The Importance of Good User Experience in E-Commerce

Just how valuable is a good user experience for the success of e-commerce? One word – ultimately.

The single most frustrating thing for e-commerce business owners is an abandoned shopping cart. How can it be that customers are filling up their cart, but then, not making the purchase? These abandoned carts can cost business thousands per year. Why do they happen?

Now, it’s likely that of some of those people, they leave their stuff in the cart for a reason you can’t do anything about. They simply changed their mind, they were just browsing with no real intention to buy, or maybe they were just taking a look at your offer and pricing things up. For the rest of the cart-abandoners, unfortunately, they’ve probably been put off by the bad user experience (UX) design on your site.  

Of the total number of people who would have bought from you under other circumstances, anywhere up to a third of those will abandon their cart if the checkout process is too long and complicated. Think about it. If you’re trying to buy something you need, you’ll try and figure out even the most awkward e-commerce setup. But then, if you know you can get it somewhere else more efficiently, then you’ll be out there like a shot.

A recent study has shown that the average US e-commerce site asks users to fill out 15 fields. The ideal is closer to 8.

The naughty list

Several other UX features can put people off when purchasing on your site. These are:

• Unclear pricing structure
• Requiring an account / sign up
• Site errors
• Perceived lack of security
• Insufficient variety of payment methods

Just a few tweaks and fixes to eliminate these features can massively improve your conversion rates and limit cart abandonment.

Keep them coming back.

Even if people do end up buying a product from you, if your site has terrible UX, the chances of them coming back are pretty slim. Would you go back to a site you knew was hostile to what you needed?

Fortunately, you don’t need to do a ground-up site redesign to improve your UX. As well as reducing the number of fields your customer has to fill out, you can also try and automate the site to do some of the work for them. Ask for the minimum amount of information and limit the demands you’re making on their time.

Don’t ask people to sign up unless you have to. If you’re asking the customer to purchase a recurring service then sure, they probably need their own account. However, if they don’t absolutely need one, don’t ask them to make one. Most people will run a mile.

You should also make sure that your customer has all the information they need to make an informed purchase, but no more – overwhelming someone with information they don’t need is likely to confuse them and encourage them just to walk away. Every step of making an online purchase involves different decisions. Help your customer make them.