Your business website is your most valuable asset – so it makes sense to hold user experience (UX) in the highest regard when looking at improving what you offer. Every marketing effort is implemented with the view to drive users to your site and ultimately convert sales. With such a wealth of choice online, UX has never been more important.
In fact, digital design agency Xigen discovered that 60% of people would be unlikely to return to a website after encountering bad UX. The same users told it that an ‘easy user experience’ was the most important feature for a website to have. PwC research also revealed that 73% of consumers consider customer experience to be an important factor in their buying decisions.
Ensuring your customers are happy with your service is, clearly, imperative. The importance of well designed, easy-to-navigate websites, catered to the user experience cannot be underestimated as part of this. Slow loading times? Confusing wording? Deceitful UX? Serve these kinds of problems to a potential customer and their decision is simple – there’s a whole world of online options to choose from instead.
What to look out for
So what can be done, and how will UX shape online retail in the future? There’s infrastructure in place for the possibilities of UX to be boundless – meaning there’s so much brands can do to tailor and optimise the user journey.
A big starting point is to think mobile-first – according to Statista, in the first quarter of 2020, mobile devices generated more than 50 per cent of website traffic globally. If you’re not optimising your site for mobile, UX will inevitably be poor for more than half of internet users and, as a result, you’ll quickly lose custom.
Even as far back as 2012, consumers were becoming impatient with websites not quickly presenting them with what they were looking for. Expectation levels have only risen further since. Google research shows that 79% of people who don’t like what they find on a website will go back and search for another, and 61% said that if they didn’t find what they were looking for immediately on a mobile site, they’d look elsewhere.
This is why personalisation is going to play a large – and defining – role in what online retailers can achieve for their customers. Real-time personalisation has the potential to increase engagement and heighten UX by presenting users with exactly what they’re looking for.
If you’re really looking to utilize UX, augmented, virtual and mixed reality could be amazing advancements to set your site apart from the rest. Motion design is also an up-and-comer in terms of captivating your audience with unbeatable storytelling – done well, animation and motion design can create powerful connections with users.
The possibilities are wide-ranging but one thing is clear – the future of online retail is truly going to be shaped by great UX. Making online shopping experiences seamless, simple and engaging will be key – from voice command, to AI and even 3D interfaces. The UX landscape is going to flourish and it’s the job of brands to keep pace with the market.
Ensuring you enhance the UX of your site in the most effective way requires research, planning and precise implementation. If you have an in-house expert, fantastic. But what if you don’t? As this will be such an important aspect of your business success moving forwards, calling in the experts is a great idea.
Whether you’re in search of an agency to help with what your WooCommerce platform can achieve, or even Magento ecommerce developers to create you something on brief from scratch – employing the help of an expert can really pay off for your brand. You can challenge these people and explore the true potential of the technology already available for businesses. In an increasingly competitive online marketplace, investing in your ecommerce offering and tweaking the small margins to cater specifically to your users will make an immeasurable difference.
