In the world of ecommerce, successful marketing for any business all begins with visits from curious shoppers or potential buyers. However, given the nature of the world today due to the digital shift, there are many factors exhibited by your online webstore that could contribute to diminished curiosity in shoppers and stunted potential for sales conversions, even given the possibility of the best goods or services within your market or industry. But what is is that could be so profoundly influential as to stop online visitors dead in their tracks and cause them to opt for departure from your website?
Although business may seem like a simple transaction of payment for product, and especially for online trade given its alleged lowered degree of interpersonal interaction, to conduct business is contrarily intended largely to provide an experience. A desire should be present, similar to welcoming someone into your home or place of business, for any visitors to thoroughly enjoy their visiting duration. When things go awry on a website, people’s experiences quickly worsen and people feel far less inclination to stick around. For that reason, to ensure the utmost in website responsiveness across the board is to ensure increased user experience (UX), and therefore, increased business.
Load and Wait Time
We won’t waste any time getting straight to one of the most important considerations for responsiveness; that being the acknowledgement that people do not wish to waste their time. As time has progressed, and as people have grown accustomed to the expectations of how digital platforms like websites should respond to their use, a precedent has been set as what is acceptable in terms of the time spent waiting for a website to load. Needless to say, the allotted time that people will allow for a website to load is ever-diminishing the more and more people adjust to the supposition that everything today be available and accessible as quickly as possible and no slower.
Some of the bigger names of the ecommerce world shed light on these truths, with Amazon stating that an additional 1 second load time could cost them upwards of $1.6 billion in sales each year (Fast Company). Similarly, Google found that to slow down their search results by even so much as four-tenths of a second, not even half a second, they could surrender 8 million searches per day (Fast Company). Regarding responsiveness of websites and how they affect people’s willingness to continue patronage of these websites, the first thing they notice is how long it takes to get the information they want. So either set your website up in a way that it will be quick loading for visitors, or quickly find that your visitors are leaving you before getting a chance to see what your business offers them.
Mobile Responsiveness
While we’re on the topic of getting your website visitors information they want quickly, let’s also talk about getting them their information unconditionally. The condition we are talking about here is that of the type of device with which a visitor is conducting their visit. People have adopted various screens through which they browse and, more importantly, shop. If there was ever a thought that or time when you could appeal solely to the PC and laptop user, those days are over and gone. More platforms have become the norm and more exclusivity to some of these platforms over others is a reality worthy of consideration while developing your website’s responsiveness.
Amidst user of PCs and laptops, smartphones, and tablets, it was found that 66% of Americans own and use at least two of these and over one-third, 36%, of Americans own and use all three of these device types (Pew Research). With numbers like these regarding the number of user for each device type, it is necessary to ensure easy and presentable viewing of content from any device. Although this apparently notes mobile responsiveness as important, the matter becomes especially pressing due to the fact that many users are using exclusively one type of device. At 18% of adults, the total account for one-device users is hovering at just under one-fifth of the user population, with 7% of that group using only tablets and a sizeable 34% using only smartphones (Pew Research). In short, to miss out on business potential with the mobile population due to poor mobile responsiveness will cost you a lot in the way of brand recognition opportunities and much more.
Navigation and Guided Suggestion
Upon user ability to access your website’s content quickly and from whatever device they may be using, the next step is to make visitors of your website comfortable in your space. People have come to your website in hopes of satisfying a need of theirs. However, even if a shopper knows that you supply a solid good or service, business cannot be conducted unless the shopper is able to find what they are looking for on your website. By integrating a hierarchical menu structure, you give people top-down directions to find exactly what they seek. Starting with broader topics will help in narrowing down to specifics, and in finding one’s exact needs with ease, people are bound to conduct in repeat business on account of their prior seamless experience.
To have minimalist navigation on your website that allows people easy passage through the many layers that it boasts is vital in terms of upholding good user experience. To have good navigation aids in finding products within a certain field, however for those attempting to find a specific item model, they may find only difficulty if a website is not set up to assist the user. Including search bars, with predictive text to prevent visitor slips from turning into frustrated customers walking away, and suggestive information based on relative searches will make for enhanced user experience where they will undoubtedly find anything for which they could possibly search (NN Group). Any way to make finding things simplified will do great things for satisfying your visitors and increasing your business.
Directional Speaking and Calls to Action
As a business owner with a webstore, your job is not limited to merely accepting sales from customers. Your job is to entice, persuade, and especially to reassure customers of their wants and why they came to you with their business. That being said, you will be able to satisfy a lot of customer needs and further establish your business as a major player in your industry by giving strong direction to page visitors. Doing this will sell your brand as being the best brand to get the job done that a visitor requires. For a customer to feel like a company is confident in its products and a buyer’s to-be satisfaction with said products builds confidence in that buyer, furthering the user experience provided by the company.
Also to be considered is the fact that people’s perusing your catalog of goods and services implies a desire to buy, even if somewhat reluctant at first. With this being their intention upon visiting your website, act on that and motivate them to buy to fulfill their needs. Depending on the market or industry, you can display these a number of different ways with a number of different written commands, such as the especially popular “Add Item To Cart”. How you display them can be broken down into where they are found on your site, included text, color and design, button shapes, and size (Jeff Bullas). These will give your visitors some guidance and the push they need to make the purchases they see as necessary.
Conclusion
In conclusion, to have created a website with great content and products is certainly noteworthy, but only if your visitors are able to experience it optimally. By ensuring that your website loads in a time that is acceptable, is operable across device types, hand-holds through you site, and establishes that confidence in seller and buyer will be mutually upheld as business is conducted. All of these things are key to maintaining good website responsiveness and a user experience that will keep visitors visiting and repeat buying. Check out Rave Retailer today to learn more about creating a website that will engage shoppers to the fullest and create new and recurring clientele for your business!