Usability Factors For E-commerce And Shopping Cart

The success of an E-commerce website and shopping portal depends majorly on the usability of the portal itself along with the shopping cart. While it may be easy to attract buyers to the portal, it is often very difficult to convert viewership into sales. So what are the big and small elements that make an E-commerce website tick? To know about the best practices followed by successful merchants, read on.

• Include options for refining product results as per different criteria : This refines the search down to the clear favorites as per design, color, shape, brand, size, price etc. This also makes the buying process much easier, faster and simpler. The website design should be flexible enough to allow this as well as the clearing of the refining criteria.
• Include Breadcrumb navigation, state the products clearly with bold Headlines and Subheadings : This enables the viewer to establish where they are in the site structure and help in promotion since these elements are used in understanding the classification and targeted words.
• Include search function clearly and with smart functions : It should be easy to locate and above the fold. Smart functions like typing prediction/suggestions for easy querying are very helpful for the shoppers.
• Avoid forcing the shoppers to make an account before they start shopping : This turns away the maximum number of shoppers.
• Do some cross-selling and display the related products before the shoppers check out : Display contact information where shoppers can view it and also ensure that it is displayed in the same area on each page.

These best practices have been carefully formulated only after realizing the problems faced by the online buyers. Incorporating them also ensures that customers start trusting the brand, the cart abandonment rates are lowered and also referrals are increased, which can greatly benefit the seller.