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Ecommerce is everywhere these days and is growing like wildfire. And for all the eCommerce retailer businesses, having a strong digital presence is really important.

Today as the technology is advancing, so are the user expectations taking a leap.

So, to dive in such an augmented industry, you need to make some extra efforts to reap the benefits.

To make the most out of eCommerce, you need to follow the trends and offer your customers the best to deliver stunning User Experience (UX).

Following is a list of all the upcoming eCommerce UX best practices you need to incorporate in your business.

1. Functionality over beautification

Fancy designs and beautified backgrounds including autoplay videos, hidden navigation buttons, and image carousels are a thing of the past now. These fancy looking designs have ended up frustrating the shoppers due to slow loading and poor functionality.

UX has always been about providing better functionality. It is all about how easily your customer can find a product, how well they can view it, what all information has been provided and how quickly they can check out?

Though it is not denied that having a beautiful website design impresses your shoppers, yet they are not here to see the design but to buy from you.

Your eCommerce store should be able to guide shoppers to their desired destination without much effort and provide pictures of the product from various angles. Giving detailed information regarding the product will aid your customer to make an informed decision and a simplified checkout always renders exceptional user experience.

If you are confused between a beautiful design and good functionality, choose later over the other.

2. Mobile First Approach

We all are well aware of the rising use of mobile devices and smartphones in eCommerce.Mobile searches have already overtaken the desktop searches which had pushed Google to prioritize mobile sites, and include it in its algorithm.

Mobile Commerce has reported a whopping sales figure of over 1 trillion dollars. If you are still not having an app or mobile website for eStore, you are losing on a massive opportunity.

Initiating websites with a Mobile first approach is no more an obligation for store owners but has become a necessity. When the mobile usage trends are depicting the shift, it is high time to be a part of the change.

As an eCommerce UX trend for 2019, dedicated apps and mobile websites which are simple to use will be quite popular amongst the shoppers. Convenience and simplicity is the key for future of eCommerce transactions, mobile-first approach holds the treasure.

3. Personalization

Personalization has taken a comfort slot in the User Experience matrix. Customers today find it really important if they are being served with a personalized experience based on their earlier visit.

This new way of expecting more precise, quicker and seamless personalized customer experience is becoming more critical for brands.

Harnessing the power of engaging and relevant conversations, AI and machine learning can actually make your customers feel good and delighted.

Personalisation is the need of the hour and the expectations attached will remain increasing in 2019. As a part of improving UX for your eStore showing “product recommendations”, “related products”, “people who bought this also bought” sections can help. Based on their prior purchase patterns, such recommendations can enable your customers to find new products which they might like.

Having a section showing the trending products and offering them to sign up for email newsletter which can serve their personalized requirements can also be a great help.

4. Website Performance

User experience has the design as well as the functionalities as two important components. But for a user, the performance of a website holds equal significance.

Website performance has a number of key performance indicators (KPIs). A few steps that can actually help a lot in improving your site’s performance are namely Page Loading speed, site’s SEO, using a Content Delivery Network (CDN), minimize the number of plugins and many more.

But consider these to be really important, you actually need to work on these KPIs to deliver an exceptional experience to the user.

The faster your website loads the better UX it will have.

An optimized website in the context of content, images, tags, and XML sitemaps will not only help the browsers but also real users for a good UX.

Content Delivery Network (CDN) is the best option to use when you have a huge amount of data for your users. CDN strategically distributes the data on a number of servers and shows that web content to the user which lies on the closest server. This helps in the quicker loading of your store and hence better UX.

5. Design for Larger Screens

Getting your websites responsive has been an important factor for a good ranking as well as for your users. But one of the best practices for UX in 2019 will be to design for larger screens.

The newer releases of smartphones with larger screen sizes, the trend of owning a mobile like iPhone X, XR, Google Pixel, Samsung Galaxy, XS Max and many more is increasing. And the coming year will witness a strong increase in this trend of edgeless phones and phablets yet.

So watching the popularity charts, it is suggested that you should design mobile applications or mobile sites for larger screens.

Getting prepared for the future always help in fighting the odds. Hence for your eCommerce store to deliver an exceptional User Experience, consider the trend and optimize its UI/UX to use the thumb.

6. Videos for description

Videos have taken over written content for the product description. Now the users want to see more than to read.

Users want to be informed about the product description, how it works and more stuff related to the product by watching the description.

Forming this as a trend, having videos for description helps a lot in improving the UX and also in increasing the conversion rate though.

7. Simplified Checkout process

Simplifying the last step of a user’s journey adds a lot more to the experience they had during their visit on your eStore.

Cutting down on steps to checkout and simplifying the process lowers the rate of cart abandonment.

Taking care of a few things while creating the checkout page can help. Avoiding distractions and contain only the functionality to complete the process.

Having a provision for guest checkout and even logging in with their existing accounts (like on Facebook, Gmail etc.) can make it easier for users.

A functionality allowing them to switch between their cart and shop more can really help on reducing the cart drop rate and add to the positive experience they had while shopping.

Conclusion

Your business is all dedicated to customers. So your website, mobile site and even your mobile app should be aligned with the convenience and interests of your users as well.

As the trends and best practices have already been shared with you for the benefit of your business in 2019, the key purpose behind it all is to make the user journey easier and better.

A good UX design is really important as it invites and attracts the visitor to stay, tour, shop, and checkout.

Guiding the user’s way through to find the required products, eliminating the challenges and simplifying the process on a whole is all about UX. Implement the above-mentioned eCommerce trends for UX in your store to drive more traffic and generate higher ROI.

To seize a better opportunity to grow and optimize your business, you can read our blog on 13 Trends to boost your Ecommerce Sales in 2019 .

Stay tuned for more. Till then Stay optimized and Keep Trending.