Every product brand now seems to have an e-commerce website. It is now easier than ever for businesses to reach their target markets, regardless of the locality. Amazon.com and eBay have become the largest global e-commerce websites based on this factor alone. However, for new businesses that are just tapping into e-commerce, there are certain challenges that they will need to overcome.

Of these challenges, the biggest happens to be the e-commerce experience that businesses are offering to their users. The user experience is deeply linked with the web design of an e-commerce store. Consumers always want to feel like they are the sole focus of the business. If you don’t perfect your web design and user experience, your consumers could be driven away by even the slightest of inconveniences.

It’s not just consumers having a preference to be “spoilt” by businesses here. The user experience and web design play a crucial role in highlighting the branding, affecting sales and building consumer loyalty. Here we have highlighted a few more reasons why improving the e-commerce experience for your users is so important, along with some tips to help you do this.

It’s all about personalisation

Since 2017, personalisation of the user experience has become the main focal point of e-commerce stores. Users want to visit a website and have it accommodating to their tastes, preferences and shopping habits. The web design should reflect this desire, allowing users to have an experience that is catering to them specifically.

With so many e-commerce websites out there, it’s the little things in your web design that can act as the major differentiating factor for success, drawing more users to your e-commerce store. Personalisation has slowly begun to take a bigger role, so any web design ignoring this opportunity immediately puts you at a disadvantage.

A great example of a retail brand championing this is Thread.com. Using an initial sign-up process where you are guided through a simple selection of what kinds of clothes you like to wear, its intelligent algorithm then generates the best-matched clothes for you from hundreds of stores, at the prices you like and in your sizes.

Synonymous with convenience

A major impacting factor behind the popularity of e-commerce stores is the convenience they offer. It minimises the need for waiting in long lines, dealing with crowds, or finding your favourite products out of stock. Users enjoy the convenience that e-commerce stores offer and their web design needs to reflect this factor.

There are products out there to help large retailers with their in-store customers, such as Nextail, but they are only really accessible to the larger retailers with 20 store locations or more.

This need for convenience can be seen in the fact that most people use their smartphones to access stores. Laptop and PC usage is slowly shrinking with each passing year. You need to make sure that your web design reflects this mobile usage improving convenience and experience.

Gives an impression of your business

Consumers massively consider web design when they’re trying to get an impression of the business. The colours of the page, the logo, the fonts, the layout, the styling and other aspects of the web design are scrutinised.

With old-fashioned web designs, outdated, or quickly mocked up WIX websites, you’re not going to attract buyers to your e-commerce store. Consider the web design of big brand e-commerce stores such as Cartier, Nike, Apple and more. These brands emulate opulence, luxury and exclusivity, and their web design offers this feeling to the consumers. A business needs to reflect their products in the design of their website.

So, put simply

By executing these suggestions, you can enhance the e-commerce experience for your users and see the difference it makes in improving customer loyalty, sales and more. We’d be very happy to chat about your e-commerce site and give you practical and immediate suggestions to improve your sales.