
This is part 3 of our series about E-commerce user experience design best practices. You can read the part 1 here: A Killer Product Search Experienceand part 2 here: Seamless Navigation
70% of online shoppers abandon their carts and leave E-commerce sites without purchasing anything. Window shoppers aside, a lot of this comes down to site owners’ negligence of the user experience (UX) as a key part of their strategy.
Poor clarity on full pricing, clunky search, lengthy forms, and not taking into account local habits (for multinational websites) are the most common sales killers, but each of these issues can be solved with smartly designed adjustments.
Need to fix your E-commerce performance, or benchmark your online retail project? Here is the third section of an incredibly convenient checklist of 250+ tactics, straight from an upcoming easy-to-browse 31Ten eBook on best E-commerce Linux practices.
Together with the search function and navigation (covered in part 1 and 3), header and footer sections of your pages play an important role to support the product discovery, navigation plus key shortcut experiences. According to a THCI eye tracking study, visitors cumulatively spend 23% of their attention time on the header section of your website.
Again, each ecommerce website being different in its offering and target audience, we invite you to A/B test these tactics, as they may or may not have an impact on your conversion.
Watch out for the following icons indicating the suitability of each tactic:
I.I Search Bar
Please refer to our Search section by clicking here: A Killer Product Search Experience
I.II Language or country selector
Vlad’s take: “Consider also sending the visitor automatically to their country specific section while notifying them why they have been sent to it. And offer a clear way to revert this automation to the country of their choice.”
Vlad’s take: “Same as country selection, also offer a clear way of reverting the automated selection.”
I.III Header Information
Vlad’s take: “Same as the wishlist, these are functions you may want to provide shortcuts for.”
Vlad’s take: “Same as tactic 8, any key benefit you are offering that can reinforce trust may have an impact on your sales when displayed prominently: social rating, free sampling, favorable return conditions, third party ratings etc.”
13 Include a QR code as an entry point for users to shop on mobile version / APP if you have higher usage rate and conversion on mobile.
15. Use contrasting background colors in your footer to signify the end of the page
16. Consider using a fixed bottom menu as a footer on mobileVlad’s take: “Especially with the rise of progressive web apps, mobile footer menus are increasingly popular.”
17. Consider showing a contextual footer to answer uncertainties, such as returns & exchanges or shipping rates at checkout
18. Use negative space to highlight footer navigation links
19. Use the footer’s opportunity for a last call to action
20. Display core guarantees in China
21. Include necessary but low conversion impact information in footer, such as legal (copyright notices, terms & conditions, privacy policies, disclaimers), non strategic awards and certifications, non-customer entry points (employee login, press) etc.
22. Provide a contact touchpoint in the footer: form, chat, phone number, address
23. Dynamically display personalized content in footer
We are passio- no, obsessed with creating the very best, up-to-date online user experiences that translate into more checkouts and a higher percentage of repeat customers.
Want to improve your E-commerce platform’s usage, retention, sales and conversion rates?
Click the “Read more” link below to leave us your email address and be notified first when the eBook is published!
• Vladimir Garnele •
10y+ experience UX-UI designer and partner at digital agency 31Ten. Vladimir writes about design and user experience best practices in China and shares key case studies from his work helping startups and multinationals alike build fantastic digital products that customers love to use.
• Zhoumo Yang •
Zhoumo is a 31Ten UX-UI Designer. She has more than 2 years of experience at the carrefour of photography, online interfaces and product design. She has a thorough understanding of end-to-end design process including user research, user flows, wireframes, prototypes, and final UI. www.yangzhoumo.com
31Ten
Shanghai based digital agency: UX/UI, cutting edge web development, online performance & analytics
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