It’s that time of the year again and Black Friday is upon us. The sales are everywhere; there’s something new everywhere; deals here and deals there; but what makes customers buy off of one website over the other? We’ve gathered our fair share of easy tips to help your e-commerce platform maintain a successful Black Friday campaign.
Stay true to the brand
Avoid visual clutter by using simple designed ad banners with clear call to action. The designs should stick to the brand identity which makes the user related more to the website.
Help your users get to what they want
Listing all products in the sale next to each other is overwhelming. Use categories to help the users navigate to the right section of the website, as well providing filters to narrow down the range of products displayed.
After clicking on the Black Friday banner, the page displayed include products featured as deals of the day, hottest deals and a list of categories which have deals.
Make your discount percentages pop
Offers and discounts are great driver for the shoppers to take the decision to purchase a product (link). Discounts are the core of Black Friday campaign. Featuring those discounts visually and in percentage has a great impact on the experience.
Tell the users the what they will really pay before they click “checkout”
61% of users abandon their cart and the checkout process when they realize that extra fees are too high. Deceiving the users by using a website wide banners promoting free shipping which isn’t the case when they proceed to the actual checkout, leaves a bad impression.
Macy’s promotes free shipping in the header and in the product page but when the user tries to checkout, they add shipping fees anyways.
These are just simple design tips that you just can’t overlook; however, an awesome and successful Black Friday campaign (or any sale for the matter) doesn’t only stop at these, without proper marketing, a secure website that actually works, great effort exerted by your customer support team and the right partners to get your goods to the customer, you don’t stand a chance in this highly dynamic season.
Looking back at the last 10 years, tracking the evolution of the different technologies has become quite challenging of a task; one reason why is the speed of said evolution, another could be the immense number of new tools, practices and technologies surfacing in a single month let alone a year or two. However, if this has to tell you anything, it’s the fact that the current generations are aiming at surpassing themselves in terms of achieving the impossible and in return leveraging the experience of living from the tiniest detail to the greatest.
When it comes to one thing that has definitely evolved in the past few years in human lives, it’s definitely the shopping experience. Since we’re now almost always online, our mere day-to-day interactions online produce an incredible amount of big data which, with the increasing power of computing, is used to make our experience, as customers, richer, more seamless, more entertaining and of course more fulfilling to our needs.
Imagining what the future could be like could appear to be easy from afar yet remains difficult because you never know what the next breakthrough is or where it is coming from. However, if the future is anywhere, it’s lying right in the palm of our hands, the smartphone. Think of all the things made easy by having your smartphone on you, countless, right?! Consumers are now engaging with brands on various channels through their mobile phones, be it social media with the brand itself or finding inspirations from influencers or with the brands’ e-commerce platform. The sheer number of clicks and actions a customer has to go through to go from engagement to purchase is still hindering. Brands have been reinventing the customer experience through mobile by distributing their online presence between e-commerce and mobile apps for more reach, all you have to do is scroll, but it is not yet enough, carts are still abandoned and needs are yet to be fulfilled in a better way.
We imagine a future with less friction and an even more seamless experience and we think the next 4 things are what will be taking our shopping experiences up a notch or a few in the next few years.
Machine Learning and AI
With the help of machine learning and AI, your desired product will find you not the opposite, since a unique experience is all about being personal, an experience tailored just for you, right? If you think online shopping still lacks the presence of someone there to turn to for inquiries and questions, chatbots are now developed and equipped with all the information anyone would need, ready to answer all your questions and might even take over the whole customer support as we know it.
Augmented & Virtual Realities
You will be able to find all the info and reviews you’d be searching for to determine whether you should purchase X or Y as you point your phone towards the product using AR experiences online or in-store. The lack of the sensory element in online shopping will be a thing of the past, overcome by creating engaging buying experiences using VR though which you can see the product, place it where it fits, try it on and customize it to your taste.
Digital Fingerprinting
You won’t be afraid to share your personal information to make a purchase online because you won’t have to when you can present your unique digital fingerprint for authentication, reducing the number of steps needed to checkout and leading to higher conversion. Digital fingerprints will also be of great help in avoiding fraud in online transactions protecting both retailers and customers.
Personalized Payments
Online payment is still such a hurdle to many, right? Personalizing payments should come as a natural evolution to personalizing the whole shopping experience. Retailers will be providing means for customers to decide when and how much they’re willing to pay, gaining not only their loyalty but also the certainty to come back for more.
As a retailer, are you ready for the future? Are you ready to engage the customer on more than meets the eye? The survival in this game will be not only for the smartest, but also for the first and not necessarily the best anymore. Hop onto the train of the new first and you’re guaranteed a notice from a customer overwhelmed by choices yet holds the upper hand all the way and is always looking for only what calls their name.
In part one of this post, we reviewed the differences between a desktop web and mobile design throughout an e-commerce website. We reviewed some of the important pages including: home, category, product and cart page.
In this post, we continue the journey through another four key screens.
Search (5/8)
Search functionality is one of the most crucial features that should not be only included in the e-commerce website but also implemented in the most efficient way. The usability of this functionality doesn’t only lie in the interface of the search bar but also in how smart the search is.
Web view:
Amazon search got it right. Just from generic keyword like “Laptop”, it offers suggestions related to everything a laptop needs as well as the ability to search in a specific category.
Mobile view:
Emphasizing on how important the search is, amazon mobile design uses the entire width of the screen to display the search bar as well as being thump friendly. The suggestion list height doesn’t extend more than the space above the keyboard.
Search Result (6/8)
Next step, after having a smart search, is having a usable search result page. That includes a clean display of products, sorting, filtering and different display options if needed.
Web view:
At first glance, Amazon design may seem noisy but you can easily comprehend how the page is designed in blocks and each block serves a specific functionality.
Block 1: Showing number of results found, the keyword I used in the search, sorting and display options
Block 2: Filters
Block 3: Search result. This is the most important block and that’s why it takes the most space.
Block 4 & 5: show ads, promotions or sponsored content.
Mobile view:
Amazon mobile design is very clean and organized. It starts out with a message that includes the keyword used in the search, followed by the search result count, link to filters and the result products. Sorting and filtering options are included in another screen due to the variety of options.
Checkout (7/8)
Implementing a usable checkout process decreases abandonment rate and guarantees a solid conversion. However, the process is lengthy and requires too many information, especially from first-time users. We will not go into details of the process but rather look at it from a bird’s-eye view and how it looks like on web versus mobile design.
Web view:
A common practice in design a checkout is to include the following:
Remove all elements that aren’t related to the checkout process like website header, that includes search bar, categories and any extra links.
Include a progress bar indicating the number of steps, current and completed steps.
Emphasize on the security of the process.
Provide support for the customers, in the form of live chat or help line.
Call to action buttons are the most prominent visual element.
In B&H checkout design, the desktop size can afford to include all the following practices in the same screen as well as order summary always present of the right side of the page.
Mobile view:
B&H mobile checkout disregards almost all the practices followed in the desktop design due to the limited space. However, it depends on how the process should flow smoothly where users can only focus on one task at a time and that is what they can currently see from the long one-page checkout.
Post-checkout & Account (8/8)
As important as the checkout process it, the follow up process is also crucial. If the follow up is frustrating, so will be the customer and will avoid any future transactions on the website. This includes creating a new account on the website as well as the page displayed after a successful checkout; the thank you page.
Web view:
B&H promotes their users to identify themselves before checking out. It provides different options including guest checkout and social media login. Following a successful checkout, user receives an invoice with their order details as well as the ability to track that order. It also promotes guest checkout to create an account by only providing a password.
Mobile view:
B&H mobile design is almost identical to the web design but accommodates to the small screen. This is due to the importance of every elements used in the web design.
Lessons Learned
The most obvious obstacle when designing for a mobile screen is the limited space available. This limitation drives designers to either compromise some content and accommodate to it. This can only be achieved by defining a hierarchy of importance to the content and which should be the most accessible in order to have a usable mobile experience. This indicates that each platform has its design needs and capacity which can be limiting but that doesn’t mean usability should be compromised.
There is no argument about how e-commerce has integrated itself in our lives in the recent couple of years. Online shoppers now have access to e-commerce websites through different platforms; laptops, tablets and smartphones. Although it’s the same shop, where the user goes through the same journey, the experience quite varies between bigger and smaller devices and how your users interact with them.
In this post, we are going to explore this user journey and the differences in interactions between a 14-inch laptop and a 4-inch smartphone. This inspection will only include comparison between the view of the website from a desktop view and mobile browser view (responsive version).
The journey
The e-commerce website visitors aren’t all the same when it comes to familiarity level with the shop. Some are frequent visitors, beginners or first-timers. Thus, every user will take a different path. For example: a frequent user will probably go through a much faster checkout experience, since their info is already saved in the system, rather than a new user that still needs to provide their payment and shipping info.
However, we will go through some of the main screens that most of the users will probably go through which are
Home page
Category page
Product page
Cart
Search
Search result
Checkout
Post-checkout & Account
Home page (1/8)
Similar to shop window display, you showcase products, discounts and offers in this page. Users should be able to tell if they can buy what they want just from skimming through this page, otherwise they will abandon the website for another alternative.
Walmart focuses on listing ads, offers and campaigns in the home page. This makes the page look more lively and active which is a great attention grabber for the shopper.
Similar to the web, ads and offers can be found but in a much more compact design using the slider to make it more usable for the users holding their phone and using their fingers to interact with the screen. A common practice is to list all the shop categories in the home page of the mobile view for accessibility and exposure to display as much information as possible in a such a limited space.
Category page (2/8)
This page includes listing of all the products related to a specific group. Users would make use of this page if they are hesitant about which product to buy and/or would like to view multiple options or if they just came to browse without a specific destination or purpose in mind.
Nordstrom helps their users decide on the product they want much faster by guiding them, using big and flashy imagery indicating subcategories. Once the user clicks on a certain subcategory, they are redirected to a clean display of products side by side, as well as all the relative information they need to view.
Due to limited visual space, the subcategory filter is replaced with a button that opens a list of all the subcategories, followed by products display identical to the web view.
Product images are the closer the shopper will get to the actual product. Using clean and high-quality images enhances the experiences tremendously. That’s why Gilt web design capitalizes on product images without excluding relative information like price, color options, quantity and product specifications details.
The information included in this view is identical to the web design; however, all elements are resized, aligned and placed accordingly to provide readability and usability on mobile.
Unlike the web design, the limited space forced the design to include only the product information. The only consistent principle in both web and mobile views is making the “checkout” button the most prominent visual element.
Lessons Learned
There are no differences in the content present in both web version and mobile version of the websites. The only difference is how it is presented. Web users interact with a bigger space using a mouse or a touchpad, while a mobile user has access to small screen and is able to navigate using only hand gestures. That difference in interaction requires different types of design elements to ensure usability on either platforms.
The journey isn’t over yet. We will be exploring the rest of the screens in part 2. Stay tuned!
In the past few years, online shopping is becoming much more established with offline businesses realizing the importance of having to be online as well as many users especially millennials turn to online shopping as their primary destination with the help of smart phones. E-Commerce conversion rates have been increasing across different devices; desktops and mobiles (smartinsight). Even though more and more people are shopping online successfully, the user experience of most websites is not up to par.
Baymard.com: The dots are color-coded in accordance with their usability performance, with red dots indicating “poor” usability, yellow representing “acceptable,” and green “good.” The benchmark average is denoted with a back circle.
User experience (UX) is“a person’s perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service”(ISO9241-210).Your users should be able to fully understand what you offer and how to get it. On an E-Commerce website, it might seem obvious that it sells laptops but they can’t find the right or enough information they need to actually buy the laptop they wanted.
Better understanding of your audience leads to less frustrating design which in turn leads to higher conversion rate. Therefore, performing a user experience evaluation, every now and then, is essential.
What is UX Evaluation?
User experience evaluation denotes using different types of methods and tools to assess how well the users can learn and interact with the product or website. In case of an E-Commerce website, it is when the user is able to navigate the shop, find the product they desired and successfully checkout.
There are many different methods that can be used to perform a UX evaluation that yields quantitative and qualitative results. A lab user testing is an example of a quantitative method that involves recruiting real users, assigning them to perform tasks on the website and observing their behaviour to document the results in the form of metrics. Examples of qualitative methods are cognitive walk-through and heuristic evaluation which relies on thorough inspection of the website by an expert and assessing how well the users perceive the design.
Cognitive Walk-through
A cognitive walk-through is an approach used to evaluate the usability of the website from the perspective of first-time user with a specific intention.
The evaluation starts with the assessor defining a user task(s) then inspecting how the user would execute these tasks on the website. For example, a college student wants to buy a new laptop to use for studying. One of the scenarios to perform that task on an E-Commerce website would be as follows.
User visits E-Commerce website through direct URL then scans homepage for “laptop” or “electronics”. He finds a “laptops” link in the header and clicks it.
User visits the category page with many laptops on display and option to filter and sort products.
User visits different product pages then clicks “add to cart” on the laptop he liked.
User is content with his choice and wants to checkout. He visits the cart and clicks on the “checkout” button.
User goes through the checkout process.
Throughout that scenario, the assessor asks the following four questions per each new step:
Will the user try and achieve the right outcome? The user was able to find the laptop he wants and successfully select it and proceed to checkout.
Will the user notice that the correct action is available to them? The “add to cart” button or the “checkout” button was easy to find.
Will the user associate the correct action with the outcome they expect to achieve? Whenever the user clicks on a link or button, they were redirected to the right page.
If the correct action is performed; will the user see that progress is being made towards their intended outcome? The user able to keep up with the checkout process.
By answering these questions through every step of the scenario, the assessor can point out the flaws in the experience design. One of the benefits of this method is that it is a considerably cost efficient compared to other methods.
Heuristic Evaluation
Another means of user experience evaluation is conduction of heuristic evaluation. A set of heuristics is chosen and the website is reviewed to assess how the design is violating these heuristics. One of the frequently used sets of heuristics used is Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich’s10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design.
Nielsen defined each of the following heuristics in detail so we will be discussing them from an E-Commerce point of view.
Visibility of system status
Users should always be able to tell what is going on at any point in time. They can identify what page they are viewing. If the website is loading, it should say so.
Pages in amazon have clear title indicating what you should be expecting.
Match between system and the real world
The most iconic application of this heuristic is using the cart icon on the “Add to Cart” buttons. Users are already familiar with their real-life surroundings so they relate faster to your interface if you use the same elements.
Cart icon, cart icon everywhere
User control and freedom
People don’t like to feel stuck or helpless. User should be able to undo or redo any significant action on the website.
Walmart notifies me of deleting an item from the cart and provides me with a clear “undo delete” action.
Consistency and standards
Consistency creates a sense of comfort where the user is confident about the identity of every element in the design. An example of that can be represented in the fact that all buttons should look similar and no other element should look like a button. Consistency isn’t only about in-website consistency but also in using design elements that are familiar within your industry.
Both Walmart and Amazon are using the common terminology “Department” used even in physical stores.
Error prevention
The design should keeping error-prone actions to a minimum. If you are asking the user to enter their credit card number, the field should be designed to accept only 14 numbers.
Thanks Walmart for the heads up. No time wasted when I try to create an account and then you tell me that password isn’t valid.
Recognition rather than recall
The human brain is limited to process few items at a time but there are too many information that you need to convey. That’s why recognizing something is easier than exerting the mental effort to try and understand it.
Walmart grocery shopping cart includes product images with quantity always displayed right next to the products which makes it easier to review what I added rather than remembering it.
Flexibility and efficiency of use
The efficiency of an E-Commerce website is mostly about how easily the users can find the products they want. Having a sensible and familiar navigation and categorization makes the experience much smoother. You’d expect to find mobile accessories within the same category as mobile phones. Then, there is also the efficiency of the checkout process which is how the design incorporates the other heuristics.
Souq.com checkout progress bar indicates how easy the checkout can be and how much I have progressed.
Aesthetic and minimalist design
Less clutter makes your products stand out which helps the user focus better on what is really important. In addition to having your products photographed in a very good and clear way, minimalistic display doesn’t overwhelm the user to the point of leaving the website.
Ebay came a long way with their redesign even if it’s not the most visually rich design but took into consideration how crucial aesthetic is.
Help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors
Users don’t want to deal with problems so if something goes wrong that they can’t handle, they’d probably give up on your website. Always offer the reason for the problem and how to solve it in a clear and understandable language.
Clear instructions from Amazon to why I can’t add the product to the cart and how to fix this problem.
Help and documentation
Your users will always need help, not because of the lack of good design but maybe because of unforeseen accidents or they might have a concern that is not addressed. Similar to a real-life store, where you can ask a shop assistant for help, having an online and available customer support boosts the efficiency of your platform experience.
Souq.com offers customer support phone number. On the other hand Walmart offers a help page with FAQ.
Once the assessor evaluates the violations to these heuristics, he assigns a severity rating to it. The higher the severity is, the more the violation affects the experience negatively. This helps to organise usability problems and decide on the priorities of fixing them.
The Takeaway As your main source of conversion is your users, the evaluation should be based on their behaviour and perception. While some methods are costly more than others, there are methods that are efficient with less effort. Performing a user experience evaluation before, during and after designing your E-Commerce website surely brings out potential usability problems to light so that you can treat them head-on eliminating the risk of losing customers and consequently money and definitely contributes to better conversion and an increase in sales.
