Boost Your Shopify User Experience with These Tips

Short for user experience, UX describes the overall experience that someone gets from visiting your website. It considers load speed, amount of information, appearance, and navigation. Get it wrong and your target consumers are likely to shop elsewhere. 90% of shoppers even admit to abandoning their carts for a comparable site. Get Shopify user experience right, however, and you can say hello to repeat traffic and more sales.

Here, we look at the ways you can prioritise UX in your Shopify store and improve the user experience on your website.

88% of visitors are less likely to return to a site after a poor website user experience. So, if you want your eCommerce site to stand out from the competition, you need to keep your customers happy with a successful website that provides a positive experience from start to finish. Below, we reveal several eCommerce UX best practices to help you do exactly that.

Prioritise Functionality

Video background, automatic image sliders, and transparent buttons might be popular currently, but they don’t always function as intended. While your eCommerce website needs to look good, design elements also need to work properly and not reduce the total load time. Just look at some of the biggest sites across the globe — Amazon, for example, might not be the most creative but it works well, and there’s no distracting visuals. That’s one of the reasons why customers come back.

Opt For Customer Centric Copy

The wording on your website and Shopify store has a big job to do. Attractive imagery might make your products stand out but it’s the copy that convinces your customers to invest. Good UX comes down to copy led design. Instead of trying to fit your images and copy into a template, choose a template that fits in with your content. By using relevant words and phrases that will resonate with your target audience, you’ll be more likely to tap into their pain points too.

Consider Mobile eCommerce UX

Good desktop UX doesn’t automatically mean that your mobile site will be the same. In fact, it requires a completely different approach. Those visiting your shop from their smartphone are more likely to want a quicker experience, for example. Be sure to highlight guest checkout options and experiment with digital wallets and credit card scanning features. Allow customers to save their carts for future sessions and disable autocorrect on checkout to avoid addresses being changed. Speed is still important but so is a native experience. Also, consider allowing product images to be zoomed in with a double tap.

Focus On Page Load Time

As we’ve already mentioned, the loading time of your Shopify store is crucial. If your site takes too long to load, your target audience will only look elsewhere. A bad first impression will mean that they’re less likely to return too. Design elements can have a big impact on the speed of your store, but your web hosting servers also have a role to play. Our Shopify UX developers and Shopify UX designers can advise though and we’ll test your website speed regularly to ensure optimum performance.

Include Search Functionality

Allowing your website visitors to search for products and categories is a great way to boost UX. To really improve it though, it’s important to make the search function clear and easy-to-use. Don’t hide it. Place it where customers would typically expect to find it. You could even include suggested results and autocorrect to help your visitors in the event of human error.

Ensure Intuitive Navigation

Intuitive navigation is when a visitor can do what they want on your website, without interruption. If they can’t, UX is disrupted. One of the best ways to boost this area of your Shopify store is to help people to find what they’re looking for. You can do this by keeping features in expected places, such as the basket in the top right corner. Sort products into familiar categories and subcategories, and be sure to keep the internal search option in sight.

Use Captivating Product Images and Information

Product images and videos can be a useful selling tool. But experts say you should only have one image for every five paragraphs. Too many can slow down the site speed and distract potential customers. And it goes without saying that any content needs to be relevant to your products too.

Optimise The Checkout

The second most common reason for website visitors to abandon their baskets is because they were asked to create an account. So, by including guest checkout you’ll be boosting desktop and mobile UX. Offering a range of payment options and the ability to save baskets for the future can also help to increase user experiences.

Be Careful with Pop-Ups

Pop-ups are great for showcasing relevant information and offers. But they can also become annoying and distracting. Be sure to only use pop-ups sparingly and where relevant. Giving visitors the option to easily dismiss pop-ups can improve the overall website UX.

Incorporate AI And Chatbots

Another one of our eCommerce user experience best practices is to use AI and live chat plugins. The former can provide relevant information and recommendations based on consumer behaviour and preferences. The latter will help you provide excellent customer service and answer those all-important questions.

Strengthen Your Website Security

Website security doesn’t just protect you, it also protects your customer’s information, which adds to a positive user experience. To do this effectively, you need to ensure that any software and website plugins are updated regularly. Using HTTPS will protect against hackers too. But don’t worry if you don’t know where to start as a team of Shopify UX designers at a Shopify development agency can take care of this on your behalf.

If you want to maximise your online sales, and beyond, you need to ensure that customers choose you over the competition. One of the easiest ways to do this is to ensure your Shopify site is easy-to-use. Also, consider all of the above eCommerce UX best practices throughout the whole customer journey.

At Vsourz, our team can help you to implement a Shopify user experience strategy that works. Our Shopify UX developers will take care of all the hard work, and you can benefit from repeat traffic and more sales. Simply, get in touch and let our Shopify UX developers and Shopify UX designers take your user experiences to another level.