When it comes to getting people to reach the checkout page on your ecommerce website, having a user friendly experience is essential for building your business, increasing revenue, and keeping your consumers happy. 67% of users say that a poor website experience negatively affects their opinion of a brand. Having a user friendly experience is a huge deciding factor when shopping online. If it gets too complicated or confusing, it discourages users to keep looking around or shopping in your store. With that being said, here are some tips to help you optimize your store to be more user friendly and increase your conversions.

Showcasing your ecommerce brand

This should go without saying, but construct your site to be different from other sites. Especially your direct competitors. Consumers want to see your brand’s logo and your colors in a way where they can instantly recognize it. If these aspects are similar to other sites, specifically competitors, you need to start differentiating.

Keep your branding colors and fonts consistent throughout the site. While this is a web design best practice, it can also instill trust in your ecommerce website. When a checkout page looks like an entirely different website, or a PDP doesn’t align with the homepage, this can trigger confusion and distrust causing the user to bounce.

Another branding strategy is to feature your social media channels to incite engagement. If your company has a presence on social media, then those channels should be clearly visible on your website. This gives users the chance to 1) further engage and follow your brand, 2) share your brand, and 3) receive any further information they need to drive them through the sales funnel.

Easy sign ups and checkouts

Let’s be honest, no one likes an unnecessarily long signup process. When implementing a new form, set up the appropriate event tracking (such as GTM click triggers or heat maps) to make sure it’s providing the best user experience.

When seven of every ten visitors leave the checkout page without buying, it’s essential to make the checkout process as easy as possible. One tactic is offering easier sign ups in checkout to speed up the process for the user. Using a simple message like “Already a customer? Login.” can improve conversion rate by not interrupting the shopping process and cutting down the steps to conversion. You don’t want customers abandoning a purchase because your signup process is complicated.

Offering promos and smart product recommendations

Who doesn’t like a free product or a great offer for a deal? 91% of consumers are more likely to buy from companies who remember them and provide relevant offers. If they come back to your site on a regular basis for deals and free products, it’s because you trained them that way, which is a good thing.

Place static or dynamic product recommendations on your homepage, or use a “smart” plugin like Also Bought that uses AI to provide the best product recommendation to cross-sell each individual shopper. It does not take a lot of customization and content on your homepage to make customers go where they want to with a single click. Amazon is the quintessential example of this tactic, which has attracted the extensive customer base that they have now.

Making it easy for consumers to contact you

51% of people think “thorough contact information is the most important element missing from many company websites.” You should make it extremely easy for customers to find your contact information such as customer service phone number, hours of operation and address. If you hide this information, you are essentially telling your customers you don’t want to be found. Your customers will notice this and go somewhere else to find their information. One feature you could add to your site would be a great store locator. Having a store locator not only helps to convert online visitors into offline customers, it also enhances their overall experience and improves your brand awareness and search rankings. Here is an example of a great store locator for Jagermeister.

Offering secure authentication

This section goes hand in hand with the sign up process. 83% of consumers are willing to share their data in exchange for a more personalized user experience. If the process is too long or complicated, you will bring more inconvenience than simplicity to your customers. Therefore, it is important to implement authentication that is secure and thorough while preserving the consumer’s privacy and convenience. Not everyone is interested in the latest high tech security features, but they also appreciate the fact that businesses keep information secure in our data-driven lives.

Common characteristics of user friendly authentication: requiring no lengthy or difficult passwords to low risk systems, applications or accessing basic content; stronger forms of authentication, for instance, via personal phone as a second layer on top of a strong password.