Delivering the Ultimate Ecommerce User Experience

Today’s business environment has changed dramatically due to the global pandemic. All businesses have gone online, and it turned out that the former approaches don’t work anymore. Cookies died, so new suggestions are required to ensure tremendous user experiences. In this article, we’ve provided valuable tips and examples to show you the way out.

Delivering excellent ecommerce user experience is the future of retail

Numerous business owners used to perceive ecommerce best practices within the context of the retail industry. Nevertheless, such perceptions are no longer relevant since modern users demand more vivid, emotionally charged experiences. Thus, it’s essential to get inspired by something like an amusement park and introduce the new practices to various marketing channels.

What are they, exactly?

Today’s progressive business solutions apply the latest achievements in the artificial intelligence field to boost their ecommerce design. Combining science with creativity, they offer numerous effective solutions, such as augmented and virtual reality, the elements of video games, etc. Thus, customer experience should be connected with technology, supplying your users with high-quality “Imagineering” (the term borrowed from Disney.) Is it easier said than done?

In this article, CitrusAd will reveal some of the core ecommerce UX design principles and provide top-notch examples from top-tier retailers who have embraced the change.

Perfecting the first ecommerce experience

The first impression truly matters, so you should enable your ecommerce design to catch your visitors’ attention right from the start. The very first encounter a user has with a website is one of the key points of engagement.

In fact, great UX means that each point of engagement is positive for a user. It should also provide a seamless flow from one point to the next. In other words, your functionality and designs should be consistent, having the same elements on all your pages and channels.

The Bootscompany is an example of a retailer who successfully applies these principles.

• No matter where you land on the website, the AI and the navigation make it easy for you to move to the most relevant place.
• They optimise from the first encounter by providing a great experience across desktop, iPhone, and Android.
• Internal linking is well-thought and leads to the most probable place you’re aiming to visit — if you land on page X, the AI will suggest the next logical step (for instance, page Y.)

Best-practice ecommerce sites are timely

Successful retailers are aware of the fact that the best UX means meeting their customers’ needs by providing the right content at the right time. Investigate a combination of the ecommerce best practices to see how they assist in achieving ambitious sales goals.

Push Notifications

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) dictates new rules, preventing companies from sending unsolicited messages. Thus, push notifications are becoming increasingly popular, operating under permission-based marketing principles. They ensure an excellent ecommerce experience that complies with modern requirements.

,RSS Feeds

Modern customers are very busy, so an RSS feed is a sound solution allowing them to get urgent updates without having to browse each website separately. They only have to subscribe to the news and plug the content into a feed reader to get a stream of the most recent updates coming from various sources.

Logical AI

Logical AI provides a seamless online shopping experience, perfectly reflecting the agent’s world as well as the current situation with the help of sentences in logic. A course of action is determined based on the relevance of particular steps aiming to meet certain goals.

We’ve prepared an example of a retailer who applies the above-mentioned practices to hit their sales targets. It is Ocado, a well-known online grocery store.

• You can add recipes to your grocery list from a drop-down menu or search for a particular recipe and then add the ingredients to the cart. Products also have the “see recipe” option.
• The “You might also like” function suggests other products you may need as well.

Bringing in-store experience to online space

It is difficult to imagine the best online shopping experience without personalisation which goes hand-in-hand with user-friendly solutions. Today’s industries combine offline and online presence to provide their users with the convenience they are so eager to get. Have a look at how the ASOS brand manages to realize the traditional in-store USPs in an online environment.

• Customers can watch product videos to see what ASOS clothes look like.
• Live chat is accessible from every page, so users can get timely interactive help.
• Extensive product filters allow for getting precisely what users want

The best online shopping experiences perfect the final touchpoint

The final touchpoint is almost as essential to an impeccable ecommerce user experience as the first touchpoint. It has a considerable impact on whether the customer will come back for more purchases and provide a lifetime value to the retailer. Thus, after-sales support is the key to keeping customers satisfied. Explore the following example of a large online retailer, Kogan, that takes proper care of the final touchpoint.

• The company stands out due to its pricing policy, offering significant discounts, and its well-thought ecommerce design.
• Kogan drives the point home in the checkout by slashing through original prices and listing the “new” price underneath. In the cart, you will see how much you’ve saved on your order. For instance, you will be offered a $36.90 discount on Apple iPhone 11 that initially cost $899.
• Upon completing the order, you will see the final order list and estimated delivery dates.
• Kogan encourages users to create an account and remembers purchase details to make personalized offers during the next visit.

Retail media for improved shopper experience

Cookies are no longer relevant for the ecommerce industry, so we recommend using retail media platforms to promote your products and services. By doing so, you will be able to provide your users with non-disruptive advertising to connect them with the items they need. Thus, feel free to use in-feed ads, sponsored content, and online video advertorials, for instance, Sigma Technology Gaming. Such an approach will help you to significantly improve your shopper experience and engagement.