In 2020, many e-commerce businesses have experienced a burst of growth. Ecommerce giant, Amazon, saw a 47% increase in revenue as people increasingly shifted to buying online. The company’s sales are projected to reach $416 billion by the end of 2020, owing to the increase in online shopping.

A recent study shows that 95% of consumers will likely shift to online shopping in 20 years.

Starting businesses online is easy and requires building a good website that enhances user experience and increases sales.

User experience is defined in terms of user interaction and engagement with a particular website and their satisfaction level. Sites that are easy to navigate translate into a good user experience.

To increase your sales and turn your leads into customers, you need to provide your users with a better user experience, which, in turn, will increase conversion rates.

Studies show that user experience can increase a website’s conversion by up to 200%, along with your website’s reach. Customers who had a better user experience are more likely to provide a useful review and tell others about your products and services.

Let’s look at how you can improve your site’s user experience to increase sales and generate more revenue.

Improved Website Design

When designing a webpage, aim for an aesthetically pleasing look with appealing colors and an attractive, well-coordinated theme.

If a visitor finds your website easy to access, they’ll spend more time browsing through your products and services. The increased dwell time of customers on your webpage will help increase your SEO ranking and give you an advantage over your competitors.

Here are some ways you can improve your website’s design to enhance user experience:

1.    Structured and Organized

The best websites have an organized and structured look, which helps users quickly find what they’re looking for. Your IT support team can make your website enticing to attract consumers to your products and services.

To better organize your website, choose which services and products you’re going to offer and then stick to them.

Having a fixed idea in your mind about which products and services to display on your site will make it look cleaner and more efficient. Use ds amazon quick view to gain more money shipping products.

Additionally, make sure all the content posted on your website is relevant to your overall theme and in-line with your company’s values. Posting a large amount of information to attract more readers can backfire if the content isn’t relevant and doesn’t match your company’s mission.

2.    Fast Response Time

An important part of providing a good user experience is fast and efficient customer service. Customers that don’t get quick replies are more likely to abandon your site and search somewhere else.

Incorporate an online chat option with a customer service agent available 24/7 to help customers with their queries. You can further boost sales by reaching out to customers quickly over the phone and email, and ensuring their issue is resolved in the least possible amount of time.

3.    Optimized for Mobiles and Tablets

Your website should be optimized for phones and tablets as most customers purchase products while on their phones. ReadyCloud reported that 44% of customers shop on their smartphones, while 11% use their tablets.

Similarly, eMarketer’s reported that 59% of online consumers who shopped on ecommerce websites used their mobile phones.

4.    Run a Trial Test

To ensure your website provides a good user experience, conduct a beta test of your site to ensure all areas of the site are functional and accessible. Make sure all the hyperlinks are working and are connected to the right pages.

Ask the testers to fill out a short survey at the end to rate their user experience and encourage them to leave recommendations about what they would like to change or improve. Visit https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/create-online-survey/ to create your online survey. You can go now to this website if you would like surveys to be part of your customer retention program.

A trial run will help you gain valuable feedback from your website’s visitors and give you a chance to improve the overall site design.

Image Filename: Amazon-website-main-menu

Image Alt text: A screenshot of the main navigation menu on Amazon’s website

Easy Navigation

If your website isn’t easy to navigate, it won’t be long before your visitors abandon your site and head over to your competitor’s, thereby increasing bounce rate.

Let’s look at some ways in which you can provide easy navigation to your customers.

1.    Give Simple Options

To optimize your ecommerce website with easy navigation, make sure all sections of your website are linked. You can do this by hyperlinking text to various webpages, using call-to-action buttons, link building in your main navigation menu, and embedding links in your primary and subheadings.

The options you offer to your visitors in your main navigation menu should be simple and easy to understand. Use small words and phrases and link the names to the product webpages to quickly go to their desired products.

Try to keep the number of your items listed in your main menu to seven or less. If you provide customers with too many complicated options, they’ll get confused and leave your website.

Ensure your main navigation menu is easy to read at a glance. Use drop-down menus to divide categories and sub-categories.

Check out how Walmart’s site offers an organized, easy to read main navigation menu that allows customers to quickly go to the relevant product pages.

Put your contact page information, FAQs, and staff pages in the footer, so the main menu or the navigation bar at the top of the webpage doesn’t become too crowded.

2.    Describe Your Specific Products

Many websites use generic labels in their main navigation menu, such as “Shop” or “Products.” This puts off visitors who may be looking for something specific and don’t wish to browse through all your products to find it.

It’s better to write descriptive labels for easy navigation. Titles that are product-based and meaningful engage customers better.

For example, if your ecommerce website is selling green cleaning products, use descriptive labels for each category of your products, such as “Green bathroom cleaning products,” “Green kitchen cleaning products,” and “Green window cleaning products.”

The use of clearly defined labels will allow customers to see your product range at a glance and help them quickly decide what link they want to click on. Descriptive tags will also help your website rank higher in Google searches.

3.    Back to Previous Page Option

Another way to provide easy navigation is to incorporate a ‘back to previous page’ option, which allows visitors to go back to the previous page that they had opened with a single click.

Many customers accidentally click on a link and are transported to another page. Giving them an option to go back to the previous page will ensure they continue browsing through your website instead of abandoning your site in irritation.

You can add links to previous pages under the masthead of your ecommerce website or add a button linking to the last page above the product descriptions.

Adding a “back to previous page” option also reduces the number of clicks a customer needs to make to go to their choice of a webpage. Instead of going a long way around, these buttons will make navigating your website easier for your users.

4.    Improve Your Website’s Footer

You can increase your website’s conversion rate by 23% if you improve your footer area. An ecommerce website with a good design stands out from the rest because it makes fair use of every inch of space available.

Don’t make the mistake of ignoring your website’s footer area as they’re extremely useful in providing easy navigation to your customers.

Feature links to the main products in your site’s footer. You can also include popular offerings here so customers can quickly navigate to those links.

Another way to utilize your footer space is to link to the About, Contact, and location pages. Add links for your contact information or contact form and link to Google maps for your physical offices’ location.

As with good website design, make sure the footer area isn’t too cluttered. You should only add links that you feel are important to your visitors and ones they’ll need to visit frequently, such as a customer support page or FAQs page.

Loading Speed

A survey result showed that if your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, 57% of customers are likely to ditch your site and hit the back button.

In the last 20 years, people’s attention span has reduced from 12 seconds to 8 seconds. This statistic reflects how customers tend to stay on websites that open quickly and leave if a website takes too much time to load.

With every second your user has to wait around for your site to load, your website’s bounce rate increases, resulting in a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction and a 7% reduction in conversion rate.

To provide visitors with a smooth and speedy shopping experience, you need to reduce your website loading time.

One way to reduce load time is to compress your CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files so your webpage can load faster. There are many software applications on the internet that can help you achieve this.

One such software is Gzip. It takes large chunks of data and content on your website and compresses it, so your website loads more quickly.

Another useful tip to decreasing your loading time is to reduce redirects to other sections of your website. While it’s essential to use backlink building services to improve your website’s SEO in Seattle and enhance your user experience, too many redirecting links can slow your website down.

The time it takes to take the user from one page to another may lose you a customer and lower your revenue.

You also need to optimize all images on your website to increase your loading speed. One way to optimize images is to reduce their size without compromising their quality, as smaller images tend to load faster than bigger ones.

Choose your image’s dimensions carefully and title them using descriptive labels that are relevant and meaningful to your site’s visitors. As a result, they become curious and are likely to wait a few seconds longer for the image to load.

The right file type and thumbnail of images also play a role in image optimization. Make sure you’re adding Alt text to each image as this gives visually impaired readers an idea of what the image represents.

Lastly, reduce server response time by selecting a reliable and fast web hosting service so your website can load quicker, and users are encouraged to stay on your page and explore more.

Search Capability

Most visitors want to quickly find what they’re looking for on a website. If your website doesn’t have a search option, 60% of users will abandon their search and exit your site.

Ensure your website has an easy-to-finding search bar that is positioned clearly at the top of the homepage and subpages. The search function helps customers do a quick search and go directly to the product they need, thereby enhancing their user experience.

When customers can locate their desired product quickly, there’s a higher possibility that they’ll immediately end up purchasing that product, increasing your sales.

Some customers also like to browse through different products on a website. The search bar will help them jump from one product to the next seamlessly and effortlessly, thereby increasing their satisfaction level.

To improve your website’s search options, add multiple filters such as price, ratings, color, location, size, etc., to make it easier for customers to sort through the range of products available.

You can also add a voice search option for a better user experience, as studies suggest that almost 30 to 50% of all searches will be via voice commands.