Bad UX is driving up cart abandonment – here's how to fix it
The competition is growing: whatever industry you imagine, there are multiple vendors, so companies have to go the extra mile to attract and retain customers
As consumers are getting pickier and pickier with so many options, the standards are constantly growing, and the UX is no exception. But why is it so crucial? Let's have a look.
What creates a good user experience (UX)?
UX is a complex of aspects that shape a customer's interaction with a company. Here we'll talk only about website UX. So, what things should you consider when designing a user experience?
1. Understandable site navigation
If we are talking about e-commerce, most customers expect a comprehensible layout, with the menu and all the interactive elements situated in the relatively same position so that navigating the website feels comfortable.
Some brands, however, want to stand out from the crowd and offer unique designs with buttons and other menu elements positioned in unusual places on a page. Such an approach can be a great option for an Haute couture brand or a business that has to create an impression rather than sell something online. Yet, even though it might look beautiful and appealing at first glance, it's crucial to maintain a balance between the look and functionality as well as keep the brand's visual part aligned with its identity.
For most retail and e-commerce businesses, a simple but understandable design would be a great fit as its primary goal is to make the way of customers to the checkout as quickly as possible, making them spend more. Meanwhile, by simple, we don't mean boring; we mean stylish.
2. Appealing visual design
Visuals are an integral part of brand communications, as they help the target audience relate to the company's identity and vibe. High-quality visuals (both images and videos) attract attention, shape brand perception, and guide consumers throughout their buyer journey.
Yet, product photos need to reveal helpful information in addition to aesthetic appeal. Using videos to present a product or demonstrate consumption situations is becoming increasingly common. For an apparel brand, you can show the product from different angles, including close-up, and incorporate a video to show the outfit in action. Additionally, you can experiment with and personalize the page view; for instance, the initial image may be a flat lay, but when you hover over it, a model image will appear.
3. Easy checkout process
The fewer clicks people have to make to finish their purchase, the more likely they will do so. Bugs on the website, limited payment options, confusing navigation, and too many forms make consumers abandon shopping carts or even prevent them from exploring more.
Try to make the buying process clean and well-organized: avoid collecting unnecessary personal data so that users are not overwhelmed by filling out multiple forms. Remove all excessive fields, distracting pop-ups, and other irritating elements.
The real influence of UX on the user experience
According to the latest poll by Storyblok, a headless CMS, the subpar UI and UX have more impact on consumer decisions than you might think.
- 42% share they need only 10 seconds to decide if they stay on the page or leave. For 20%, only five seconds are needed.
- 8% of consumers abandon carts more than 10 times per year.
- Most consumers don't need additional features such as chatbots, with only 27% citing them as necessary.
On average, e-commerce stores are losing an average of five purchases a year per consumer, which can be tremendous sums of money depending on company size. But why does it happen? When asked for the main reasons why people abandon e-commerce websites, consumers primarily named limited payment options (37%), slow loading speed (33%), and poor navigation (37%). Meanwhile, 42% of Americans said they've been in a situation where they were ashamed to reveal where they bought a product from because of the site's poor design. At the same time, only 18% of Europeans had a similar experience.
Meanwhile, 42% of Americans said they've been in a situation where they were ashamed to reveal where they bought a product from because of the site's poor design. At the same time, only 18% of Europeans had a similar experience.
How to bring user experience to the next level?
As websites are rather dynamic than static (they are constantly updated), businesses have to select the content management system (CMS) that will help build, maintain and improve the UX for their customers online.
1. Create seamless navigation across the website
Companies often struggle with standardizing their templates across various displays and channels, which can confuse users. Meanwhile, composable components like those offered by Storyblok make it simple for developers and content creators to design anything and publish it anywhere without sacrificing performance or consistency.
Similarly to pieces of a puzzle, components can be assembled in a variety of ways. Once you've created the component, it can be reused throughout the website while ensuring uniformity across recurring content. With the set of nestable components, both developers and content creators can quickly build and maintain complex content structures such as landing pages and home pages.
After examining the main pages of the Fortune 500 companies, we found that the top-performing sites all had easily scannable designs that were tailored for the rapid consumption of content. Clean navigation, unified configuration, and consistency enable users to quickly find what they're looking for and move around the websites.
2. Use high-quality visuals
As we mentioned above, visuals are crucial for UX. Many CMSs, however, don't always provide effective tools to preserve the high quality of all the assets. This may lead to situations when website visitors encounter low-resolution pictures, slow page speeds (while photos and videos load), or even blank spaces instead of images.
In addition to producing sophisticated content, delivering it to end-users without delays and loss of quality is crucial. Storyblok's image service makes apps and websites faster by transforming, optimizing, and caching images in a CDN (content delivery network). This feature positively influences the site's performance and encourages user engagement.
3. Create personalized experiences
Last but not least advice would be to tailor the experience for each user based on their unique activity, purchase history, location, and other factors. Personalization is a growing trend that consumers expect from brands. In fact, approximately 55% of all consumers worldwide say they will make a purchase online only if the website provides product information in their native language.
If you want to better serve customers in a wide range of global markets, you should incorporate best-of-breed localization and customization tools into your content management system (CMS). It's possible to adjust languages, currencies, delivery methods, offers, and much more so that people of different cultures can get relevant content and product information.
Key takeaways
User experience can be fragile, as any unexpected website element can make a potential customer close the tab and never complete a purchase. That's why, apart from the product itself, marketing strategy and business operations companies should emphasize the software they use. Choosing the right solutions is crucial for any business, as using outdated technology that cannot meet modern consumers' needs can significantly harm the brand.