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One of the highest priorities for every online business is ensuring their customers a convenient environment for shopping. The profitability of the whole company largely depends on this partially subjective comfy feeling.
However, marketers and developers have been accumulating valuable insights about what affects the comfort level while people browse through a website, choose items, pay, and so forth. In line with these aspects, specialists craft actionable strategies for improving their selling platforms. In this post, we’ll observe five significant directions to follow so that users enjoy their online shopping and consequently buy more.
1. Boost the Performance of Your Website
An online shop is a compound structure that requires constant examination and amelioration. Some technologies behind these websites are becoming obsolete, others are evolving, and new ones are emerging. Popular eCommerce platforms like Magento, Shopify, or BigCommerce can’t work years later like on day one without proper maintenance.
That’s why programmers always have a lot of tasks. They have to optimize Magento database, media, caching strategy, JS, and other parameters in order to make the loading speed as close to instant as possible. Numerous research has proven that performance directly impacts the bounce rate: the slower the site loads, the higher are the chances that a user will leave it.
Giants like Nike also have serious drawbacks when it comes to loading speed either on a desktop or mobile version (see the screenshots below). Even with the naked eye, we can see that the loading speed of this site on mobile is far from perfect. Google PageSpeed Insights assessments for Nike are 12/100 on mobile and 19/100 on desktop.
Screenshots taken on the official Nike website
2. Improve Core Web Vitals
Besides other metrics, pay attention to Core Web Vitals: these are several web performance indicators that reflect different aspects of user experience on your website. If you run an online shop on Magento, explore at least the following Magento 2 core web vitals tips. In general, Core Web Vitals (or CWV) pays attention to three main things: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
LCP estimates the loading speed of the largest media element on a web page. FID indicates the time of response to particular actions by users: pressing the button, selecting something, etc. CLS reflects the extent of visual content stability during the use of a website. It touches upon unpredicted changes of layouts that hinder users.
In the screenshot below is the Google PageSpeed report about Nike’s website. As you can see, one out of four core web vitals is acceptable, and the overall page speed is poor. This underlines the need to monitor various aspects of the website’s performance. Modest metrics worsen the shopping experience (conversions, bounce rate, and so on) as well as the store’s rankings in search engines.
Screenshots taken on the official Nike website and Google PageSpeed Insights website
3. Enhance the UX/UI of Your Website’s Mobile Version
If you don’t have a mobile app, you should critically rethink the design of your eCommerce website on smartphones. The share of mCommerce has already surpassed sales via desktop, so the mobile-first approach has become leading. Excellent usability is vital if you intend to succeed in the never-ending competition with your rivals.
There are a couple of ways to make an online store better in terms of UX/UI.
- The first is to make it responsive so that it adjusts to devices of different formats.
- The second is to rebuild a site as a progressive web app. While being websites, PWAs inherit the best traits of native apps: they are mobile-friendly, have an impeccable UX/UI, the push notification feature, and an offline mode. Moreover, users can install PWAs without downloading.
Take a look at the screenshots from the Puma Mexico PWA. Its catalog and product pages incredibly remind us of a mobile app. But this is a website that was redesigned to make shopping handier on smartphones.
Screenshots taken on the official Puma website
4. Take Steps Towards Omnichannel
The concept of omnichannel marketing is all about providing a seamless and comfortable shopping experience. There are two main measures on the way to genuine omnichannel.
- The first is uniting offline and online directions of the business.
- And the second is implementing the technologies for recording and saving the history of communications and purchases as well as sharing it with all involved staff members, online and in-store.
Let’s discuss one example of omnichannel in online retail. By exploring customer behavior, marketers found out that the vast majority of shoppers combine online and offline interactions with brands when they’re about to buy something. They tend to check the availability of items in physical shops, study info on a website prior to visiting a store, or order products online to then pick them up offline. Certainly, if retailers created a suitable shopping environment for such operations.
The screenshot below shows an example of the omnichannel approach on the Urban Outfitters online store. You can check whether the item is somewhere within 50 miles from you or pay for it online and get offline later.
Screenshot taken on the official Urban Outfitters website
5. Give Personalized Product Recommendations & Cross-Sell
Why not prompt goods that perfectly match/complement the chosen one or fit the taste of clients in general? For people, it is highly convenient to see these hints and waste less time looking for the appropriate pairing for their orders. In turn, for online shops, this is the additional opportunity to sell more while showcasing themselves as mindful helpers.
We particularly love how Ikea recommends commodities. For example, view the page of an armchair. The “Goes well with” section will be a selection of additional items (like a footstool and lint rollers) and other products that will look nice with this specific model (poufs, cushions, plaids, etc.).
Screenshot taken on the official Ikea website
Conclusion
There are plenty of ways to make your customers enjoy their shopping experience with your company. We’d recommend you start by fixing the loading speed issues and other lags that diminish performance. Nevertheless, every aspect from those stated above hugely contributes to the impression that users obtain while shopping on your website. The better this perception is, the higher will be the revenue of any eCommerce site.
About the Author
Kate Parish
Kate Parish, Chief Marketing Officer at Onilab, with 8+ years in Digital Marketing and eCommerce web development promotion. Kate constantly upgrades her knowledge and skillset to stay fit in the progressing online world. She always does exhaustive research in SEO, branding, SMM, PPC, and Magento PWA development before sharing her expertise with a broad audience.