State of User Experience: E-commerce Websites

The State of the User Experience is a result of annual surveys that explore consumer expectations and behaviors online.

Here are the 3 key takeaways you need to know for your own web property:

1. Focus on mobile experiences. Design for the mobile experience first, routinely verify that it loads quickly, and monitor this traffic segment as the lead indicator for future sales.
2. Optimize website performance. When deciding between snazzy and snappy, go with the latter. Use a content delivery network (CDN).
3. Add social to the e-commerce experience. Combine social and e-commerce into the same experience—from research to purchase to customer service. Think Facebook shops, social reviews, ratings, comments, etc.

Have some more time? Here’s a closer look at trends in how U.S. consumers behave online compared to last year:

• Attention is the new digital currency. People who spend a lot of time online now spend less. Those that weren’t spending a lot now invest more.
• Consumers seek news online. Consuming news content leads the way for online activities, followed closely by social media, and then watching video content.
• eCommerce is only part of the customer. Consumers spend more time researching products than shopping online. Once they research online, you need to re-engage them with remarketing/retargeting campaigns and expanding to affinity and in-market audiences.
• When they go online, they are using a smartphone. Smartphones dominate as the device to access online content, with nearly half of all visits a smartphone. If you add tablets—another gesture-based device—mobile becomes the device of choice.
• Online consumers demand a lot from e-commerce. They expect them to be faster than five seconds, engaging, and functional—and all this across all devices.
• Online sales are penalized by slow websites. Consumers will leave slow loading websites after waiting a mere five seconds and will usually not recommend/refer products from slow websites.
• Consumers utilize social media for research. Consumers employ social media for a variety of activities while shopping online, so don’t separate e-commerce from social. Instead, combine them.

What’s more, the survey looks at the “future” of the user experience by focusing on the responses from Millenials. It is effectively the same findings as above but to a higher degree.

You can view and download the report here from Limelight Networks.