A fabulous website is necessary for businesses to grow in the modern era. In a nutshell, your website is the face of your business, and thus it is essential to design a website neatly. It will not be an overstatement to say that customers are reluctant these days to trust a business that doesn’t have a website.
Having an online presence either through a website or a mobile app is important as they give a transparent medium for the customers to buy things directly. As far as running an ecommerce business is concerned, having the design and development process successfully completed by a top ecommerce development company is a necessity.
The online ecommerce platform needs to have captivating aesthetics that keep the customers hooked to the ecommerce website & ecommerce app, and increase the ecommerce business’s revenue.
The term ‘UI/UX design’ was first coined in the late 1990s by cognitive psychologist Donald Norman. Moreover, ever since the proliferation of the ecommerce industry, the importance of UI has increased manifold. Thus having a beautiful UI for a successful ecommerce business is necessary.
This blog will study the nuances of user interface (UI) and their overall impact on the eCommerce business. In addition, we will also see the approach and steps to create an emphatic UI design for your eCommerce app or website.
So keep reading!
What is an eCommerce UI?
User Interface in ecommerce is focused on the overall look and feel of the ecommerce website or the ecommerce mobile app. UI design is all about how the final eCommerce website or ecommerce app is presented to the customers.
User Interface design also involves maintaining robust functionality while making an eCommerce website look a certain way. Along with pleasing the visitors with aesthetically designed elements, it also clarifies the visitors’ direction to navigate through the website.
In addition, proper user segmentation is essential for your eCommerce business as it reduces bounce rates and increases the overall conversion rate of your eCommerce app or ecommerce website.
Key elements of eCommerce UI Design
Having a balanced ecommerce UI design is a key aspect to garner more organic traffic to your ecommerce platform. The UI designers have to maintain a fine blend of intuitiveness, functionality, and beauty in the UI design of the ecommerce app or website. Here are the five key elements in making the ecommerce platform more engaging and reliable.
Informative Homepage
An informative homepage of an ecommerce website or app is essential as it is able to satisfy multiple functions. Be it giving a starting point to the journey or a card of invitation to the customer, a well-designed homepage can do everything. Moreover, it can be your asset in designing your marketing strategies as well.
Proper Site Search
Having a proper search box is very important as it is highly likely to convert your leads into customers. But if the search bar doesn’t work properly, the visitors won’t get their desired information and will leave the ecommerce website unsatisfied.
Here are some of the key ideas to improve the site search experience:
- The search bar should be big enough to fit the queries of the customers
- Provide the visitors to search their product in list or grid format
- Show status of the products for example in stock, out of stock, etc. clearly to give the visitors a fair idea about product availability
- Have a search autocomplete to save time for the visitors
- Allow the visitors to search the items using product codes
- Always analyze the consumer behavior and keep improving the overall ecommerce website experience
High-quality visuals
The ecommerce store owners should understand that their customers can’t touch and feel the products. Thus, in order to render a more immersive experience, it is essential to use high-quality visuals.
Top-quality visuals like demonstration videos, high-quality photos, user-generated content, etc. can play a vital role in giving your ecommerce website a much-needed edge. In fact, 77% of the customers prefer photos taken by previous customers rather than professionals.
In order to give a 360-degree view, you can use Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) (Take Ikea for example) to enhance the overall shopping experience of the customers.
Importance of UX Design for Ecommerce
The user experience design has to be user-friendly for the ecommerce platform as it is vital to keep the user engagement rates high. So, always put the users in focus first and then prioritize the functionality above everything else.
You need to understand that not each of your targeted customers is tech-savvy. Thus, always make the UX design as intuitive as possible. Do not complicate things for the visitors with complicated design solutions.
Here are the best practices to create a simple UX design for eCommerce app and websites:
- Simplify the ecommerce UI design
- The web pages and app screens must load quickly. Keep a check on that
- Image zooming with double-tap gesture must be there
- Always look to analyze and test the user behavior for future references
Checkout process
Having a trusted payment environment integrated along with a proper checkout process will add stars to the credibility of your ecommerce platform. A well-defined checkout process makes it easier for the user to buy and make the payment. Moreover, in addition to a proper checkout process, it is essential for the ecommerce website to have Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates as well.
The SSL certificate will encrypt the data and keep the payment information protected from external interference. Moreover, if the ecommerce website has an SSL certificate, HTTPS will appear in the URL.
Effective Strategies for Ecommerce UI Design
To increase the overall user experience, the user interface of the online eCommerce store development must be intuitive and visually appealing. To achieve a top-rated UI design for the eCommerce platform, there are certain design elements that you must follow.
Business goal
Before even beginning the UI/UX design process for your ecommerce platform, you need to first;
- Understand the essence of your ecommerce business.
- Understand the purpose of the product that you are trying to sell online.
- What goal do you eventually want to achieve with that?
Having a well-defined business goal will become the platform on which you can conduct other important functions of the eCommerce User Interface design process.
Continue reading: The importance of UI Design in eCommerce – a detailed guide
