Ecommerce Articles & Videos

  • Online Shoppers Take Note of Socially Conscious Retailers

    Ecommerce brands that demonstrate their efforts toward social causes stand out to customers who hold similar values.

  • Livestream Ecommerce: What We Can Learn from China

    Livestreams allow users to see products in detail and get their questions answered in real time. They can be integrated in ecommerce websites and on social-networking apps.

  • Companies on Social Media: 6 Interaction Types

    Our user research discovered 6 distinct types of interactions users/customers have with companies on social media. Recognize each type, and support each one with different design approaches.

  • Social Commerce vs. Social Selling

    There are two ways to facilitate e-commerce social media: you can sell directly on the social platform, or simply promote on social media with a link to a traditional e-commerce site for the actual purchase.

  • UX Guidelines for Augmented-Reality Shopping Tools

    Ecommerce AR tools are relatively new, so must be highly discoverable and easy to learn. Calibration issues run rampant, and users must dedicate focused attention to interact with this unfamiliar feature.

  • Imagery Helps International Shoppers Navigate Ecommerce Sites

    Nonnative speakers rely on visual cues to navigate international sites presented in an unfamiliar language. Use imagery to support text and help these shoppers.

  • Augmented Reality for Ecommerce: Is It Useful Yet?

    Augmented reality is an exciting technology, but the experience of using it is underwhelming, which hurts its overall perception of helpfulness.

  • 5 Types of E-commerce Shoppers

    Extensive user research with people shopping online identified 5 main types of behavior: product-focused, browsing, researchers, bargain-hunters, and one-time shoppers. Each user type benefits from different UX elements.

  • Don't A/B Test Yourself Off a Cliff

    A/B testing often focuses on incremental improvements to isolated parts of the user experience, leading to the risk of cumulatively poor experience that's worse than the sum of its parts.

  • Emojis in Email Subject Lines: Advantage or Impediment? đź‘Ť đź‘Ž

    Our research shows that emojis in subject lines increase negative sentiment toward an email and do not increase the likelihood of an email being opened.

  • Communicating Changes Throughout the Buyer's Journey: A COVID-19 Case Study

    When emergency situations impact retail operations, stores must inform customers of resulting changes to services with salient communications across all channels.

  • Online Shopping for Food and Groceries During Covid-19: Workflow Issues Impact the Ecommerce Customer Experience

    Allow users to reserve delivery windows before they start shopping; clearly communicate delivery minimums and fees; allow users to specify substitutions for low-stock items as they shop.

  • Animated GIFs in Email Are Worse Than Static Emails

    On average, people have a more positive reaction to emails without animated GIFs compared to those with animated GIFs.

  • UX Guidelines for Ecommerce Product Pages

    Customers shopping online rely on product pages to decide what to buy. Help them by answering questions, enabling comparison, providing reviews, and facilitating the purchase process.

  • What Is a Conversion Rate, and What Does It Mean for UX?

    Conversions measure whether users take a desired action on your website, so they are a great metric for tracking design improvements (or lack of same). But non-UX factors can impact conversion rates, so beware.

  • What B2B Designers Can Learn from B2C About Building Trust

    Even though B2B and B2C ecommerce sites have different kinds of users, both types of sites can use similar strategies to simplify purchase flows and increase consumer trust.

  • Ecommerce Selling Strategies from Brick and Mortar Stores

    The user experience of shopping online can be enhanced by employing proven selling strategies from physical stores in the design of ecommerce websites.

  • Alternative Payment Methods Enable International Purchases

    By understanding customers’ payment preferences and offering options that people are used to in their own country, sites can improve the checkout experience for international purchasers.

  • Store Finders: Why People Still Need Locator Links

    In addition to a site-wide store-locator link, location-finder links in key areas anticipate users’ needs and make it easy to find a physical location within the context of their task.

  • Applying Discounts and Promotions on Ecommerce Websites

    Coupons and other discounts should be easy to apply and shopping carts should clearly display how the total was affected by the promotion.

  • Companies on Social Media: 6 Interaction Types

    Our user research discovered 6 distinct types of interactions users/customers have with companies on social media. Recognize each type, and support each one with different design approaches.

  • Social Commerce vs. Social Selling

    There are two ways to facilitate e-commerce social media: you can sell directly on the social platform, or simply promote on social media with a link to a traditional e-commerce site for the actual purchase.

  • 5 Types of E-commerce Shoppers

    Extensive user research with people shopping online identified 5 main types of behavior: product-focused, browsing, researchers, bargain-hunters, and one-time shoppers. Each user type benefits from different UX elements.

  • Don't A/B Test Yourself Off a Cliff

    A/B testing often focuses on incremental improvements to isolated parts of the user experience, leading to the risk of cumulatively poor experience that's worse than the sum of its parts.

  • What Is a Conversion Rate, and What Does It Mean for UX?

    Conversions measure whether users take a desired action on your website, so they are a great metric for tracking design improvements (or lack of same). But non-UX factors can impact conversion rates, so beware.

  • Ecommerce Selling Strategies from Brick and Mortar Stores

    The user experience of shopping online can be enhanced by employing proven selling strategies from physical stores in the design of ecommerce websites.

  • Designing Search Suggestions

    Useful search suggestions lead to relevant results and are visually distinct from the query text. (This is about how to design the search feature on your own website, whether it's an ecommerce site or not.)

  • Mobile-Checkout Experience: Tips

    Remember these essential experience elements that are often overlooked or easily forgotten during the mobile-checkout design process.

  • 5 Tips for Effective Online Advertising

    How to include ads on websites and interactive environments without undermining the user experience.

  • Pitfalls of Conversion-Rate-Only Concern

    Numbers don't paint the full UX picture, so in the quest for conversion rate optimization, don’t lose sight of the fact that we’re designing for humans.

  • 3 Rules for Better Comparison Tables

    Successful comparison tables help people make decisions quickly. Simplicity, consistency, and informational are qualities of good comparison tables.

  • Let Loyal Shoppers Edit Saved Credit Cards

    To eliminate outdated information and make online shopping efficient, let ecommerce users easily update existing payment information directly within the checkout flow.

  • The Anatomy of a List Entry

    To support scanning and product comparison, item descriptions on listing pages should have a visual design and layout that preserve content priorities.

  • User Intent Affects Filter Design

    Results pages that refresh too soon or shift the page position disrupt the filtering process. Design filters and facets to offer a smooth user experience.

  • Everything I Needed to Know About Good User Experience I Learned While Working in Restaurants

    Satisfying user experiences are built on good customer-service principles. Restaurant UX provides many lessons for interaction design.

  • Don't Force Users to Register Before They Can Buy

    Optional registration on e-commerce sites simplifies the purchase process and invites users to register when they feel comfortable, rather than forcing unwanted registration.

  • 3 Tips for Better Product Descriptions on Websites

    Key content requirements for product pages are: answer users’ questions, be direct, and help with product comparison.

  • Decision Making in the Ecommerce Shopping Cart: 4 Tips for Supporting Users

    Enable decision-making in the shopping cart by providing product detail, allowing access to product pages and letting users easily delete items.

  • Mobile Navigation: Image Grids or Text Lists?

    For mobile navigation, image grids should be saved for deeper IA levels where visual differentiation between menu items is critical.

  • Designing for 5 Types of E-Commerce Shoppers

    Considering e-commerce shoppers’ motivations and habits when they come to a site can help designers make decisions that improve overall site usability while supporting users’ needs.

  • Infinite Scrolling Is Not for Every Website

    Endless scrolling saves people from having to attend to the mechanics of pagination in browsing tasks, but is not a good choice for websites that support goal-oriented finding tasks.

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

    Ecommerce designs benefit from large product images, robust reviews and easy discounts, but suffer from hidden product detail, poor site feedback, and crowded customer-service areas.

  • Maps and Location Finders on Mobile Devices

    Maps of business locations may be more visually appealing than a simple list view, but they introduce too many usability issues on mobile devices.

  • State the Price to Give B2B Sites a Competitive Advantage

    Prospective customers want to know the price as their #1 info need on any website — including B2B sites, but these sites often hide or obscure pricing information.

  • Conversion Rates

    Increased conversion is one of the strongest ROI arguments for better user experience and more user research. Track over time, because it's a relative metric.

  • HealthCare.gov’s Account Setup: 10 Broken Usability Guidelines

    HealthCare.gov’s account setup process is unnecessarily complex and may have contributed to backend technology failures.

  • Users' Pagination Preferences and "View All"

    Long listings might need pagination by default, but if users customize the display to View All list items, respect that preference.

  • Ecommerce Usability Improvements

    Sites have improved, and we now know much more about e-tailing usability. Today, poor content is the main cause of user failure.

  • How to Achieve Painless Registration (at asktog.com)

    I'm about to give you a number of ways to increase sales on ecommerce sites and increase sign-ups on service sites, but first, raise your hand if you personally, when surfing the web, enjoy registering to use a site.

  • Transactional Email and Confirmation Messages

    Automated email can improve customer service, strengthen relationships, and help websites bypass search engines. But most messages fared poorly in user testing and didn't fulfill this potential.

  • Does User Annoyance Matter?

    Making users suffer a drop-down menu to enter state abbreviations is one of many small annoyances that add up to a less efficient, less pleasant user experience. It's worth fixing as many of these usability irritants as you can.