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1. Navigation: Keep it simple
2. Homepage: Get it right the first time
3. Product Page font Visibility: Grab Visitor's Attention
4. Add to cart button: Final action just a click away.
5. Font Visibility: A costly mistake
6. Primary Navigation: Quick Access Guaranteed
7. Trust: winning the customers trust
8. Special Offers: don't save the best offers for last
9. Breadcrumbs, where am i?

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e-Commerce websites are increasing at an incredibly fast rate. There are no boundaries and any geographical restrictions have long disappeared, allowing shopping enthusiasts to shop at their convenience. In spite of these advantages, most e-Commerce websites are performing poorly. e-Commerce websites often fail in their primary objective of making purchasing easy for customers. This article explains common pitfalls and provides a set of e-commerce usability guidelines that can help you make your site more usable.

1. Navigation: Keep it simple. Don't confuse your customer

Is your navigation structure a complex maze hidden under complicated series of clicks? If yes, this is the biggest strategic blunder in an e-Commerce website. A neat navigation structure will allow smooth and effortless browsing, which ultimately encourages visitors to continue explore the site and turn them into regular site visitors. You need to give tactical thought to the navigation structure of your website to ensure that customers are able to locate information, compare products, and make payment with minimum clicks. To improve the navigation of your e-commerce website, you can head over to this article.

2. Homepage: Get it right the first time

Your homepage often creates first impression on the minds of visitors - at least for those who have commenced browsing your site by going through the door. It is imperative that site visitor must find exactly what they're looking for the moment they arrive. e-Commerce websites need to display numerous product offerings rather than just displaying one or two products on homepage. By displaying very few products on homepage, you are narrowing down customer's choice from the word go.

3. Product Page Font Visibility: Grab visitor's attention

Right color combination, font size, and font color ensures that visitors do not have any problem viewing product details and that they find relevant information they are looking for in the shortest possible time. So, every element should be designed to achieve this goal.

4. Add to Cart Button: Final action just a click away

Very often, the 'Add to Cart', the final action button in an e-Commerce website is either not well designed or strategically placed to grab prospective buyer's action. The selection of shape, color, font typography, and button content all trigger the final action. Make sure the 'Add to Cart' button is obvious, bright, and prominent in comparison to other features on product page such as wishlists, view product, email to friend, or check out buttons. Less important functions should be lighter colored buttons or simple text links.

5. Font Visibility: A Costly mistake

Another often overlooked e-commerce usability guideline is selecting right typography. Deciding on what font type, font size, and font color to use can be very tricky. You may spend thousands and thousands of dollars on cutting-edge e-Commerce platform and hire most expensive developers for its robust performance, but your site just won't work if this very basic and crucial aspect of website designing is neglected.

6. Primary Navigation: Quick access guaranteed

It is equally important to have an intuitive and engaging primary navigation so that users can find information they are looking for quickly with minimal clicks. For those who are not aware, primary navigation controls are present in a sidebar to the left, right, or top of a page on inner pages. These controls allow users to surf effortlessly on the site. The easier and interesting you make it for your audience, the more likely they are to stay on your site, buy the product they are looking for, and return to your site in future. Dull and mundane primary navigation just won't work.

7. Trust: Key lies in winning customer's trust

e-Commerce websites run on the fundamental principle of trust. In order to win customer's trust it is very important that you study customer psychology. Lack of secure site (https) or lack of a certification by an Internet trust organization can prevent customers from buying from your store. Online businesses must provide security against misuse of confidential information and clearly display privacy policies. Providing guarantees as will client testimonials of actual clients (fake testimonials will hurt you more) will help in improving credibility of your site. It is equally important that you mention details for contacting your organization such as physical address and phone number.

8. Special offers: Don't save best offers for last

Customers are looking for special offers, discounts, or best deals. Don't shy away in flaunting such offers at the home page. It is most likely that customer will review special offers and it will strike a chord on the first attempt. Remember the goal of e-Commerce website is not just better user experience, but also to increase sales and improve bottom-line results.

9. Breadcrumbs: Where am I?

What is a breadcrumb? It is text-based navigation that shows your current location in the site hierarchy. If your existing e-Commerce site does not have breadcrumbs, it might result in customer discomfort. Customer might feel lost in the maze of product links and rattled if unable to find exact location in site. Highly time-effective, breadcrumbs help in reducing site abandonment and prevent consumer from going off track while placing an order.

Please see an example of breadcrumb below:

Home>>Brands >>Women>>J. Renee

Not only does it give your location within the site, but it also provides shortcuts within the site hierarchy. It is a standard navigational element in most of the robust and successful e-Commerce websites.

Conclusion

Success of e-Commerce websites lies in improving user experience, keeping it simple, and winning client's trust. This will not only result in converting potential clicks into final transaction payment, but also strongly influence the customer to revisit your website in future.

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Top 9 E-Commerce Usability Guidelines - Usability Geek

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e-Commerce websites are increasing at an incredibly fast rate. There are no boundaries and any geographical restrictions have long disappeared, allowing shopping enthusiasts to shop at their convenience. In spite of these advantages, most e-Commerce websites are performing poorly. e-Commerce websites often fail in their primary objective of making purchasing easy for customers.

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Ecommerce UX: 3 Design Trends to Follow and 3 to Avoid

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Ecommerce UX: 3 Design Trends to Follow and 3 to Avoid

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*THE GOOD: Bigger product images
*THE GOOD: More Robust Reviews
*THE GOOD: Coupons You Can Use
*THE BAD: Smaller and hidden product descriptions
*THE BAD: Adding items to the cart, it needs to be very apparent so that they are worried about it being added.
*THE BAD: Cluttered customer service

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Web Design and Development Blog | Web Design Trends, Tips, and More by Shopify Partners.

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For many of us, the holidays are a time for great food, tasty treats, and delectable drinks aplenty. But that doesn't mean our desire for delicious design eye-candy disappears entirely. Fortunately for our hungry eyes (and stomachs!), online food retailers often have incredibly well-designed stores. From stunning product photography and distinctive logos, to detailed product descriptions and creative ways of sorting and grouping products, ecommerce websites selling food and drink offer some great website design inspiration to sink your teeth into.

To help satisfy your cravings for mouthwatering ecommerce design, we've put together a round-up of our favourite Shopify stores selling food and drink. Here are 10 ecommerce website designs sure to satisfy your taste buds. Dig in!

You might also like: 11 Inspirational Art and Photography Ecommerce Website Designs

You might also like: 10 Beautiful Ecommerce Website Color Schemes

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Gillian is a Partner Marketer for the Shopify Partner Program. She likes Oxford commas and owns four different copies of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

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10 Delicious Ecommerce Website Designs Selling Food & Drink - Shopify

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For many of us, the holidays are a time for great food, tasty treats, and delectable drinks aplenty. But that doesn't mean our desire for delicious design eye-candy disappears entirely. Fortunately for our hungry eyes (and stomachs!), online food retailers often have incredibly well-designed stores.

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*Product Under test
-the goals of the website
*Business Care
-why do you need to do this test?
*Test Objectives
-need to be specific
*Participants
-describe key characteristics
*Test Tasks
-should relate to objectives
*Responsibilities
-location of test and when it will be held
*Procedure
-playbyplay of the activities

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*you need to have tasks for them to do and not questions like in focus groups
*usability tests should be used throughout the whole process
*it's a good way to remember that not everyone thinks like you, especially when you've been staring at it for so long.
*testing one user early in the process is better than testing 50 at the end.
*we are all beginners under the skin
*after the testing is over, write down the 3 most serious problems encountered.
*start off asking what they think of the home page.

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Advanced Common Sense - Rocket Surgery Made Easy

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Steve Krug's second book, Rocket Surgery Made Easy, explains exactly how to do your own fast, effective, low-cost usability testing.

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*get out of the building as soon as possible

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7 Step Guide to Guerrilla Usability Testing: DIY Usability Testing Method

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7 Step Guide to Guerrilla Usability Testing: DIY Usability Testing Method

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Step 1: come up with a list of tasks
*these are things they need to be able to do on the website
Step 2: prioritize tasks
*go through and rank which is the most important from 1 to 3
Step 3: turn tasks into scenarios
Step 4: start guerrilla testing
*you must remind the tester to say their thinking out loud!!!!!
Step 5: Capture testing insights
Step 6: Fix your usability problems
Step 7: test again, validate, make it a habit

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Why you only need to test with 5 people 

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Why you only need to test with 5 people 

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*zero gives zero insight
*as you add more users, the less you learn because the same small problems will keep resurfacing.

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Is Guerrilla usability testing a feasible approach? 

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Is Guerrilla usability testing a feasible approach? 

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*creating with the user in mind is key.
*beginning, send a survey to see what the users will be expecting from the website.
*using only 5 people can find problems right away.
*guerrilla testing can be done anywhere in any condition
*when it comes to testing, you can not interfere, sit back and take notes, possibly be filmed.
*you are looking for if it's the systems fault or the user is causing problems