Commentary

5 quick customer experience fixes for the retailer website

Scott Voigt, CEO/Co-founder, FullStory, offers up five fast actions a retailer can accomplish to ensure the e-commerce customer experience is a rewarding one.

Photo by iStock.com

August 28, 2018

By Scott Voigt, CEO/Co-Founder, FullStory

In 2010, a page viewed on a computer that took four seconds to load would see a 30 percent decrease in page views. Fast forward to 2012, and that same four-second page load would drop your page views by 40 percent. Jump to 2016, and 53 percent of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than three seconds to load.

Now it's 2018 — what do you think the impact of slow loading sites is now? Don't give users time to change their minds, get distracted by something else — or be frustrated. A whopping 79 percent of online shoppers say they won't go back to a slow-loading website.

Here are five quick action items to ensure the online retail consumer experience is a rewarding one for both consumers and retailers.

Make sure your site loads FAST. Performance is everything in an environment where you have mere seconds to grab attention.
Next, check site design. Nothing will turn shoppers away faster than clunky or dysfunctional design. The text should be easy to read and pleasing to the eye — not too big or too small. Make sure your site isn't too busy with animated GIFs or auto-play video. Can visitors find their way around easily? Don't hide the navigation elements or make them confusing. Avoid odd color combinations and bump up your call to action.
Keep the ads to a minimum — don't be too aggressive or in-your-face, or users will leave faster than you can say “pop-up ad.” Yes, the ads are part of your revenue stream, but using too many pop-ups/overs/unders ends up distracting from the content you want people to see. Another tactic to use judiciously: automatically-checked opt-in boxes. One during the course of any session will do.
If you're using a button of any kind, make sure the button does something. Using these for decorative purposes will only confuse visitors and cause them to rage click (that feeling when your browsing session isn't going well and you repeatedly click your mouse in frustration, waiting for something…ANYTHING…to happen.) Check all buttons for broken links on a regular basis, too.
Check for desire paths — a shortcut from point A to point B that your buyers might be taking instead of the path you designed for them. Why is this happening? Are there JavaScript errors? Have you checked the site at several different speeds to ensure connections don't time out? Redesign your path — or, even better — use the desire paths that are already in use and improve them.

Running through this checklist will give your e-commerce site a fast boost and a boost, fast.