The journey that e-commerce customers take from the very beginning of learning about your brand to making a purchase and becoming a repeat customer is crucial. Each step must be optimized to provide the best experience that will convert the visitor into a paying customer and promote e-commerce success.
Small details make a big difference. For example, research shows that 40% of e-commerce site visitors will leave if they encounter design-related problems. If you are looking to build or revamp your e-commerce site, it is well worth investing in qualified and experienced web design experts focused on these nuances that impact conversions. Top web design companies aim to streamline the online shopping experience to boost revenue.
What exactly constitutes the user journey and key elements to optimize?
The Optimal Path for the E-Commerce User Journey
The typical e-commerce user journey consists of the following key phases:
- Awareness - The customer discovers that your brand or e-commerce site exists through digital marketing or advertising efforts.
- Research & Comparison - Now aware, the customer starts browsing your website along with competitor sites, evaluating products, comparing features, reading reviews and considering other decision-influencing factors.
- Purchase Decision - When the customer has the information that satisfies their concerns and gives them confidence regarding the product, it is time for them to make a purchase decision. They may either decide to complete the transaction on your website or alternatively, abandon and leave.
- Post-Purchase Experience - After making the purchase, any follow up actions the customer needs to take as well as their satisfaction with your assistance, returns policies etc. shapes their view of your brand and likelihood to become a repeat customer.
Each phase in this journey presents opportunities to guide customers towards the ultimate desired outcome - completing the purchase. Let us see how some of Kochi's top web designing companies leverage design strategies to positively influence each stage.
Optimizing the Awareness Phase for E-Commerce Success
If your website never comes onto the radar of your target audience, no amount of design optimization will matter. The very first step is to gain visibility and increase brand awareness. This is where your overall digital marketing plan and search engine optimization (SEO) strategy come into play.
However, your website itself can also boost discoverability when designed keeping SEO principles in mind. Kochi-based web designing companies like IPIXO know that on-page website optimization along with quality content creation is key to being found online by ideal customers.
Elements like an optimized site architecture, clean code, relevant meta descriptions and quality blog content integrated with your product pages enable you to rank higher in search results for industry keywords. This helps tremendously with increasing website traffic. Ultimately, you want to make sure that when people are seeking solutions that your e-commerce site sells, you show up prominently in those search results so the right audiences discover your brand.
Guiding Research & Comparison Towards Conversions
The second phase of research and comparison is when potential customers get their first impression of your e-commerce brand - through your website. This critical phase makes or breaks conversions.
In fact, 46% of e-commerce site visitors say they will immediately leave a retail site if the design or layout looks outdated. Another 45% expect images and product graphics to be “very high quality”. It also only takes 500 milliseconds for someone to form an opinion about your brand based on your website design.
Therefore, visual design is key to keeping visitors engaged enough to delve deeper. Your product pages are opportunities to shine and where visual storytelling matters through high-quality images, interactive elements like image zoom for close inspection, videos for a 360-degree view or to demonstrate usage along with compelling descriptions.
An intuitive and consistent site-wide navigation menu also enables seamless exploration while prominent calls-to-action can guide them through key workflows to learn, compare or seek more information.
In this research phase, a big question website visitors frequently have is whether your brand is credible and can be relied upon. This is where showcasing security badges, positive reviews from reputable industry experts and trust building content like “about us” pages become important. When a competitor comparison arises, you want visitors to see you as a market leader outshining the competition.
BigCommerce found that 67% of customers consider customer ratings and online reviews as very important or somewhat important. Savvy e-commerce web design involves seamlessly incorporating this social proof into your site design.
Driving Customers Towards Purchase Decisions & Transactions
Having built confidence and trust through good content and engaging visuals, you now need to eliminate any hesitations and friction in the purchase process. This is where the final tipping point happens - web visitors convert to paying customers with completed transactions or they abandon their cart.
Ensure your designer pays close attention to streamlining checkout with as few steps as possible, keeping forms short, clear and simple. Calculation of taxes and shipping charges must work accurately demonstrating price reliability. Provide guests options to checkout securely without requiring account creation which is the biggest cart abandonment cause.
Allow various payment modes, enable easy mobile checkout and reassure customers with guarantees, security badges and policies so that they feel comfortable sharing their valuable financial information and completing the purchase.
Small user interface additions like showing notifications for offers ending, stock status for product scarcity and cues on reliability like your business longevity years also prod impulsive decisions.
Post-Purchase Follow Up That Maximizes Customer Lifetime Value
Your interaction with customers does not end with their first purchase on your e-commerce site. Post-purchase follow up shapes repeat purchases and loyalty i.e. their customer lifetime value.
A “thank you” popup after checkout instills goodwill. Email and push notifications can share links to help with product usage guides, warranty and manuals. These reassure customers on their decision while conveying your brand as helpful and dedicated to their success with your product. Such an approach seeds future repurchases.
E-commerce businesses also need to nail excelling order fulfillment with fast, accurate shipping, tracking and delivery notifications. Easy and flexible returns reaffirm reliability in product quality claims and descriptions from the buying experience.
Seeking customer reviews and feedback online or through surveys lets you identify improvement areas to invest in. With every such effort and interaction, demonstrate your brand commitment towards maximizing the value customers gain with you. This ultimately makes your ecommerce store their first preference over competitors.
Bringing It All Together with a Conversion-Focused E-Commerce Website Design
We have covered several elements spanning the user journey - from initial awareness and comparisons to post-purchase nurturing. At each step, website design optimization keeps the user's needs and motivations central to guide rather than force decisions.
Pulling all these conversion-focused elements in a strategically structured e-commerce site architecture delivers the results - higher conversions, lower bounce rates and more repeat customers.
Now is the time to take stock of how optimized your current site is to fit this entire user journey. Identify weak points causing abandonments so you can maximize success with a design revamp attuned to user psychology and intent.
best web designing company cochin have expertise across both visual design and conversion rate optimization to create high performance e-commerce stores. Leverage their experience and in-depth understanding of all nuances that influence decision making.
With analytics tracking set up across websites, companies have access to data-driven insights on exactly where most visitors drop off or feel hesitant to complete desired actions. The right web design partner will know how to analyze this qualitatively and quantitatively to address it through iterative tests.
Stay updated on current design trends that appeal to modern sensibilities. For instance, WebFX reports sites with long page loading times often have higher bounce rates, while Accengage reports popups and notification bars boost conversions by up to 320%. The latest innovations prove useful when woven intelligently keeping your audience profile and buying journey context in mind. Professional web designers stay on top of these ever evolving trends to incorporate the best ones for your industry.
As Kochi’s top web designing company and pioneers in incorporating art, emotions and connections in website design, IPIXO can undoubtedly create a high converting e-commerce website for your organization without losing sight of aesthetics. With a passion for balancing visual storytelling and user experience strategy, contact them for a consultation today on how to leverage web design for e-commerce success.
