If you want to maximize the number of completed orders in your online store you have to give consumers the best online shopping experience.
Easy right?
Wrong
There’s a lot of different factors that go into creating the best online shopping experience.
When a customer lands on your store what does it look like to them?
If they’re on a mobile device (likely) does it look good on their device and is it fast?
They’re probably looking for certain information or pictures so you have to provide that.
It’s all about anticipating consumer’s wants, needs, and being able to go above and beyond.
These 4 ways to give consumers the best online shopping experience will help you anticipate shoppers needs.
1. Landing with ease on any device
No matter what device people use on your website it needs to look great.
If you know what to look for then this isn’t as hard to achieve as it used to be.
You do however need to know the importance of a mobile-optimized website.
A mobile optimized website is usually a responsive page which is the best way to achieve mobile optimization.
There are other options you can focus on for your mobile audience also such as a mobile app but that’s not always a good option.
People use multiple devices. You can either cater to them or lose them. Click To TweetOptimizing your landing page to look good on all devices and making sure it looks good and customers know what to do is essential to create the best online shopping experience.
An easy way to test if your page at least works well on a mobile device is to use Google’s free mobile check tool. It’s not perfect because it only focuses on the technical aspect but it is a start.
No matter where a customer lands on your website and no matter what device they’re using their experience should be flawless.
Part of being flawless is making pages load as fast as possible.
2. Make it fast
Faster is always better when it comes to the internet.
We want to find what we’re looking for fast and we want our content fast.
It is important to make sure visitors are able to find what they’re looking for fast but this one focuses on fast loading pages.
A website that loads in 3 seconds is average. One that loads in 2 seconds is good. When your website loads in 1 second or less then that’s amazing.
Your goal for fast is always 1 second or less. That’s difficult to achieve though and admittedly even this page doesn’t achieve that except as an amp page (I won’t get into that here).
While fast is the goal there must be a balance between content and speed.
Even if you can’t achieve a 1 second or less load time the point is that the faster the load time the better off you are.
The best online shopping experience comes from a fast loading page that doesn’t keep people waiting.
You can test how fast your pages load with the Google PageSpeed Insights tool.
The longer a page takes to load the higher the chances people will back out.
Once consumers make it to your pages you also need to keep things clean with few distractions.
3. Keep distractions light
The fewer distractions you have on a page the more likely visitors are to complete their primary goal.
For an online shopping experience, people have one goal in mind, to find products they like and buy them.
There are two types of shoppers online:
- Focused shopper
- Browser
The focused shopper is the one you have to cater a distraction-free shopping experience towards.
It all comes down to getting them to the product they’re looking for fast and keeping distractions low.
The more focused you can make consumers on the purchase, the better off you'll be. Click To TweetThe focused shopper will probably arrive on a product page from a search engine or a product ad.
No popups should be visible and the product page should be clean with the main goal obvious.
What’s the main goal?
For a product page, the main goal is always the add to cart button.
It’s ok to have items that visitors must interact with (like links to subscribe to an email list). It’s never ok to force a distraction in someone’s face though. That’s one of the reasons I am not a fan of the website welcome mat.
The less friction you create the more likely you are to create the best online shopping experience.
4. Less friction means smooth sailing
Each step of the way in the shopping process should be frictionless.
That means any device should work just as well as any other device. It should also be fast so everything loads smooth. And of course, distractions need to be at a minimum.
The less friction you create during the buying process the more likely consumers are to buy.
Friction in the buying process could be that total cost of purchase isn’t well defined or that the checkout process is cumbersome and asks for too much information.
There are a lot of things you can look at and do to prevent shopping cart abandonment which comes down to an experience full of friction.
The smoother the transaction, the less likely anybody is to think twice and leave.
Check Yourself
Now it’s time to get your website checked out to make sure you’re offering the best online shopping experience.
You may be so knowledgeable about your website that you don’t see that which is right in front of you. That’s why you need an outside opinion (the more the better).
An Online Presence Report is a perfect way for you to see what changes are necessary and where you’re doing well. It’s a free personalized report that I create by hand to help you expand your small business online.