Having great products isn't sufficient to achieve E-Commerce success. You must understand the importance of UX for web stores. Today, customers have plenty of choices of places to do their online shopping. Unless you provide them with a great experience, you will likely lose them to a competitor. This article aims to help you understand UX design and how it can benefit your web store.

What is Online UX?

UX refers to the overall user experience visitors have while using your product, solution or services. Online UX is how they experience searching, selecting and ordering from your site. For many customers, your web store is their only interaction with your company or organization. Their experience is often the only way they can judge your brand values and the levels of customer satisfaction you're willing to provide. 

Users are increasingly visiting websites to actively engage with your brand and content. Therefore, you must give them as good an experience as possible through your site to ensure they are satisfied and maximize their chances of returning and buying. Also think about creating a community your customers will want to come back to again and again. If you don't understand UX's importance for your site, you will fail to attract new customers and lose existing ones. 

5 Ways to improve your on-line business

1. Improve SEO Rankings

Reaching the top of the Google rankings is a goal for most e-commerce companies, as it guarantees your site will receive significant traffic. Previously, topping the search engine's rankings could be achieved merely through technical means, many of which had no consideration for users. 

However, last year, Google released its "page experience update," prioritizing sites that have passed specific UX metrics. Therefore, designing your web store to include a high degree of UX will benefit your users and help you climb the rankings. 

E-commerce success is not all about high traffic volumes. Even if your web store was to get to the top of the Google rankings with a poor UX, it is unlikely many of your visitors would return to your site. Indeed, with conversion rates across all sectors and regions being less than 5%, you must do everything possible to ensure users return. 

Providing them with an excellent user experience will not only help you climb to the top of the Google search results but retain much of the traffic you get by being up there. Therefore, improve your SEO rankings by improving your web store's UX.

2. Develop Trust and Credibility

Most people need to trust your company and its reputation before committing to buying your products. Since many users only engage with your organization through your web store. You website is the single most important aspect of your business from their view point.

For companies who are new to the market, establishing trust and credibility is arguably more challenging than it was in the years before e-commerce. You don't have the opportunity to physically greet customers as they walk through your door and gradually build a face-to-face relationship. 

However, you can still give them strong reasons why they should trust you ahead of your competitors. You can do this by providing visitors with the best experience possible. Continuously assessing and improving your UX will boost your credibility, helping to turn your web store into an established brand.

3. Focus on Speed

Excellent UX design will increase your web store's conversions. When new users land on your site, it is generally because they are interested in your products. However, that interest is insufficient to keep them or convert them into subscribers or paying customers.

Annoyances such as slow loading speeds, unclear navigation, distractions, and misplaced action buttons are examples of poor UX design. More importantly to you, they will likely result in your visitors looking for somewhere else to spend their time and money.

Check your websites speed often, since site updates including links, photos and embedded content can rapidly degrade your sites performance. Use a tool like pingdom.com to check your base line and address issues to keep your site fast and user friendly.

Good UX means more conversions. That means more visitors return, more will subscribe, and more will buy your products.

4. Save Time and Money

You might think your product is so unique and desirable that it doesn't matter if you have a poorly designed web store that gives users a poor experience. Granted, your sales may be good, but are they enough to keep your customer coming back and your competitors from overtaking you? Focus on where you can save your customers time and money? Keep the bottom line in mind to not undercut your own profitability, but remember that customers who feel you have their best interest at heart will become return customers in the future.

If you haven't invested in UX, you will undoubtedly be losing out on sales. Plenty of potential customers will be put off sufficiently by a poor experience that they will refuse to make a purchase regardless of your product's quality. So keep your websites easy to use and updated in a way that adds value, not complexity.

If you have on-line service support or chat, make sure that it is responsive. If using bots make sure that users can opt in to speak with a real service agent. If no online 1-to-1 communication is available, create FAQ lists, communities, where users can help each other, or another way that your users can see you are working to meet their needs for product and the answers they need to make their buying decisions.

5. Increase Revenue

If you have a web store, it is safe to assume that making money is one of your goals. Therefore, you should get excited by doing something that will increase your revenue.

Ultimately better SEO, a more significant amount of traffic, increased credibility, and a boost in conversions will lead to increased revenue from your web store.

Indeed, some estimates suggest that every $1 spent on improving UX increase revenue by $100. So make your site attractive, interactive and build a community where users can feel at home. Share information, answer questions, and connect users with influencers or other content to help them see you site as a brand they want to use again and again. And plan to see UX refreshes as continuous improvement by:

• Engage with your customers to find out what they want and what is missing for your website.

• Check the competition, go through the end to end buying process and compare experiences.

• Stay ahead of the curve by continuously assessing the newest approaches to e-commerce.

A Good Start for your web based business 

Good UX design gives your web store significant advantages over your competitors. You can climb the search engine rankings, build trust in your brand, save time, and increase revenue.

Website users no longer view excellent UX as a nice-to-have but a must-have. As such, failing to provide the best UX possible means you risk losing customers. Your web store's future success will be defined by the attention you pay to the design of your web store today. Need more help to get your web store UX ready? Think about teaming up with a UX design expert today.