The importance of UX in the development of e-commerce

The User Experience or UX is the new standard for every successful e-commerce. It is not just a question of implementing visual design features on the site, but it is a concept on which all the e-commerce design must rotate. In a customer centric era, in which the customer must be positioned at the centre of commercial activities, it is essential to know their users and then develop the sites according to their tastes and browsing habits. Not being able to use all sensory and cognitive perceptions as happens in a physical store, e-commerce must make up by creating a device that welcomes the user in the best way to facilitate shopping. Today this aspect must be taken care of especially for users who surf from mobile because they represent a slice of traffic in constant growth.

Commitment and resources are obviously necessary to learn the needs of our user. In most cases, this requires in-depth research to find out as much information as possible about users so you can answer questions such as:

• From which sources do they come? Direct traffic or social media?
• Where are they?
• Why are they looking for our e-commerce?

A good UX is essential when it comes to e-commerce for at least four reasons:

1. A user who has a good e-commerce experience is more likely to make a purchase, ie complete the desired experience, contributing to the achievement of the goal;
2. A user that has a good browsing experience is more likely to visit again our e-commerce to complete new purchases;
3. A good UX favours in the user the exchange of favourable opinions, he is more inclined to recommend the site to other potential customers, sharing for example its experience on social media;
4. A successful e-commerce invests in marketing (SEO, SEM, Social Media Marketing) and an optimized UX allows an improvement of the ROI (Return of Investment) favouring the general profitability;

The production effort is aimed at passing the user from the navigation to the cart and checkout by developing a stream as linear as possible, also contemplating possible user actions and anticipating possible behaviours: interruptions of navigation, insertion and disarming of products in the cart, abandoned cart, speed and security in registration and payment transactions.

One of the key factors in this process is the experience in the field and the ability to perform iterative tests of constant quality, able to highlight in real time the areas of intervention in order to maintain the efficiency and profitability of e-commerce always at the state of the art. The iterative test phase is essential to reduce cascade design risks, and is part of the agile methodology family that best responds to changes and flexibility in user decision-making.

CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization)

The CRO or conversion rate is the polar star that the UX must follow in its development. It is necessary to understand whether the implemented UX tricks are in line with the conversion rate and its improvement. These two aspects, which are often erroneously managed separately, must be integrated in order to obtain data and experiment actions able to provide control metrics for the design and the UX that, without a quantitative feedback provided by the CRO, would remain at the mercy of the personal suggestions.

Do you want to optimize your e-commerce by improving the UX of your users? Contact us now for more information.