Retail websites have a certain reputation for being unfriendly to their users. There’s no reason this has to be the case. Check out these seven ways to improve your site and there’s a good chance that your customers will notice a big difference.
1. Empower Users With Custom Bookings
Live chat services and appointment-setting widgets are a great way to ensure that clients have the ability to tackle most problems on their own. They feel as though they can get help if they need it, but they’ll also be in a great position to set their own schedule without needing any outside help. That’s especially good news for those who manage businesses in the healthcare field.
2. Don’t Hold the User’s Hand
Being user-friendly is one thing, but being obsequious is an entirely different one. Don’t provide too much help for the user unless it’s asked for with a click or tap. Cluttering things up can make them harder to use, which is why some people employ the term user-friendly in a sarcastic tone.
3. Eliminate Unnecessary Controls
There’s a high probability that your site has too many controls littered across the page. See if you can cut down on some of these by combining the functions of several of them together. Your customers might not always know what to do if they’re presented with too many options.
4. Provide Customers With a Dark Mode
At the very least your site should respond to your user’s browser settings and render pages in black or gray if they request it. Some sites offer a custom dark mode while others simply trust that their clients’ browser software will do the conversion for them. In either case, you want to be sure that you support this since it can be very jarring to suddenly get a page that’s too bright when shopping online in a dimly lit room.
5. Switch to a New Image Format
Almost all major browsers now support the WebP file format, and it’s likely that you have several other options too. These new formats compress images much more aggressively, which can drastically reduce the amount of time it takes for clients to render a site.
6. Test Page Load Times
People don’t want to have to wait for your site to render, so it’s important that you test how long it takes for it to load on several different devices. Keep in mind that many smartphones and tablets don’t have very strong processors, so it’s vital that you offer a simple version of your page to these users if at all possible.
7. Offer Desktop Users a Similar Experience
Every eCommerce company should have a mobile site these days, but that doesn’t mean you should forget about all of your clients who’d rather shop from their laptops. Make sure that things render well on wider screens. Take advantage of the increased real estate by showing more products on each screen.
No matter the business size or industry, having a website that is user-friendly will have a large impact on the business’s success and profitability.
