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Top UX Features For Your Ecommerce Sites – Part II

Hi, people! Let’s recall Tokokoo blog post from a few days ago, Top User Experience Features For Your Ecommerce Sites. Today, we will continue our previous discussion about user experience features. If we had had user experience features like: Product Videos, Price Drop Alert, and Image Testimonials from Customer on the former blog post, now we are going to have Customers Review, Shop Together, and What Others Are Viewing. Sip and enjoy!

Customers Review

Customers Review – UrbanOutfitters.com

This user experience (like one in UrbanOutfitters.com) feature allows your customers to review your product. Their review (including ratings, comments, and their identity) will appear in each product description page. Just make sure if you are confident enough with the quality of your product so the bad ratings risk can be reduced. Otherwise, it would make those potential buyers think twice before buying your products, or worse, cancel it.

Shop Together

Shop Together – Buy.com

Which one do you prefer, go shopping all alone or pull someone to accompany you? If you already know which product to pick, maybe go shopping all alone is not a big deal. But in most situation, don’t we all need a second opinion? That’s why there are user experience features called Co-Shopping or Shop Together that connects different users from different areas, virtually. Some ecommerce sites also add up facility to chat online with their customer service.

What Others Are Viewing

What Others Are Viewing – Buy.com

Still on Buy.com ecommerce sites, right below the shop together widget, there is a column whose title is “what others are viewing”. Now, imagine yourself when visiting an online store. First, I bet you’ll click the Shop tab then select a product category that attracts you the most. Then, you browse their products, read some descriptions. If you get interested, maybe you’ll use the Shop Together user experience feature above. If not, mostly you’ll just close the web browser tab. That’s the use of this What Others Are Viewing: to prevent potential buyers to navigate away from the ecommerce sites while probably there are some other products that they’d like to buy.

That’s all for now. Any opinion?

Top UX Features For Your Ecommerce Sites

Written by Shinta Yanirma on August 3, 2011 in Ecommerce Tips and Trick - 1 Comment

Essentially, doing either offline business or online business makes no different. You still have to do continuous marketing, maintain unique brand image, keep up innovation, etc. It also applies for customer. Your aggressive online stores advertisement will do you no good unless your brand has gained customer attention and loyalty. One of the many ways to engage customers is to include some user experience (UX) features on your online stores.

But user experience features aren’t free. In some cases, they are very, very expensive. Selecting the right feature set is an exercise that should be as well-informed as possible, and should take into account available resources, industry best practices, and the competitive landscape.

What kind of user experience features that may be suitable for your online stores? Keep reading.

Product Videos

Product video -Nikicio.com

A minute of video is worth 1.8 million words, according to Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester, a leading technology research firm. Videos bring a product to life more than static images. It is also usable for almost any kind of product varying from software to apparel. Because of their potential for increasing sales as well as improving search engine placement, product videos are likely to become a standard user experience feature on e-commerce product description pages in the near future.

Price Drop Alert

Newegg’s price drop alert. -image by UXBooth.com

Price is a key determining factor for purchase decisions. It even matters more when customers consider to buy such products whose price has high tendency to decline, for example: electronic products and gadgets. It makes sense, then, to let customers know when the price of a product they have indicated an interest in drops. Hopefully, it would encourage customers to return and buy. As a return, you could set requirement for customers to give their email address.

Image Testimonials from Customer

Image Testimonials -Iwearup.com

There are some customers who have lost faith in product image displayed on the online store, espescially when the product physical appearance is the important thing, for example: furniture, shoes, jewelry, etc. These customers may have experienced “ads scam” from another sellers in the past that the products they got weren’t the same as they looked on the web. If you let customers to post picture of themselves with the products, those potential buyers might finally decide to buy.

There are plenty more, sure. So, which user experience feature had been used on your online store?

Let’s Shape Your Shopping Cart More Convenient (Part 2)

Written by Shinta Yanirma on September 5, 2010 in Ecommerce Tips and Trick - No Comments

Let's Shape Your Online Shopping Cart More Convenient (Part 2)

image: mediatemple

Hi Tokokoomania, are you still working on your online store? How about our tips about shopping cart on the last article, is it help your site yet? We really do hope so.

If it haven’t support you, please read our next five tips about making shopping car more convenient for your customers. Come on, here we go.

6. Don’t forget to attach “Continue Shopping” link

If your aim is to make customers shop as much as possible, than this “Continue Shopping” link should be attached in. So it will be easier for customers to go back to the store and catalog. This link usually placed under the table on the full shopping cart. Wherever you want to placed it, put it in an easy place to find by customers.

7. Keep every input form simple

One of many reason people went shopping online is to simplify everything. Keep that in mind when you create input field in a form for your customers. Choose the most important information only and make sure it will lead to an easy checkout process. If you make this process inconvenient, than don’t expect customers have another purchase on your site again.

8. Visual support always good

It doesn’t have to be fancy images, visual support also able to show in any kind of form such as diagrams to simple icons. One of the most important image your should consider is showing the customers the location of an account number their credit card so it will help to go through the process until their done with billing information. Icons will also support text to make the form easier to scan through.

9. Give lots of helping elements

Don’t underestimate the helping elements on your shopping cart and checkout process. Quick tips explaining about how to use the cart features or showing the easiest way to finish the checkout process will mean a lot to confuse customers. And, did you know labels on the cart and checkout form can be explained with tool tips.

There are also other choices, click and drag the image to the cart. The cart icon will easily tells customers that they can drag items to add into the cart.

10. Pay extra attention on verify page

As the last step to checkout process, verify and edit page is very important. It is really convenient that merchants give customers a chance to confirm that they are purchasing the right stuff. On this page, you should include all the information about the product in a table, almost the same as full page checkout.

Also give customers a tool to cancel their order or even “continue shopping” button. Consider button with contrast color from the background and bigger font to make online shopping become more convenient to your customers.

Doesn’t sound right for you? Let’s discuss this topic much further. Fill the box below and start the discussion with us.

Let’s Shape Your Shopping Cart More Convenient (Part 1)

Written by Shinta Yanirma on September 1, 2010 in Ecommerce Tips and Trick - No Comments

image: Apple Store

Traffic jam and long working hours keeps you away from a new leather jacket or limited edition notebook you wish for? That’s an easy task with technology these days. Shopping is easier, thanks to e-commerce websites on Internet. Only with a click, you could have everything you wish for at your door step.

Unfortunately, not all online stores promised the same easy ways for customer to shop. There are still a lot of mistakes which is done by merchants.

If your e-commerce website hard to understand and often mislead to mistakes, with no doubt it will keep customers away. So how to get more efficient online store which is quick and easy without any hassles for customers?

We will discuss 10 tips to help your shopping cart and e-commerce checkouts a lot easier and convenient for the customers. In this article, we have the first five tips and soon will be continued on the next articles.

1. Have both full page and mini carts

image: webdesignerdepot

One thing hassle me most when I went shopping online is making mistakes on things I ordered. Whether the color or size. Having both of full pages of cart and mini cart on top of the page fold will help to remind customers to avoid mistakes on things they ordered.

With shopping mini cart, you can show information only in a small area. The best way is when a product selected; the item will immediately show in the mini cart. While in the full page cart, customers will be provided with more details information such as product details, remove or edit items, extra tax prices and shipping options.

2. Connect carts with an icon

Let's Sape Your Shopping Cart More Convenient

image: iluminejp

As we mention on the first step, it is crucial to link mini cart to full cart. In order to make it more eye catching, complete it with interesting icon.

So, whenever customers clicking on the mini cart, it should link to the full cart, with an icon appear alongside the mini cart. Pay attention and choose your shopping cart icon wisely so it could be easily be recognized by anyone visit your online store. The website above is a perfect example. These buttons are in a foreign language, but anyone can easily recognized the shopping cart icon.

3. Clear Checkout option

image: bridge55

There are two options to make checkout page. First, step by step method which is very easy for the customer to follow the process. For example is Apple.com checkout page.

The checkout procedure divided into four different steps: Sign In, Billing & Shipping, Payment and last step, Verify/Edit. Second option is to include all information on a single page, from shopping cart, personal information and shipping/billing. It will work out fine if supported with good layout.

4. Visible checkout and add to cart buttons

One crucial thing you should remember when designing an e-commerce checkout and shopping cart is creating large obvious buttons. Choose simple words, such as “Add to cart” or “Proceed to checkout” and have it in bright color.

Place the buttons directly under the information of each product. Remember, if the checkout button is hard to find, than customers can’t buy your product.

5. Readable based table layout

10 Easy Ways to Make Shopping Cart More Convenient

image: mia and maggie

For full shopping cart, one of best option is to use table based structure. It should provide the information without interruption. Choose font wisely and avoid distracting background. Using strong borders to separate cell will be great idea.

The cart should be display as a very clean cart. Easily readable and have all important elements. Complete the cart with picture would be another great idea. It will give visual affirmation to the customers.

Do you agree about all of our points? If you have any comment to make it more perfect, then please write to us on the box below. We will continue our tips on the next article soon.

How Important Shopping Cart on My Online Store?

Written by Shinta Yanirma on August 10, 2010 in Ecommerce Tips and Trick - 4 Comments

image: nerve/sourcebits.com

Shopping cart is one of the most important things on traditional stores. It helps them to carry out products their wish to buy. Is it the same with online store? What is virtual shopping cart anyway? Read more…

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