7 Tips to Improve Your Online Store’s User Experience

AMZ Seller Financing • December 31, 2018
To excel as an online seller, your user experience has to be second to none.
It will be very hard to keep your customers happy unless they see you care about them. It’s not enough to have great products; you have to offer them more than that.
Here are 7 tips for how to improve your user experience, so that your customers keep coming back.
1. Enable Good Loading Speed
2019 is upon us. No one wants to visit websites that take too much time to load. No one has the luxury of time anymore.
Nowadays, websites are struggling to keep their visitors engaged, because there’s so much going on all the time. What you actually have is around four seconds before your customers lose patience and walk out on you.
This is why it’s extremely important that you have good loading speed. Make sure your product images can load quickly, and that the loading speed per page is optimal. This will facilitate the navigation and keep your website looking professional.
2. Have Stellar Customer Service
It’s essential that you have high-quality products, but it’s equally important that you have great customer service.
Customers love feeling cherished and special. And the only way you can help them feel like this is through stellar customer service.
If you don’t have enough time, think about getting a new team member on board, in your office or through outsourcing. Because without customer service, your online store won’t look professional. And you won’t be able to retain customers.
Some online sellers are a bit apprehensive when it comes to getting new team members, and it’s perfectly normal to feel this way. After all, no one wants to spend more money on maintaining their business.
However, it’s better to spend some more in the beginning and create a strong business than to invest less and die out in a couple of years.
3. Regularly Update Your Website
Imagine a customer visiting your website and discovering you have outdated images. Or it says you have a certain product in stock, but it turns out you ran out of it three months ago.
No one wants to go through this, especially if they’re a first-time visitor.
This is why you need to conduct regular updates of your website, making sure that every last detail is 100% correct. Your contact information, about-you page (if you have one), product descriptions, product images, terms of service, etc. – everything has to be updated regularly.
4. Use High-Quality Images
High-definition images are all around us. All the latest mobile phones are so good they can capture stunning images, so that everyone can seem like a professional photographer.
If your website doesn’t have high-quality images, you will never convince your potential customers you’re a fantastic online store.
People are visual beings. Over 80% of the information we use comes through the eyes, which is why visual input is crucial. Therefore, make sure that you use only professional-looking images.
5. Simplify Your Shopping Process
Think about it, what is the reason your customers came to your store in the first place? That’s right – to shop. Maybe some of them came to take a look (do a bit of research), but most of them came for one single reason, and that is to purchase your product(s).
That is why your shopping process has to be as simple as possible. Take a look at your website and mark all the parts you feel are redundant. Remove them, and leave only those sections that are absolutely necessary.
Remember, this isn’t a gallery or a new portal, this is an online store. So, all you need has to revolve around the shopping process and stimulate the customers to make the purchase.
6. Recapture Users That Leave
Not all the customers will buy something right away. Many of them will leave your store without making a purchase.
However, this doesn’t mean those customers are not willing to purchase a product from you – they probably are. They just need a little bit of convincing.
A great number of customers will take a product (or products) to the shopping cart, and then change their mind when they’re about to make the purchase.
Around 70% of customers will do this, but a lot of them are definitely still interested in your products.
This is why you should use abandoned cart emails. These are a form of follow-up emails that speak directly to the customer who left your store without making a purchase.
We talked about how much customers love to feel cherished. Receiving an abandoned cart email will definitely help them change their mind and go back to your online store.
What’s even better is a sequence of abandoned cart emails (from 3 to 5 of them), because not everyone will go back after the first email.
There are a lot of templates to be found online, and you can learn how to make an abandoned cart email sequence in a couple of steps. You can also hire an email marketing expert to do it for you.
This will do wonders for your shopping process.
7. Keep The Customers Informed
Customers like when they’re a part of a tribe, or a special group. Because this makes them feel more special as well.
If you have a new product, or some news about your online store, be sure to share that with your customers.
You can use social media, or newsletter, but make sure your customers know exactly what’s going on. Keep them informed, and you will keep them engaged.
And when they are engaged, they want to purchase your products.