4 Important Qualities That Make an Ecommerce Website User-Friendly

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July 20, 2021 Business, Marketing, Web development

Ecommerce websites must be user-friendly. That allows customers to easily find the products they need. Besides, without being user-friendly, these platforms cannot retain any of their customers nor can they rank higher in search rankings.

There are many qualities an eCommerce website must have to be user-friendly. Of those qualities, we will discuss some of the most important ones here.

#1 Size and Dimensions of Your Images

The images on your website will take up most of the space on the server. The larger the size of these images or pictures, the more time they will take to load. As a result, the loading speed of your website is heavily dependent on the size of your images.

To ensure faster website loading speed, you have to optimize your images. Avoid uploading PNG formats and go for JPEG; they are more suitable for websites and consume less space. Optimizing the images will not ruin their quality as long as the original images are not of bad quality.

Once you are done optimizing the images, you will have to set up the way they appear on your website. That means you need to fix the dimensions of your images.

Given it is an eCommerce website, you want the product images to be visible, but not overwhelmingly large. Hence, you can choose from one of two options – a 200×200 px setup, or a 300×300 px setup. The 200×200 one is smaller and you can fit four images (products) in each row. For the 300×300 one, go for a maximum of three images (products) per row.

#2 Positioning the Search Bar

People will not scroll or look through all the categories if they are looking for specific items on your website. They will simply locate the search bar and look up the products they want.

In a normal blog or company website, you will find that the search option is located in one corner of the menu bar. It is usually small and often difficult to find. However, you cannot allow the same to happen on an eCommerce website.

The search bar should be positioned centrally. It should occupy the top middle portion of the website so that it is one of the first things visitors see. At the same time, it should also be large enough so that nobody misses it.

While setting up the search option, make sure your website is filtering search results based on the keywords and not the exact name of the products. It is unlikely that a customer will know or type in the full name of a product. They will instead go for a more general search. Hence, it is better to look for results based on the keywords they type. Keep search suggestions turned on to make things easier for your customers.

#3 Distributing the Categories

While the search bar is a quick way to land on the desired product page, many people still prefer checking out each of the product categories. This is quite common when customers are not sure which product brand to order from or what type of product they need.

You can distribute the categories directly on the menu like the way they did on the Green Stationery website. This online stationery shop sells everything from pen and paper, to printer ink and other office items of various price ranges. You can see how well distributed their categories are on the menu bar. Anyone looking for a specific type of item can simply hover over the drop-down menus and choose the preferred category type.

The Green Stationery website makes buying stationery online very easy. And its category distribution model is something that other eCommerce platforms should consider while designing their websites.

#4 Avoiding Unnecessary Animation

It is very easy to add animations to websites these days. With a few simple lines of JavaScript, you can animate entire blocks or sections of the website. However, just because you can animate certain parts does not mean that you should.

On an eCommerce website, the ultimate aim is to get people to buy your products. Adding animation will not help this purpose. Sometimes, the animation might not support the customer’s browser, and that might cause problems. At other times, these animations might slow down the loading speed. Hence, try to avoid using them or to keep their number at a bare minimum.

By ensuring these qualities on your eCommerce platform, you will be able to make it more user-friendly. And by doing so, you can attract more new customers, as well as retain the old ones.