The Dos and Don’ts of Ecommerce Website Navigation
The success of an online store is related to many different factors. You need a fast loading site, professional design and of course products worth buying because that makes a good ecommerce website that actually brings sales.
However, one area that is incredibly important but sometimes overlooked is website navigation.
You need to ensure that users have a smooth, seamless and frictionless user experience where they seamlessly find what they want.
An eMarketer study found that online shoppers spend, on average 9.4 minutes per visit on desktop/laptop, 7.5 minutes by mobile phone
9.9 minutes on a tablet.
The first impression should be solid
You have a very narrow window to impress your visitors and capture their attention. So the first impression is crucial.
One of the biggest parts of making a great impression is quickly communicating what the heck your store is all about.
Select product categories properly
Another common mistake is too many or too few categories – this is especially problematic for mobile users.
“38 percent of mobile sites have category hierarchies that are either too deep, too shallow, or overlapping, making it very difficult for users to understand and navigate the site’s structure,” says the Baymard Institute.
Too few categories means users have to hover over one category and then move to another, then another, and maybe even another. You get the idea. But at the same time, forcing users to sift through too many categories can be just as unsettling.
Search feature to save time
Someone comes to your website with a specific product in mind and doesn’t want to filter through multiple product pages to find it.
They just want to do a quick search, learn the details, and buy it if it meets their expectations.
One of the best ways to welcome these customers and make it easy for them to find you is to install an internal search function.
This will make their life much easier, help you differentiate your products, and ensure that they are not looking for a product in the wrong category.
I know I’m personally a big fan of internal search and use it quite often to speed up my product searches.
Offer search suggestions
But you’re taking it one step in addition and enhancing your seek characteristic even greater via ways of offering customers with a few directions.
Maybe they recognize what they’re searching out but aren’t precisely certain how they must word it.
You can streamline matters even greater via ways of supplying seek pointers so customers don’t have to overthink it.
Add category of new arrivals
As you begin to build relationships with repeat customers who have become more familiar with your brand and are interested in your products, a “New Arrivals” or “New” category as part of your website navigation bar will indicate that you are constantly updating your inventory.
Retarget cookies
You’re probably aware of how big customization is these days.
79 percent of shoppers are likely to only interact with a brand if offers are tailored based on past interactions.
E-commerce sites that emphasize customization have a huge advantage over those that don’t. It’s really simple. That’s why I think cookie retargeting is such a great idea.
If you’re not familiar with the concept, you use cookies to track your visitors’ behavior so you can deliver targeted content to them when they return.
Conclusion
Brands think, “Let’s just make pretty pictures and some categories and be done with it.” But as we recently learned, there is much more to it than that. You really want to read the details and do the little things to make your visitors’ lives easier and allow them to easily navigate your store.
Using the strategies listed above should cover the basics and have a positive impact on the time spent on e-commerce website design results.
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