The performances and outlooks of ecommerce websites and mobile apps are constrained by many essential goals such as sales generation, attracting buyers, promotion of a positive brand image, cultivating loyal customers, etc. To achieve these goals, ecommerce websites need to take into account a large number of factors. These factors may include the web page/app's loading speed, quality customer support services, recommendations, the content on the site, pricing, shipping and product return policies.
Along with these factors, User experience (UX) has also become a very prominent factor in determining an ecommerce business's success or failure. Here, we will analyze the importance of UI & UX for ecommerce businesses.
Table of Contents
- What is UX/UI?
- Changing Standards Of Users
- What else does UX include?
- Top 3 Examples of ecommerce platforms with best UI/UX designs
- Conclusion
What is UX/UI?
UI and UX are terms that are frequently used interchangeably. However, they mean two different aspects of an ecommerce site. While UX refers to user experience, UI refers to the User interface. The designing of both parts often goes hand in hand with one another. Both contribute to the overall performance of the site.
Suppose the UX design is the optimization of the site's performance in handling conversations and selling products. In that case, the UI design optimizes the site's visual elements, look, and feel.
Changing standards of users
Nowadays, the merits by which the users are interacting with the ecommerce business judge are rapidly changing. The users now prefer sites with comprehensive, comfortable, and easy UI/UX designs to navigate.
The first impression is the last, especially true for the site's Ui/UX design. Nowadays, an online store's success requires much work in the UI/UX department to win loyal customers via productive customer communication.
The UI/UX design elements include ease of access to information and support, fast load time, easy navigation, purchase history, refunds, discounts, secure checkouts, and other convenient features.
Various studies suggest that around 70% to 85% of the online shopping carts are abandoned by the users in ecommerce shopping, amounting to a considerable loss of ecommerce businesses.
Even though a huge portion of these transaction losses and user dissatisfaction can be explained by outside factors such as extra shipping costs and extra shipping time, the factors associated with UI/UX such as lengthy checkouts, glitches, re-entering of personal details, re-entering of payment options, and problems in entering the discount codes also play a role in disappointing customers.
This is especially true for users that are using mobile devices to interact with your ecommerce business. A website made for large screens such as computers can not work the same way for mobile screens that are much smaller.
Due to this reason, websites need to have a responsive design to avoid inconveniences that are commonly encountered by mobile users. Most of the times, when mobile users leave a shopping site, it's due to UI/UX related issues such as difficult navigation, lack of easy access, lack of information or support, effort-intensive and time-consuming input options, and lack of convenient features.
The minimal expectations of mobile customers are security, smoothness, quickness, and overall ease of access when inputting personal and payment information.
What else does UX include?
Since UI is considered merely a subset of the ecommerce website's overall performance, it's no surprise that UX design includes a lot more than only attractive visuals and looks. Sometimes, it becomes hard to distinguish between the two.
UI focuses on providing the user with attractive visuals and an appealing interface that can attract his attention. UI optimizes the site's visual interface and ensures that the site's aesthetics and functionality are optimal.
The optimization of visual elements includes having optional fields on your site, ensuring that the checkout works just fine, whether the site's elements are responsive or not, and whether the site's overall visual structure is consistent.
UX design, on the flip side, is concerned with the psychology of the customer interacting with the website, which includes how the customer will be interacting with the checkouts, payment options, and other features of the site.
Naturally, UI design is another aspect of this optimization; however, UX's scope can be extended much further. It also involves ensuring that the checkout portion does not have too many fields. The forms do not require the customer to put too much personal information, that the field sends a confirmation message after the form is submitted. The form does not glitch after the user has entered his details into the form.
UX design in the context of ecommerce is about optimizing your site following the customers' actions, reactions, and needs. UI plays a role in achieving those goals by guiding the user towards his demands.
UI design helps optimize the product searches, categories, and listings providing digital space for visuals, information, and recommendations. While UX is central to maintaining the site's performance, UI design is just as important in guiding the user towards the ecommerce store's features.
Top 3 examples of ecommerce platforms with best UI/UX designs
Now, let’s look at some examples of ecommerce platforms that have designed and implemented successful UI/UX strategies.
- Amazon’s UX strategies
- Netflix’s UX personalization
- Sephora’s UX strategy for mobile users
1. Amazon’s UX strategies
Amazon can be easily considered the world's leading ecommerce platform that has revolutionized ecommerce stores' standards along with customer interactions. Let's discuss the elements of Amazon's UX strategy briefly.
- Search driven and navigation centered approach
- Simplified and easy experience
- Focus on personalization
Search driven and navigation centered approach
One of the most appealing features of the site is its search options that enhance the user experience. Amazon has auto fill, spell corrections, categorization, filtration, post-search personalization, and other convenient features.
Simplified and easy experience
Another thing that makes Amazon a successful platform is its one-click purchase technology. Amazon's product page layout, while it has many options, is straightforward to navigate. One can find product reviews, information, price, ratings, and feature comparisons all on one page.
Focus on personalization
Along with a navigation driven approach towards UX and a simplified layout, Amazon also focuses a lot on personalizing the site to keep the users engaged with the site. The home page experience and the content recommended by the platform plays a huge role in making Amazon the preferred platform for buying products.
The user is greeted by personalized cards based on the previous browsing sessions, previous purchases, special deals, and Amazon's perks. Amazon's personalization aspect makes it easier for users to keep track of their purchases and pick off from where they left.
Amazon's services are now not merely confined to selling products; it has also ventured into the home and personal devices, digital media, and entertainment. As an ecommerce platform, the strategy of Amazon towards UI/UX is evolving, and it betters itself as time passes on.
2. Netflix’s UX personalization
When it comes to watching movies online, Netflix is a game-changer and has changed how we experience movies and series. Netflix has a significant influence on sites that offer movie-watching services.
The reason for Netflix's popularity is its huge focus on personalization. Netflix allows the user to personalize the on-page content, layout, search results, imagery, and many other UI elements.
“We like to think of our service as really not a single service or a single product, but 140 million or so products because each user—each profile—gets their own customized, personalized experience.”-Tony Jebara, Director of Machine Learning, Netflix.
Along with that, Netflix employs cross-platform access, licensed content, marketing, affordable prices, and localization in around 190 countries. This overwhelming focus on personalization and other convenient features is the reason behind Netflix's global popularity.
3. Sephora’s UX strategy for mobile users
As time changes, the screens are getting smaller and more comfortable to carry around, due to this reason, most people are turning towards using mobile phones to interact with websites. When it comes to websites, not all websites can accomplish what Sephora has achieved in its UX designing.
Sephora is a global retailing website that uses traditional ecommerce strategies to go along with data analytics to ensure that its journey from start to finish is comfortable and enhances their experience.
Sephora's UX approach is based on a conventional mobile storefront UI and in-and-out-of-store mobile points of entanglement. Sephora calls its approach "Seamless Omni-channel experience for users."
Sephora integrates augmented reality, live assistance, 3D make-up try on, beacons, CRM integrated recommender engine, image, and barcode search options. When it comes to the best ecommerce experience on mobiles, Sephora takes the cake.
Conclusion
The UI/UX strategy of any ecommerce platform is paramount to the success of the businesses. If UX tracks, manages and optimizes the aspects of a website's performances and user's interaction with them, the UI design is necessary to guide the user towards those aspects.
We hope that this blog post was helpful. Contact us for ecommerce development consulting.