Anya Hawkins's blog : What Do Customers Want From Their Online Shopping Experience?

Online shopping has become an integrated part of modern life. With nearly everything in the world available to us at the click of a few buttons or taps on a screen, eCommerce is a competitive world. As with any marketing, there is a lot of psychology and science behind how people engage with online platforms. User experience online is a mix of what technology can realistically offer and how we then use that technology. Each industry will have different approaches to functionality and how it is used. For some items you buy online, you may want the quickest process possible, whereas, for other items, you may want to take your time and have a more meaningful shopping experience. You may have a platform that appeals to both of these approaches, especially if you appeal to very different customer groups.

An example of this may be a designer fashion brand; you will have customers that won't think twice about spending thousands of their currency on one item of clothing. This type of customer knows what they want and is happy to go through this process quickly after selecting the proper attributes (size, colour). You may then have another customer who has saved up for the same item and wants to be sure that it is precisely what they wish as this item is a much more considered purchase for them. For this kind of brand, you need to consider multiple types of customers and make sure they both have the best experience for their needs and wants.

There will always be edge cases with what customers want from their online shopping experience. Still, there are a few key elements that remain the same across the majority of customer groups:

Speed

The speed of a website is more important than you might realise. The time a page takes to load can be the difference in whether a customer stays on a particular website or bounces to another site/gets distracted by another online offering. As a society, we are much less patient than ever before with our technology and have expectations for instant action after clicking something. When researching user experience and web load speeds, you will see that everyone from Magento partners to independent business owners will use online speed test tools to keep an eye on whether their site is performing well in this area. There are many online tools you can use to check load times, and if you are running a website, you will need to make sure that you compress your images and adhere to best practices for image/video sizes.

Usability

There are so many extensions available for every web platform that it can be tempting to introduce as many of them as possible. Evidence suggests that unless something is vital and enhances the conversion experience, the less functionality, the better. The usability of the website essentially means finding information/pages quickly and being able to convert quickly. Finding areas quickly means a customer expects straightforward navigation, meaningful site search, and plenty of clear calls to action to add items to the basket and proceed through the payment stage.

Function

While noted above that the less functionality, the better is the case, on the whole, functionality that improves the user experience can be the difference between a customer returning to a website or forgetting all about it. Your functionality may include loyalty schemes, VAT switches, conversions for measurements, or even something impressive like augmented reality. If you are running a website, you need to ensure that the functionality is relevant, meets your customers' needs, and works well; otherwise, this can be a step in preventing a smooth conversion.

Safety

Being careful with your details online is increasingly important. Knowing that a website is secure with how it processes and stores your information is vital in the modern age of scams and hacks. A website should have a clear privacy policy and show that payments are processed securely by having an SSL certificate which usually shows in the URL bar as a padlock. Having clear lines of communication available to customers also allows you to feel in safe hands, especially if you can speak directly to a customer service representative.