same time. This is where many developers create issues for their websites.
Solution:
One solution to this problem is to let the customer choose a product and send him back to the shopping page where they can proceed to checkout. Enable your customers to edit the quantities of items in their cart or remove an unwanted item from their cart. Let them customize products and gain more conversions, as the guys at the conversion rate store did in their case study with a 7% conversion uplift as a result. Also, display the shopping cart to allow the user to confirm what he is paying for.
Hiding Contact Information
Credit card information is very important to your customer and they cannot trust an unknown website or company on that matter if their authentic contact details are not mentioned. They want to know who they would have to approach if there is an issue with their product. If your site lacks contact information, or hide it, your customer won’t trust your website. This would result in your site going out of business very soon.
Solution:
Display the contact details right below the product description. The most obvious places to put your contact information are either in your header, the top of your sidebar, or in your footer. Provide multiple ways to contact such as through phone number, fax, email, and social media websites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. This will improve your customer relations to a great extent.
Personal info is what must not be compromised in terms of e-commerce sites. Employing high-grade security options on an e-commerce site is the foundation of a successful online business. It is recommended to hire a Magento developer to create a secure yet effective e-commerce site.
Poor Customer Service Options Link
Customers want proper customer care no matter how cheap or expensive the product they are buying. You need to make it very convenient for customers to ask queries or complain about your product. If you don’t do that, it’ll drive your customers away from your website. One of the best ways of providing customer service is live customer chat because this shows your website is very responsive and interactive. It also shows that you are interested in solving the problems of your customers.
Solution:
Provide an active email address where customers can approach you if they have any queries or complaints. A more modern way is contacting through social media pages on websites like Facebook in which there is a chat option for customers to submit their queries. Note that there should be an active team behind the chat box to make sure customers don’t have to wait for days.
Requiring an Account to Order Link
Signing up for anything is a hassle. Even if signing up is free on your site, this is an instant turn-off. You have to decide which is more important to you: getting the order or capturing customer information. Choosing the second option might give you the customer’s information, but you won’t get your product sold.
Solution:
There’s an easy solution for this. Rather than acquiring the customer’s information through the signup, ask for it after checkout. This will help you.
A lack of detailed product information Link
When you are shopping in a normal store, you can look at it, feel it, and judge the quality before buying. However, that’s not the case with e-commerce. Shopping online removes that interaction. E-commerce sites need to do the best they can to improve to be as genuine and trustworthy as real-life shopping. Remember that if your site lacks proper specifications of the product, your customer won’t wait a second before leaving your site.
Solution:
Provide as much product information as you can. That includes sizes, materials, weight, dimensions, and any other information depending on the product. People new to blogging will better know the importance of providing sufficient information to engage the audience. For this purpose, try adding extensive product descriptions and other information on your e-commerce site.
Not Including Shipping Rates Link
Whenever your customer buys something very cheap and economical from your e-store, he has a positive feeling about it. However, when he receives the product, he sees a huge amount of shipping charges being applied to the product. This enrages him/her and they might drop negative reviews on your website which you don’t want. If you don’t mention the shipping charges, your site won’t be trustworthy.
Solution:
Most major shipping companies allow you to use shipping calculators on their websites. Moreover, you can also add widgets and plugins which can perform the same functions. Try imposing shipping charges related to the weight of the product so that a customer doesn’t have to pay the same shipping fee for ordering a laptop and an earring.
Wrapping up
E-commerce is a great way of setting up a business as it attracts more customers than a physical shop. All you want is a proper, professional e-commerce website that can make e-shopping very convenient for your customers. For that, you have to master your UX skills to make your website more feature-packed. Remember, your website represents your product and your company.
