Smoothen Out Your Ecommerce Website Experience with the Laws of Simplicity

One of the primary objective of any ecommerce website is to turn the visitors into potential buyers and that can only be achieved with smooth and error-free user experience.

Turning our site visitors into potential buyers is one of the primary objectives of any ecommerce website, but as site developers or even as business owners, we sometimes fail to accomplish this minor task. Luckily, three critical questions can help us find our way back.

I am often flabbergasted how common sense is not so common at times. Well let's take example of your ecommerce website. The primary motto of any online portal or online shopping site is to convert their visitors into buyers. But obviously that common factor isn't that common anymore, clearly judging by your average ecommerce website.

Most of the times, no, it should be frequently actually, we make a mess out of our ecommerce websites by dumping unnecessary elements and distracting customers from buying a product. But, why is that?

These situations arise because we ourselves often got distracted by our secondary objectives. In the race to be number one and to know whether our marketing campaigns has been successful or not, we add a small insect "How to find us"? to the check out point. Or in an attempt to alleviate our bounce rate, we try to pull our customers back by asking them to sign up for a newsletter. The list could go on.

But each time we dwindle from our original goal we ultimately distract the user. Every unrequited call to action we incorporate in our site we distract a valuable call to buy. Whether it is "Follow us on LinkedIn", "Check out our latest ad campaign" the result is the same- users not buying anything.

In order to overcome this major glitch, Web Solution Centre, a reputed Website Designing Company In Delhi, grounded three little questions, you should question every element within your ecommerce design. The questions are based on John Maeda’s book, ‘Laws of Simplicity’. These questions will help you receive answers on every element who have embedded in your site and will smoothen out your sales process and focus your site on its job of selling products.

Q1. Can it be removed?

I know this seems like an obvious question, but how many times have you actually asked this question to every element on your website? Once you choose to put certain elements there, you just go about it and do it, never seeking advice of others or a professional. You rarely contemplate whether it is appropriate or not, or is it making any sense positioned there.

Situations may have altered and the reasoning behind putting that element in your ecommerce design may no longer eligible. Also, if we are honest to ourselves, we shouldn't have added that element in the first place.

Sometimes you can receive a strong rebuttal from the colleagues, if your choose to experience this approach. And it is especially true with those who asked to add the element in the first place. In such tricky situation, I ask myself one more question, would it leave any significant impact on the site if we removed this element?

This puts the ones in defense in a position to justify their refusal with proper explanation. You don't have to pitch them the negative consequences of integrating the element. Instead, the pressure is on them to explain why would it be bad to remove it?

Now we can simply add the question of removing elements to every part of our website, just to know their relevance. But it is particularly critical to apply this to the checkout process. Once a user has expressed an interest in buying or made a wish list, it is probably best to remove all the distractions afterwards.

Of course sometimes the answer can come out that we cannot remove it, which leads us to the next question that is " Could we hide it?"

Q2. Could we hide it?

Indeed there are certain elements that need to be there on the site. But on a flipside, they are given far too much importance that they should probably deserve. So the web developers get trapped between keeping them because they are relevant but not giving much priority. Social media icons are a pure example of this.

We desperately want the visitors to our website the chance to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and so on. But know this these social icons often become a distraction to the purchasing process. After all, only a small percentage of users are going to want this option. Also if we are giving users the choice between the two options, we would prefer them to buy something over following us on social networks.

Yet many ecommerce are literally painted with larger than life social media icons. Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that the icons sometimes sand out as sore thumb because their design does not align with the rest of the site.

One thing is certain that can’t simply remove these less needed elements, but then what should we do with them? One viable option is to consider hiding them. Now hiding does not mean that we let consumers find the secondary calls to action and loose more customers along the way. It simply means that we do not have them along side our primary calls to action- like add to cart or checkout.

A great time to ask users to follow them social media platforms is when they are done buying a product. we often see "continue shopping: link plastered boldly at the end of the checkout process in almost all ecommerce sites. It is probably the weakest call to action on the web to date! Why would anyone continue shopping after they had just bought something?

We can encourage them to step onto secondary calls to action once they are with the primary ones, so that we can customize them based on what they have bought.

Ok, having said that, there are still some calls to action that we cannot hide. So jumping to our third and final question: Could it shrink it?

Q3. Could we shrink it?

Albeit our only motto is to how drive customers into buy something, this is only crucial step of their entire journey, a journey often referred to as sales funnel. This funnel is a string of many events altogether. Ranging from discovering a need, through evaluating options to buy and beyond.

Each step along the journey has associated calls to action. For example, if users are looking for the appropriate products that will best suit their needs, you may wish to encourage them to sign up for a newsletter. This helps with their research mission and also enable us to keep our website and brand in their minds.

Signing up for a new letter is important but not as important as checking out. So in order to merge this two way street, we can shrink them. Secondary calls to action are important and must be prominent on the website. But they need to be less emphasized so as not to overshadow the primary calls to action. This can be accomplished through your choice of color, font, or the sizing of your elements in relation to each other.

So now you can simplify your ecommerce design with these simple questions. They help you to stay true to your website goal and not distract the users. Just try them once and see.

Mr. Gurjeet Singh is a freelance web designer who loves to spread his knowledge through his proficient writings.