Ecommerce UX: When A Great Experience Brings Business Value

Around 2011, the main factor making or breaking ecommerce user experience was the ability to comfortably search for specific information and products within a site. Today, the expectations have massively increased, requiring much more work in the UX/UI department to provide best-value experience and win customer conversions and loyalty. These expectations include fast loading speed, easy navigation, access to information and support, convenient extra features (comparison, personalized recommendations, purchase history, refunds, etc.), discounts as well as secure, quick, and painless checkout.

In retail, according to various studies, between 70% and 85% of online shopping carts are ultimately abandoned (Barilliance), resulting in lost opportunities for digital retailers. While a big part of those abandonment rates is due to outside circumstances, such as extra shipping costs and time, other factors (like lengthy checkout, the need to re-enter personal and payment information multiple times, glitches with discount code acceptance) are just what UX design can and should address.

Talking about mobile users, 4 out of the top 5 reasons shoppers don’t convert are UX-related issues, such as difficult navigation, effort-intensive data input, lack of comparison options, and no way to see product details:

So, for checkout, customers’ minimal UX/UI expectations are: security, clicks and taps reduced to a minimum, no repeated input, information (but just the right kind and amount of it), comparison functions, and smooth and quick proceedings overall. It seems doable enough to cover, however it’s important to understand that this is one step in a whole chain of actions making up a digital shopper’s journey.

Yet, making it easy for users to find relevant products and convert as quickly as possible is just one of the things UX/UI is responsible for.

UX should cover the entire customer journey, and while much of that journey will be determined by user interface, some aspects won’t be. Consider pricing, product selection, and customer feedback, among other factors. By paying close attention to them, a strong UX will help ecommerce websites establish profitable and sustainable relationships with their customers.

Take as an example what is arguably the world’s preeminent ecommerce multi-domain platform. "The Granddaddy Trendsetter” of online shopping, Amazon is the mammoth player no ecommerce UX conversation can go without. What started 25 years ago as a modest online book shop have grown into the definition of digital shopping for our generation.

Low costs, wide product selection, fast shipping, and exceptional customer service are not the only things making it stand out. The key ideas behind Amazon’s UX strategy are these:

Since its creation, Amazon’s search function has consistently been at the heart of its user experience. Autocompletion, spelling correction, filtering, categorizing, post-search personalization of suggested content, and other features combined create a simple and effective multigenerational user experience that has become one of the best UX practices for ecommerce.

The “1-Click purchase” technology (patented by Amazon and licensed out up until 2017) revolutionized online shopping in its time, and stays a great UX feature to this day. Overall, Amazon’s product page layout can be considered a solid standard. Extensive but highly-structured and easy-to-navigate, it provides information, price and feature comparisons, user reviews and ratings, estimated shipping costs, and more.

Having everything a customer might need on one page and providing a simplified checkout experience are not the only things Amazon is going for here. The appeal and convenience of creating shopping lists, repeated one-click purchase and delivery options, and automatically scheduled delivery of supplies by subscription add to the brand’s exemplary checkout process too.

Even though Amazon’s general motto concerning visual design seems to be “if it ain’t broke don't fix it,” what does change significantly from customer to customer is the recommended content and home page experience.

When a customer opens amazon.com, they are greeted by carefully personalized ‘cards’ with items and categories based on previous browsing sessions, special deals, a list of Amazon’s perks, and so on. While not unique to Amazon, this personalized approach makes it easy to pick up from where you left, and encourages revisiting previously viewed or purchased items all while giving new opportunities for shopping every day.

By now the scope of Amazon’s ecommerce user experience has expanded far beyond the original website. The company has successfully ventured into the domains of multi-purpose mobile apps, personal and home devices (Kindle e-book reader, Amazon Echo, Fire TV Stick), digital media and entertainment (Prime TV and Amazon Music). All of those create a true digital ecosystem and provide a streamlined, interconnected customer experience.

By constantly evolving and trying new things while staying true to what works, Amazon adapts and reinvents itself as a company. UX-wise, it remains a global ecommerce force to be reckoned with.

While more and more users become mobile-first and mobile-only, there is still a significant time-to-spending gap between desktop and mobile shoppers. However, the reasons for this gap usually lie in either a less-than-optimal UX or the fact that mobile users tend to spend more time learning about the product or service before the purchase. This brings new challenges and opportunities to mobile commerce projects, all of which heavily influence UX/UI in their own way.

One of the most noticeable examples is Sephora. The global make-up retailer uses a combination of traditional best ecommerce UX practices and data analytics to evaluate the customer journey from start to finish and adapt their offer to it.

Through a great conventional mobile storefront UI and a variety of in- and out-of-store mobile points of engagement, Sephora creates a UX approach they call “Seamless Omni-channel Experience for Users.” This includes integration of augmented reality, 3D make-up try-on and live assistance, beacons, digital customer ID doubling as a loyalty program card, a fully CRM-integrated recommender engine, image and barcode search.

While still striving for a seamless experience across devices and channels, Sephora’s ultimate bet is on full employment of what mobile can offer. More and more retailers go this route in Europe and North America, with other regions to follow. With the next large wave of mobile-first and mobile-only internet users emerging in Asia, Africa, and South America, this trend is well on its way to become truly global.