Table of contents
- Introduction
- The Essence Of A Good UI Design
- Call-to-action Buttons
- The Check Out Section
- Friendly Error Messages
- Conclusion
Introduction
When we talk about UI, it’s not just about the visual outlook, the fonts, and styles that contribute to the design, or the colors used. Instead, on a much deeper level, it depicts the niche of your ecommerce brand and so a good UI design always goes hand-to-hand with developing a prominent presence of the company.
- A single second of added page load speed can cause sales to drop by 27%. (Soasta)
- On average, 83% of global consumers reportedly multi-screen using 2.23 devices at the same time. (Adobe)
- Average connection speed gets a hike of 14% every year, it was 6.1 Mbps in Q2 2016. (Akamai)
- Web pages that load in 2.4 seconds had a bounce rate of 12.8%, whereas the pages that load in 3.3 seconds experienced a bounce rate of 20%. (Soasta)
There are several challenges in this journey of making the user feel at a symbolic home, the home where they are comfortable with trying out services, and most pertain to how much of an accessible and valuable user interface (UI) design your website can create.
Not only does it set a tone that differs according to the services you’re providing, the specific group of audience you’re targeting, or a niche you’re representing, but a good UI will communicate just the basic information and data to the viewer as succinctly and precisely as possible while making sure bounce rates are also reduced.
This will, in turn, help you with 3 things:
1. Maintain users’ interest
2. Attract new users
3. Result in increased conversion rates and sales
Below, we analyze the objective of every UI design and then move forward to examine three key factors that will lead to improved awareness of the brand and subsequent purchases.
The Essence Of A Good UI Design
At its core, an effective UI design is just about conveying important information and guiding the user from one section to another until they reach the seller’s heaven: the check-out page, or in other cases, the subscription or ‘sign-up’ page.
For this purpose, right from the homepage, one thing should be clear: this is YOUR brand. No matter how cluttered or minimalist your homepage aims to be, it should be in the vein of representing your brand and the values it stands on.
For creating an effective and viable UI design, let’s discuss some of the essential elements that every ecommerce website owner should pay mind to when designing the platform to boost promotion and sales.
Call-to-action Buttons:
Since human beings are much better at processing visual information or noticing content that stands out from the rest, CTAs do an incredible job of being visible to the viewer.
Serving as interactive tools or buttons, Call-to-Action (CTAs) usher the user and direct them, step-by-step from where they are to where they ‘need’ to be, at least for the benefit of the businessman.
This action can be anything from ‘Sign Up’, ‘Buy now’ to ‘Read more’, and ‘Download now’, as long as it’s clickable and will redirect users to a different section of the site.
CTAs are enabling the user to spend more time browsing through the crucial aspects of the website and ultimately leading them to the goal aimed by the ecommerce brand.
Size of CTAs matter primarily for handheld devices since tapping a larger button is much easier than one for which you might need to magnify the content first.
Serving this purpose, some ecommerce sites have also been using whole images or illustrations as CTAs to rule out any inconveniences for mobile platforms.
The Check Out Section:
Though this is primarily for the cart section of a retail ecommerce site, the guidelines apply perfectly to other internet-based businesses as well as the subscription pages.
You can reserve the style, decorations, attractive icons, and everything that adds to the mood of the web, outside this section.
The cart section is to be as minimalistic as possible with little to no colors involved, and simple and distinct fonts present.
A simple design will be convenient for users to interpret and thus easy to decide if they want to finalize their order for the service.
Friendly Error Messages :
Using a vague statement as ‘An error has occurred’ is frustrating and the user is completely hopeless of what the next step should be. This may very well result in the user not returning to the site for a while ending up in overall reduced conversion rates.
One way or another, you can expect your customer to run into an issue, be it a technical one on your website’s side, or a lack of understanding from the consumer himself. These errors are no good news, but the least you can do is make them feel justified by providing a sound explanation or reason for them.
The explanation of the error should be concise without getting too much into the technical details. All it should inform of is whether the fault was that of the user or one which arose from the website’s shortcomings.
Remember, though it’s still a computer and its code, the way it should be presented is as if a human is talking to another one. Get creative with your error messages like what HubSpot did above. Couple the error message with a CTA like ‘Retry’ or offer other options to keep the user engaged rather than completely oblivious of the situation.
Conclusion
A good User Interface will serve as the complete roadmap and part of the experience for the user when they try to get a notion of what your brand’s about and what services are offered.