Every online retailer spends big bucks to attract customers through search engine optimization, advertising, social networks, and email marketing. Unfortunately, even as the number of site visitors grows, some shops still can’t see good conversion rates. Very often, the issue is not in pricing and products but rather in customer experience.
Unfriendly navigation, page loading too slowly, and complicated checkout operations are among the reasons that can make customers drop their purchases within seconds. Many companies don’t realize that these problems exist because people get used to their sites and are blind to their weaknesses.
Thus, ux audit ecommerce are of utmost importance.
At UX Audit Tool, we’ve examined hundreds of websites, and each time we discover the same problems that are a real money drain. But the best part is that they are not so difficult to solve!
Let’s analyze the 10 common UX errors that we see on every online shop we’ve audited and make sure you don’t fall victim to them.
1. Navigation That Makes Shoppers Think Too Hard
The customer will leave the site if he does not find their desired object in several mouse clicks. In case of an excessive number of mega menus, confusion due to bad category names, and conflicts in naming, customers are compelled to invest more effort than needed. Navigation should be seamless enough to make users not even notice it. It is proven that 94% of all first impressions depend on website design. Thus, it is vital to have intuitive navigation because this way you can make people trust your website and shop.
Solution: Organize objects into groups as people do it themselves mentally and use a limited number of categories.
2. Slow Page Load Times
Every extra second that the user spends waiting for the page to load decreases your conversion rate. One of the most frequently encountered and easiest-to-fix issues is overloaded product pages with huge and unoptimized images as well as lots of JavaScript and other third-party plugins.
Solution: Compress images, load them lazily below the fold, and monitor third-party scripts.
3. Checkout Flows With Too Many Steps
Lengthy, multi-step checkouts have long been one of the biggest barriers to conversion. Each step provides an opportunity for a customer to change his mind or simply become frustrated and exit.
Solution: Streamline the checkout process to its bare minimum. A single-page checkout with a progress bar makes the difference.
4. Forced Account Creation
Creating an account requirement before payment is by far the quickest way to lose sales. Customers want to purchase things, not get into a relationship.
Solution: Make sure to provide a guest checkout option and then offer account creation after the purchase.
5. Poor Mobile Experience
Given that most of the visitors today come via mobile, a desktop-oriented design that is simply “responsive” does not suffice. Small buttons on mobile, poor product images, and inconvenient fields on the form cause the gradual loss of sales.
Your mobile UX may well be at fault if you’re experiencing high bounce rates or poor mobile conversion rates. Take a look at our article, ‘Why Your Fashion Site’s Mobile UX is Killing Your Conversions’, for an insight into the most common problems with mobile UX.
Solution: Develop and test for mobile-first rather than averting your eyes from it.
6. Weak or Missing Trust Signals
People tend to hold back when they notice that a site doesn’t give them concrete evidence of legitimacy, such as product reviews or security features. The gaps in confidence are most pronounced when they have to enter payment information.
Solution: Provide reviews and security features, as well as a policy regarding returning and exchanging goods as close as possible to the buy button.
7. Search That Returns Nothing Useful
Internal website search is one of the highest intent actions that visitors can perform on your website – and one that gets ignored the most. Any failed searches or unrelated results will have your customer heading right for your competitors.
Solution: Upgrade your search to make it smarter by using auto-complete features, typo support, and good fallback suggestions.
8. Unclear Product Information
Inaccurate and incomplete descriptions, along with poor images, confuse consumers; confused consumers do not purchase. In industries such as fashion, where fit and materials are key components, the costs are high.
Solution: Provide all customers on each product page with what they would ask for if they were shopping in person: size charts, materials, angles, and accurate measurements.
9. Hidden Costs at Checkout
Nothing deters the customer from completing a transaction faster than someone who’s about to confirm and being confronted with extra charges. This is one of the main causes of cart abandonment.
Solution: Let the customer know the total amount due as soon as possible, ideally on the product page or shopping cart page right from the beginning.
10. No Clear Path Back to Browsing
When a user acts or comes to a halt, a lot of websites leave them hanging with no clear indication of the next step. Whether it’s a confirmation page where nothing is mentioned about the next stage or a 404 page that does not help, voyages that could have continued come to an abrupt end.
Solution: All customers ought to be led about what to do further; they need to be provided with product suggestions, and a link to a shop to return.
The importance of a UX audit of the e-commerce store
Even if a considerable sum of money were spent on advertisements, SEO, and email marketing, one would still see the low conversion rate of the e-commerce store. What is commonly said is that the problem may be in the price or the product or the traffic. However, this is not necessarily true. In a study by Forrester Research, it is proven that for every dollar spent on UX, a company would earn $100, meaning 9,900% ROI.
Identifies hidden conversion barriers
Many factors have a potential to affect your conversions, but you may not be aware of those factors since you are well-versed with your own website. The UX Audit helps you find out these hidden obstacles in your website design, such as hard-to-use navigation, confusing call-to-actions, confusing page design, poorly functioning page components, and anything that might prevent customers from making purchases during checkout.
Keeps Your Store Competitive
The expectations of customers and e-commerce are constantly changing, which means that your UX needs to be optimized consistently. Conducting an audit of UX allows you to detect any design aspects that have become outdated, usability problems, and performance problems before they start affecting your sales. This will enable you to surpass your competitors and build strong customer loyalty.
Boosts conversion rates and revenue
The user experience, which has been optimized to perfection, is one that does not create any hindrances for the consumer’s process of making purchases online. Once you fix usability problems through your UX audit, you will be able to decrease the cart abandonment rate, build trust among customers, boost conversion rates, and make money out of your website visitors.
Provides data-driven recommendations
A UX audit ecommerce gives you practical information based on data rather than assumptions or speculation, indicating ways to improve the user experience on your platform. It shows you successful ways to enhance all aspects of the user journey, such as navigation, web design, mobile experience, and checkout process, so you know what changes to make to elevate customer satisfaction, boost conversions, and achieve measurable results.
No more guessing about why your customers are leaving. Get an analysis of your website using the free UX Audit Tool and see where you’re losing conversions from 15+ Key Performance Indicators that are compared to 40+ industries, all in under 3 minutes, without any account setup.
FAQs
- How long will the UX audit take using UX Audit Tool?
Less than 3 minutes. Simply put in your website link, and there’s no need to sign up or create an account, nor is it necessary to wait for the report from a consultant. - What does the audit measure?
The audit measures 15+ key performance indicators, such as navigation, load time, checkout process, and mobile usability, among others, against 40+ industries. - Must I be a UX expert to make use of the findings?
No. The findings come with explanations and fixes that anyone running an online store can implement easily.
