There are always many clients who do not buy anything on e-commerce sites, not because of some defects in the products that are offered for sale, but because of the bad user experience of the site. A long purchasing process, a confusing navigation bar, or a search function that does not return anything is a common problem that leads to not closing a transaction. As mentioned in our blog, Why Your Website Is Losing Customers Before They Reach Checkout, even minor problems with UX can have a strong effect on conversion rates.
What’s important is that in the vast majority of cases, such problems are invisible to the owners of the website because you can’t be objective about your own product. In such a case, an ecommerce UX audit proves its worth. Instead of making assumptions, the audit will help discover the reasons why users are not converting into customers.
Cart abandonment research always leads to the same conclusion: unexpected fees, complicated checkouts, and just plain bad design that makes the user wary. The positive aspect of these factors is that none of them can be addressed. It’s all about knowing the pattern and fixing the problems within days, not weeks or months.
Here’s a list of the 10 most common UX errors in online stores, and here is how you can avoid them.
1. Cluttered or Confusing Navigation
When a user does not see something after a couple of seconds, he leaves. Heavy mega-menus, confusing categorization, and label inconsistency between desktop and mobile are just some of the major offenders.
Solution: Do not over-complicate navigation by keeping it shallow, at least no more than 3 levels down. Organize products in such a way that makes sense to users and not how they’re organized inside your warehouse. If you are not sure about users’ current behavior, use session recordings and click-maps.
2. Slow Page Load Times
Each additional second in loading time will hurt conversions. Large product images, unoptimized scripts, and bloated third-party plugins are some common culprits for e-commerce websites.
Solution: Image compression, lazy loading of out-of-fold content, and audits of third-party scripts are required. Performance is not only a technological issue, but it’s a trust issue as well. A website UX audit will help to detect those performance issues that are slowing down your store within a short time.
3. Poor Mobile Experience
More than half of e-commerce web traffic is generated through mobile phones, but most of the shops have not adapted to the need for mobile. Clickable icons are too small, text needs zooming, and checkout forms do not fit the screen.
Solution: Design the website for mobile first rather than mobile-adapted. Test all important processes such as search, product page, cart, and checkout, on a phone.
4. A Checkout Process With Too Many Steps
Each added field or page during the checkout process provides another opportunity for someone to give up on their purchase. Examples of such elements include mandatory registration, unclear shipping fees, and superfluous fields in forms. According to the Baymard Institute, 22% of online shoppers abandon their carts because the checkout process is too long or complicated, making checkout optimization one of the fastest ways to improve conversions.
Fix: Allow for guest checkout, present all costs at once, and try to keep your checkout to either one page or a few steps. Each eliminated field equals eliminated friction; each step eliminated equals one less chance for second thoughts.
5. Weak or Missing Product Information
The consumers cannot physically interact with the products, therefore depending solely on the information available on the webpage. Poor quality images, minimal information, and lack of specification regarding product size/material will result in the consumer guessing – and guessing consumers do not make purchases.
Solution: Use multiple, clear images, specifications, and answer questions that a consumer may have in a physical store.
6. Ignoring Trust Signals
This is particularly true of less popular brands, which lack reviews, security indicators, return policies, and ways to contact the site before entering their payment details.
Solution: Put your trust signals where you need the visitor to take action – put reviews on the product page, security indicators by the payment field, and return policy links next to the “Add to Cart” button.
7. Search That Doesn’t Work Well
When the search bar produces irrelevant results, or even no results whatsoever, due to a minor misspelling of the searched term, that will send customers right into the arms of a competitor. Search is, in most cases, one of the least invested-in sections of an ecommerce website, yet also one of the highest-intent.
Fix: Autocomplete, typos allowed, and filters. When there really are no results, suggest similar items.
8. Popups That Interrupt Instead of Assist
Popups that are aggressive in nature, sign-up newsletters that appear right from the get-go before even getting a glimpse of a product, and popups that cannot be closed easily on mobile devices cause friction at the very wrong times.
Solution: Popups should be time-dependent on user behavior, not on some arbitrary timer. A 10% discount pop-up after viewing three products is entirely different than appearing within the first two seconds.
9. Inconsistent Visual Design
Wherever there is variability in the fonts used, the buttons, and the spacing, the site looks messy and unprofessional. This will make the user lose trust in the store, and they will be unwilling to make payments. According to Stanford’s Web Credibility Research, 46.1% of users assess a website’s credibility based on its visual design. A consistent interface helps build confidence and encourages users to complete their purchases.
Solution: Make use of a design system, which includes using consistent typography, button states, spacing, and colors for all pages that will be built. This does not have to be a complicated design system, as even a one-page style guide will do fine.
10. No Clear Path Back to Purchase After Drop-Off
Many merchants are doing everything possible to get traffic, but neglecting to do anything about recapturing those customers who were just shy of purchasing something. Shopping cart abandonment, viewed items not purchased, and out-of-stock products without a call to action equal revenue that is halfway converted.
Solution: Implement abandoned cart email campaigns, product back-in-stock alerts, and basic retargeting techniques for those shoppers close to making a purchase.
Find These Mistakes on Your Own Site With a UX Audit Tool
Going through a list such as this is helpful, but figuring out which 10 of these mistakes cost your store money is an entirely different challenge. And it is one that you cannot figure out by yourself simply because your site is too familiar to you for you to be objective about it.
This is what a website UX Audit Tool is for. This tool analyzes your site and provides you with an instant, AI-based evaluation of where exactly the UX on your site is causing problems. No signups are necessary, the results are delivered to you within 3 minutes. You will get a report about 15+ important KPIs of UX and conversion benchmarked against 40+ industries.
If just two or three of the errors above are familiar to you, you should definitely conduct an audit of your site. It’s surprising how many businesses discover there is money waiting to be made after fixing issues that only take an afternoon.
FAQs
- What are the frequent UX errors on online shopping websites?
The errors include ineffective navigation, delays in loading, a complex checkout process, a lack of informative product pages, poor design for mobile devices, and missing trust indicators. - In what ways can poor UX influence e-commerce profits?
Poor UX raises bounce rates and the rate of clients leaving carts, thus generating less profit and decreasing the number of returning clients. - How often should e-commerce companies conduct UX evaluation?
UX evaluation should be held once every six months or after a significant update of the website. - Will an AI-based UX audit contribute to better profit rates?
Yes. AI-based UX audit can find UX-related problems and recommend ways of improving them, hence making the buying process less complicated.
