Customers are what drive businesses. There’s an age-old adage that seems to hold truer than ever in today’s modern market: “The customer is king.”
In the e-commerce space, it’s all about upping the user interaction AND satisfaction game in an environment where there’s no personal contact. From making a good first impression to delivering top-notch customer satisfaction, these factors all play important roles in conversion, which in turn help drive sales and facilitate the return of investment (ROI).
In a report by Time, a Microsoft study found that the attention span of most people in the digital age has gone down from 12 seconds to approximately 8 seconds. What does this mean for e-commerce businesses? If a website isn’t able to capture and hold a consumer’s attention within that 8-second window, that user is most likely to lose interest and leave.
A cluttered website can confuse and drive away potential customers even before they’ve had a chance to check out your amazing products. A website that is hard to navigate may leave a user feeling lost and/or frustrated.
Enter UX and UI design. These two go hand-in-hand in planning your e-commerce site to deliver convenient customer interaction and achieve maximum satisfaction – What page layout will be most effective? Is navigation easy to understand? Is it easy for customers to find useful information on your website? Does information flow smoothly? and more.
The Roles of User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) Design
Many often find these two terms confusing. While both are closely connected and deal with how a consumer interacts with the website, UI and UX are not the same nor are they interchangeable terms.
UI is a part of UX that deals with the website’s appearance and usability. Basically, it considers what visual and technical components users interact with on a website (e.g. screen, page, menu bars, buttons, etc.). and how they can be best employed to result in a delightful customer experience.
UX is about the overall customer experience and the impression that a company makes online – from the brand as a whole to the website, products, services, and more. Effective UX design is geared towards helping create value for your brand and your business, which involves mapping out the customer’s journey and formulating a strategy to help bridge the gap between consumer expectations and customer satisfaction. Because at the end of the day, customers are left with how you made them feel.
Why Getting It Right Matters
Consider this: When a customer purchases a product, making the payment is the last step in the process to make that sale. But what happens if the way to make the payment appears as a tiny link way down at the bottom of the page, practically hidden from view? Will the user take the time to search for that link to be able to pay? Consequently, how will going through that extra effort of figuring out how to make a payment leave the user feeling?
In the scenario mentioned above, that potential sale could very well have ended up becoming a bust. However, the right UI/UX design can help make sure completing a transaction will be convenient for customers – including having the necessary components within view and easily accessible, as well as making each step in the process intuitive and convenient.
How We Can Help
At Nexus Box, we take web development seriously. We keep our clients’ vision in mind and come up with innovative ways to support them in achieving their goals.
UI/UX design is just the first in our four-step web development process in the hundreds of e-commerce sites we have created. Guided by our client’s vision and backed by research and studies on consumer behavior, our UI and UX experts leverage over 25 years of experience to effectively create customized UI and UX for the unique requirements of each web development project.
Find out more about our web development process here. Already have a project in mind? Book your free consultation today and let’s get talking.