Text/Yu Zongbo, senior interaction design expert
Amazon's success is a direct result of a strong user shopping experience. Today, it can be regarded as a learning benchmark for e-commerce developers, both in concept and practice.
As the e-commerce craze continues to heat up, the design of e-commerce websites is now facing a series of challenges, the most important of which is how to build a user experience to increase the possibility of users shopping online.
To combat the fierce competition online and reassure skeptical online shoppers, designers can take steps to improve the usability of their online stores. Since 1995, Amazon has become the recognized world leader in B2C e-commerce. Its success is no accident, nor is it simply the result of being in the right place at the right time.
Amazon's success is a direct result of a strong user shopping experience. Today, it provides many e-commerce developers with a reference worth emulating, both in concept and practice.
Dual goals are clear
Product search and online purchasing
When you browse a general e-commerce webpage, you will often face a messy layout that makes you feel overwhelmed. Amazon, on the other hand, immediately catches the user's eye with a few concise blocks or unique elements: in the upper left corner of the navigation search and the search/cart controls near the top, which makes Amazon's simple dual purpose. accomplish:
That is, users can quickly find and purchase products; secondly, sellers can quickly process online orders and make profits.
Amazon’s team of designers and architects had to ensure that these two elements were prominent and usable enough within the structure of the site. For designers, clients, project managers, and developers involved in building e-commerce sites, the user experience from the beginning (whether first-time user or returning customer) follows a clear emphasis on product search and online purchasing.
Content suitable for current users
Once the website's product search and online shopping capabilities are established, users will most likely want to take advantage of these features and start searching right away. Amazon uses cookies to record user login status, track user shopping habits and store them on the server. This is a great improvement because it can dynamically customize the user experience: based on prior searches, page views, wishlist additions, review filling, and ultimately purchase.
Related product display
An example of customized content is shown on the home page, where the recommendations are modified depending on how the user interacts with the product search function.
Recommended products based on previous behavior
As long as the browser cookies remain unchanged, the same type of customized content will appear one after another on subsequent visits:
Like Amazon, a good e-commerce site will track client-side behavior (on the server side) to ensure that each user's experience is increasingly tailored to their tastes and habits with each visit. This will increase the likelihood that users will make a purchase and, in some cases, speed up the purchase process. More importantly, it exposes a wider range of products and services to users that match their areas of interest.
Various “Why We Shop” Tips
The Amazon shopping experience is filled with reminders about why users should buy from Amazon, rather than filled with reminders from other sources (online or otherwise).
Compare with market retail price
In addition to the preferential prices provided by Amazon, each product displayed on the page also has an MRSP (Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price). This simple feature is instantly understood by users due to the impact of the copywriting. For users, “Here’s why you should buy this product from us,” is a simple but powerful sales inducement that undoubtedly increases Amazon’s revenue.
Users were earlier notified of "free shipping"
Another better example of “why we shop from here” is to display an image of the reminder on the page. When a user adds some products to their shopping cart, a large, distinctive yellow banner appears at the top of the screen and tells the user: You are now eligible for free shipping.
These banners also include links to other restrictions that may apply. Logically, the "Free Shipping Notification" should be in the "Shipping Options", but now it is displayed after the user puts the item into the shopping basket. This also reminds the user that they can buy more items in the future without considering shipping costs. , this kind of psychological suggestion will greatly promote the sales of goods.
Realistic book preview
One reason shoppers may pass up the opportunity to purchase online is that they are unable to evaluate product quality. But an up-close preview of the product will help clear up some, though not all, doubts.
"Find Inside" feature
Books are one of the most commonly purchased products on Amazon, so it’s no surprise that Amazon’s development team has built a feature about “finding inside” content. The "Look Inside" feature allows shoppers to view certain parts of a book: the usual cover, table of contents, first page, index and back cover. This can be very useful because consumers can tell at a glance whether a book is suitable for them through a table of contents or table of contents.
"Search within" function
There's also a little box on the preview menu for the Find Inside feature labeled "Search Within Book," which lets users search the entire book, rather than just partial chapter previews. When the user selects an item from the "Find Inside" menu, a lightbox pops up, giving the user a preview of the product that's almost as good as the book you hold in your hand.
The "internal search" function can return results from any page in the book, but will notify the user that it is unavailable if the page cannot be previewed. Today's search engines are so smart that they can even intuitively determine the singular and plural forms of a word, which is a best practice for search. Although this function is as simple as a stroller, it is still a good choice when you need to research a book.
Customizable history and recommendations
Under "Recommended for you today," the product list listed on Amazon's personal page for shoppers can be edited. Clicking on the "Edit this Recommendation" link will display a window that explains exactly why this product is recommended and gives shoppers the opportunity to choose to change it. Often a recommended product is based on recording prior purchases and tracking shopping habits. Here shoppers can tell Amazon not to recommend products based on certain factors. Another customizable feature is a history of all products a shopper has viewed, which appears at the top of that user’s profile page.
Products are displayed in order starting with the one you last visited, and each item has a "Delete this product" option, similar to finding items on a shopping cart page. When a product is removed, the page will reload and the listing will be updated. In the right column of the same page, users will also see a list of their recently viewed search terms and categories.
These customization or editing features ensure that the shopping experience does not place an onerous burden on users. If users are not satisfied with the recommendations they receive, they can modify them to improve future visits. E-commerce developers can follow this example and allow any dynamically personalized user to customize their content as much as possible. This ensures that users don’t feel as though the content is forcing them to make a purchase through advertising or promotional incentives.
Make users feel comfortable
Simple and easy navigation bar
A crucial point for the success of any online store is that users can use the navigation bar simply and easily, including basic store categories, user pages, shopping cart pages, purchase pages, etc. Any shopping experience point like this can be easily and conveniently accessed, and Amazon does a great job of doing this, such as the numbered sections shown in the screenshot below.
Hovering over the "Shop All Categories" button (#1) triggers a drop-down menu that displays all major product categories, allowing consumers to easily access additional products. The position of the navigation element is exactly where the user expects it to be placed under the logo in the upper left corner of the screen.
Next to the logo (#2) there are a few equally important links, such as logout, personalized recommendations, and the user’s Amazon profile. This part is not very prominent, but it appears at the top or above, visually parallel to the LOGO.
The next element (#3) section has "Shopping Cart" and "Wish List". The location of the shopping cart function hardly changes and is always located in the upper right corner of the e-commerce website layout.
Whenever users browse a product page, invite them to add their product to their cart or wish list (#4). This location happens to be on the right side of Amazon products and product details, so users can find this feature naturally.
Finally, Amazon invites users to view “used and new” versions of the same product in the Amazon marketplace (#5). Selling products on its marketplace obviously won't increase Amazon's revenue in the short term, but it may pay off in the long term, as knowing this option allows many shoppers to choose Amazon as their primary destination, even for second-hand items.
Amazon does this because it clearly understands that putting the interests of its users first will pay off in the long run. One such element you'll also notice is the one that stands out the most among the other five, with its vibrant colors, gradients and subtle three-dimensional effect. This is certainly no coincidence: Amazon wants to attract users' attention where it matters.
Easy to filter and compare user reviews
The screenshot above compares two opposing customer ratings and reviews (shown on either side of the "VS" graphic). Users can also filter customer reviews by rating. Make their purchase more comfortable and help them make an informed decision by getting thorough customer reviews, both good and bad. Users do not buy products under pressure, but believe that the decision-making power to purchase products is completely in their own hands.
Additional shopping cart options
As mentioned above, including some options on the shopping cart page can make users feel comfortable. First, if users change their mind about a specific purchase, they have the option to remove them from their cart.
But Amazon wants Delete to be the last option, so they choose Saving it for later instead of Delete. You could call it a "soft delete": it is removed from the product's cart, but remains in the item list on the user's cart page and can be easily added back to the user's cart at any time.
Change or delete products on the shipping page
The user retains control during subsequent purchasing steps. Users will see this page when selecting a shipping option, which may mean they are committed, or close to committing, to purchase the product.
When selecting a shipping method, the user is given a rather prominent button to "Change Quantity or Delete". Given the above shipping options, the user is likely to need these options, so now this button allows the user to get help and give him peace of mind.
Remind users that "continue" does not mean "final decision"
After the user adds products to their shopping cart and selects a shipping method, they review their order summary and click the "Continue" button to continue their shopping. The button is not the one that lets them confirm their order, nor is it the final page where they actually make the purchase.
To ensure users know this is not the “final” step, the “Continue” button placed below is a helpful reminder to leave their final order confirmation on the final summary page.
It’s all about the shopping experience
By learning from Amazon's example of empathetic user experience, e-commerce developers can understand users' concerns and worries, including every stage of a user's possible shopping experience.
Summarizing Amazon's page settings, we can find that its engineers are always thinking about the user's shopping experience, and making users feel comfortable and controllable is the core of all designs.
1) The focus of an e-commerce website should be product search and online purchasing;
2) Whenever possible, personalized content should be provided for each user;
3) Create sales incentives by giving reminders on “why we shop”;
4) Let users have as much access to the product as possible;
5) Don’t let users feel that some products or services are forcing them to buy;
6) Easy access to important parts at the right time;
7) Make customers feel comfortable and in control at all times.
Article source: http://pagesky.blog.sohu.com/156528777.html