The process of thoughtfully improving a website or digital product’s ease-of-use and user flow through customer-focused design, is half science, half art, but it’s key to retaining and converting visitors, and maximizing your website investment.

Aesthetically-pleasing design and flashy trends won’t safeguard your site from usability issues or guarantee a valuable customer journey. In fact, they frequently get in the way. Great user experience (UX), requires planning, testing, and investing in strategic design resources up front, but a well-designed and well-defined user interface reduces rework and wasted development time, decreases customer support calls, and, most importantly, increases customer retention rates and sales.

In fact, according to Forbes, every dollar devoted to user experience returns $10 to $100. Forrester agrees, finding that visit-to-lead conversions can be 400% higher on sites with a “superior user experience.”

Don’t turn off your prospects and customers with a sub-par, friction-filled website. Follow our 4 simple UX principles and best practices to improve your site’s ease-of-use, solve customer pain points, deliver memorable brand experiences, and increase conversions.

Your website is an essential channel to reach customers and prospects 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Your site drives sales, captures new leads, and provides customers valuable information about your products and services.

Too often, though, brands prioritize impactful design or trends over website user experience. The result is an expensive and aesthetically pleasing, but confusing and friction-filled website that bleeds users and skyrockets bounce rates.

We all want our digital brand representation to have a WOW factor – to capture audience attention and help us stand out from the competition.

Today, we’ll explain what User Experience (UX) is and why it’s good business.

As Danish usability consultant, Jakob Nielsen says, “your homepage is often your first — and possibly your last — chance to attract and retain each customer.”

What does your website homepage say about your company? Is it the “face” you want users to first meet? Does it put new users at ease and create a lasting impression? If you answered “no” to these questions, follow our three homepage tips for a winning website.

1. Your Homepage At-A-Glance

Are you a trendy footwear retailer? Do you offer face-painting services for parties? Is your homepage tailored to your unique audience? It takes a user a rapid 0.05 seconds to form an opinion about your website.

Your homepage should clearly state what your company does, why your user should explore further, what differentiates you from the competition, and what action you’d like the user to take. Try to keep your messaging simple, but impactful and descriptive, especially when it comes to headlines and calls-to-action (CTAs).

Photography is your friend here! Photography goes a long way to communicate your business objectives and values. Include simple lifestyle and product photography to draw attention, without looking too staged (stock photos) or cluttered. If you sell services instead of products, use environmental or human-interest (lifestyle) photography.

Step it up a notch by using GIFs or quality video content. Regardless of the medium, ensure the imagery makes sense and furthers your brand’s story.

Visitors to Hello Fresh’s website, instantly learn Hello Fresh is a home cooking service that provides simple recipes and pre-measured ingredients. The call-to-action to “view our plans” is front and center.

Continue reading 3 Homepage Tips for a Winning Website →

I was finishing up a craft project recently, when I realized I needed spray sealant stat – even Amazon same-day delivery wouldn’t cut it. What’s a crafty gal to do! Fortunately, I saw on Michaels.com that they stocked spray in a nearby store, so I panic purchased (we’ve all done this) the spray online to pick it up later that afternoon. I’ve been an “order online, pick up in store” convert ever since.

According to Invesp, 49% of shoppers say that same-day delivery makes them more likely to shop online. Not only that, more than 25% of shoppers would abandon a cart online if same-day shipping wasn’t available!

If same day shipping isn’t feasible for you, consider offering the option to pick up in store for online purchases. While this also requires infrastructures in place to ensure the product is at the specific store, it allows the customer to receive the product within 24 hours of purchase, with no shipping or handling fees.

Continue reading Shipping Options to Compete with Amazon: Order Online, Pick Up In Store →

Product detail pages make or break the shopping experience and directly impact conversions. Today, we’re highlighting 5 retailers exceeding our product detail page expectations with easy-to-scan and relevant product details, interesting imagery, and clever upsell features to enhance the customer purchase experience.

Sizing

We’ve all been there: you find the perfect item online, but you’re unsure of how it will fit. Should you order your normal size, a size down, and a size up just in case? Anthropologie, PinkBlush, and Asos feel your pain and are taking some of the guess work out of online sizing.

Anthropologie
Anthropologie is a brand under Urban Outfitters’ umbrella, focused on women’s wear and home décor. Their product detail pages are clean, utilizing easy to read fonts, colors, and multiple images.

What caught our eye is a quick statement underneath the size options – “Customers say Runs a Little Large”. This fit prediction comes from the mix of “True to Size” and “Runs Large” comments from reviewing customers, offering important real-time feedback to help unsure shoppers. In this case, we’d get our size and the size down.

PinkBlush
PinkBlush carries women’s maternity and non-maternity apparel.

We like that  PinkBlush’s product detail page includes a “Model Stats” section under “Size and Fit.” It’s not new for a retailer to include the model’s clothing size, but what sets PinkBlush apart is they include both the model’s picture (so you can double check the model  is the same one featured in the product images) and the model’s measurements. Customers can compare their own measurements  to the model’s , making it easier to assess the item’s fit.

Asos
Asos is a men and women’s wear company based in the UK. They recently started testing a new feature within their product images for a select group of products.

You may not notice at first glance, but they’re showing models with different body shapes and skin colors to reflect the products’ wear on diverse customers (yay!). Similar to PinkBlush, a “Model Stats” section breaks down the models’ height and  size (UK, EU, US sizing).

Sale End Dates + Discounts

Bauble Bar

Bauble Bar is a women’s jewelry online retailer, hosting frequent sales and games to engage customers.

The product detail pages for final sale items has a lot of thoughtful information, but we love how they call out sale details. The sale deadline is prominently displayed above the price in red, with copy under the CTA calling out “Psst: You’re Saving 64%”.

There’s no way a customer will overlook the red font and other need-to-know details! We also like the clever “Psst” text under the CTA, enticing the customer to buy more.

Personal Shopper

Nordstrom

Nordstrom is currently testing a new feature on their product detail pages that builds a complete head-to-toe outfit based on the item you’re viewing This interactive feature allows customers to view different options within the outfit, based on style and price.

We took this feature for a test spin. The top of the maxi dress product detail page looks normal , but  scrolling down under the product specifications reveals a new section showing a head-to-toe outfit idea built around the dress.  Shop the items shown without leaving the page, or  “refresh” the page to see another outfit idea.

Check out the product page for yourself here.

Simple to Sophisticated

Are you ready to test-run any of these ideas on your own product detail pages? Adding a sale end date or percentage off are fairly simple adds, while photographing multiple models or adding a full-outfit feature like Nordstrom is more sophisticated.

Think about how to ease friction for your customers and provide all the information necessary to compel them to convert  from the product page.