Usability of a Magento store is the shadow director of Magento store profitability. You might not strike one’s eyes, but it is the thing that directly influences buying decision and average time on the website. But what brings positive user experience? First of all it’s 'sweet treats' from Magento stores - reward points, small gifts, and more. But that’s not everything possible. So we have conducted eBay UX analysis and made the list of the tips that will help your store to be more user-friendly with almost no effort.
At first let’s learn a few rules that will help one to influence customers’ loyalty:
Don’t make customer think
Don’t make the user think about anything. All the operations including how to buy a product, where to register, how to come back to the main page, etc. should be evident.
This is especially critical for the checkout. Luckily, you can make it easy and customer-friendly with a certain module, for example Magento Stripe extension.
The rule of 8 seconds
You have only 8 seconds to win a new customer. You need to attract his attention and make him sure that this website is what he needs. 8 seconds is, of course, a very approximate amount of time. There are many factors that influence the page visit time. But the main message is the following: try to explain in a few seconds who you are and what you are doing, what services or goods your website offers and how you can be useful for the customer.
The rule of 3 clicks
One needs to build the website in such a way so that a user could get to any information in 3 clicks. Majorly this should be the product he is looking for. Don’t make the poor guy click his mouse until he has tingle in his ears.
The rule of Breadcrumbs
Unless you are a poor father from Brothers Grimm’s tale, don’t lead the customer deep in the forest and leave him with no signs of how to come back. Always leave breadcrumbs – a navigation menu with the help of which the customer can always return to a previous step or more steps back.
Here’s the list of the top things one should pay attention to during UX analysis. Though some of the points might look evident to you, make sure your website meets all these basic requirements:
- Location of web-page elements (logo, contact data, navigation menu, buttons, information blocks, etc.) should be predictable.
- Website structure should be logical; navigation should be easy and predictable.
- The image of button and hyperlinks should show that they are clickable.
- Text formatting (fonts, headlines, and text blocks) should be convenient for comprehension.
- Page and elements design should make the information perception easier, not prevent it.
- Icons and images should correspond to what they illustrate.
Let’s check how these (and not only these) rules work on the example of eBay.
[meteor_slideshow slideshow="ebay" metadata="height: 500, width: 720"]
Takeaways
We have conducted the UX analysis of one of the biggest online stores in the world. You can easily use all these instruments in your store in order to help your customers to make a purchase. There are many solutions designed to keep the customer at your store and persuade him that he needs your product.
Here come a few tips that will help you:
- To get a better UX view try to imagine yourself in your customers’ shoes
- Sketch all pages in hand. Put them side by side and then you will see what elements are missing or what UX rules are not followed.
- Support your call to actions with good graphics and text.
- Don’t forget to leave some space for banner, season sales, etc.
- Put some extra effort into the search bar design, it is your breadwinner.
- Don’t make the customer think. His navigation through the online store should be intuitive.
- Make important elements easy to notice.
- Lead your customer. Let him with no notice perform the buying actions. Even if creating such structure will take you a few days.
- Try to follow modern design tendencies. People want to see the website that keeps up with the trends not lags behind.
Good luck!