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The user experience determines e-commerce ventures’ success and is not just limited to the aesthetic value it adds. Every single element ranging from site speed to attractive catalog displays and a reliable payment gateway to a logical sequence of pages can directly or indirectly impact your conversion rate. Here we have given the 10 ways to improve your ecommerce store. To read the detailed blog about ecommerce user experience. Click the given link.

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Ecommerce user experience (UX) is putting yourself in the shoes of the user and determining what will provide them with an enjoyable, informative, and easy to use experience. E-commerce user experience is all about caring for the customer and ensuring a feel-good factor that in turn contributes to the sale of a product. It is this care that converts a casual shopper into a loyal customer.

Nowadays, customers rarely purchase your product because they think it is “better”. In fact, customers buy emotions, not products. As a retailer, it is always important to remember one thing. Customers will forget what you said and what you did but they will never forget the way you made them feel. To read the 10 best practices click the given link

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9 Simple ways to avoid shopping cart abandonment

1. Need for speed!

24% of customers cite “Website Crashed” and 15% cite “Website Timed Out” as reasons that they didn’t complete a purchase. – Shopify

In this fast-paced era with an element of impatience, where people exit a website if it takes more than a few seconds to load, the key to reducing shopping cart abandonment is to ensure that the website or app interface provides an experience as seamless and painless as possible. This means, using techniques like lazy loading to keep load times as low as possible. Keep testing the speed of the website after each update. This is especially important because shoppers remember the sites that give them a bad experience very well.

2. Go Mobile

Approximately 4 billion people own a mobile phone. Of that number, 25 percent of them use it as their sole method of accessing the Internet. –Retail Dive Since younger shoppers are increasingly using their mobile phones to shop, a streamlined, attractive mobile interface of the website is vital to getting more online sales traction. If the interface is haphazard and not user-friendly, then this, combined with the usual distractions (calls, messages, social media..etc) will lead to increased shopping cart abandonment. Mobile-friendly websites were great but it is time to upgrade to a mobile-optimized or a responsive website. In fact, the best way to capture the millennial market would be to have a native mobile app developed for both Android and iOS as no website compares to a native app in terms of ease of use and navigation. This has been proven time and again by some of the world’s biggest retailers like Amazon, eBay, Groupon, H&M, etc.

3. Keep the checkout short and sweet

More than a third (35%) are turned off of a brand by just one bad experience, so getting the user experience right is of paramount importance. – Biz Report

With an abundance of eCommerce websites providing shoppers with more choices than ever before, shoppers tend to lean towards the ones with easier checkout flows. The minute they encounter a lot of pop-up windows or multiple confirmations for the same action, they are going to exit to find a website with an easier interface. Same way, if they find a website with an enhanced UX, that brand is going to earn their loyalty.

87% of online shoppers said they would abandon their shopping carts during checkout if the process was too difficult. And on top of that, 55% admitted they would abandon their carts and never return to the retailer’s site. – Retail Dive

Shoppers don’t like filling up registration forms, verifying email IDs and phone numbers, and entering their billing and payment details but this is necessary for every eCommerce website. A simpler way to do this would be to allow shoppers to register with their social media accounts. Simple steps like this can go a long way in avoiding shopping cart abandonment The cart page must appear uncluttered and present a clear picture of the chosen products. Prominent details on the page must include a breakdown of the price in terms of cost, shipping, and taxes, information on the return/exchange policy, and delivery. A well-designed checkout process and – crucially – one which works well on mobile as well as desktop is vital. – SalesCycle

Traditional eCommerce websites can take a leaf out of Amazon’s handbook by facilitating a one-click order process. The social media app, Instagram recently launched a new feature that allows potential shoppers to click on a picture with the outfit they like and purchase it directly through the app without visiting the actual website. This says a lot about how much modern shoppers value a quick, efficient shopping experience.

4. Eliminate uncertainty:

One of the major complaints of online shopping is the difference between the real product and its online description or product images. This can be reduced by realistic product photography, incorporating more detailed, catchy product descriptions, and by including videos of the product that show a more realistic image of the product and its attributes. The importance of keeping all descriptions honest and as real as possible cannot be stressed enough. Heavily-edited photos are a big no in an age where shoppers value credibility over everything else. In the eyes of the digital consumer, a product is only as good as the information associated with it.  – RetailDIVE

Fashion websites need to stop using flat lay images and ghost mannequins. On-model fashion imagery can improve conversion rates considerably. And it is not enough to have a model of just one body type and skin colour. Shoppers today want to know how the dress will look on their skin tone and body type. But photoshoots with multiple models are bound to cost a lot of money. This is where AI can help. An on-model fashion imagery generator can save costs, increase the number of conversions and save a lot of time.

5. Keep all prices transparent

63% of abandoned carts are due to unexpected costs such as shipping at checkout. –Statista

Most websites show one cost in advertisements or even on the PDP (Product Description Page) and then increase costs in the cart. This makes shoppers wary of the sudden increase in price. The easiest way to avoid shopping cart abandonment is to make sure all costs (including shipping and taxes) are clearly indicated in the product description page. This ensures that people don’t bounce from the checkout page seeing a jump in the total cost. One thing websites can do is to build the tax in within the product cost, and mention the cut-off rate for free shipping and delivery (if it exists) at the home page or the product pages. This will ensure transparency and credibility.

The good news is that 58% of shoppers say they’d add items to their cart to qualify for free delivery –Retail Dive

6. Peer Pressure

The best person to convince a shopper is another shopper. A simple message like “3000 shoppers bought the same product this month” can go a long way to reassure shoppers that they have made the right decision. When shoppers feel that they’ve got the best deal for their price, they are positively inclined to go through with the purchase. A website can also assure them of this by including information about savings, shopper ratings, and reviews for each product page which is a great way to foster trust. Social proof is another way to improve credibility and boost checkout rates, There are several tools that allow companies to display social media posts on the website. This shows shoppers what other people think of the website and the product, providing social proof to nudge the shopper to checkout.

7. Returns

One of the greatest advantages of eCommerce is their ability to offer doorstep return/exchange facility. An efficient policy supporting this needs to be clearly placed on the checkout page to offer reassurance to the shopper. Free returns allow shoppers to buy items without any worry and doubt.

– SalesCycle

8. Style it up!

Another effective element to include in the shopping cart abandonment page is styling recommendations based on the products in the cart. When a shopper sees accessories to complete the look, it inspires her to visualize the outfit and encourages her to add those accessories to her cart or at the very least, purchase the clothes to be styled with similar accessories she already owns. This increases the size of the cart and provides a great experience

9. Multiple Payment Options:

With the abundance of payment options available, retailers need to offer multiple payment gateways including region-specific payment options, and the option to remember their payment details. New payment partners may also offer special deals and cashback schemes enticing the shoppers to complete their purchase.

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How will AI in retail industry help to reduce cost?

Retail businesses worldwide are in one of three phases: shock, stabilisation or recovery. Regardless of the phase they’re in, every retail business, even the traditional ones that have depended solely on physical stores to drive sales so far, have arrived at one conclusion: AI is the ‘vaccine’ for retail to survive in the post-pandemic world.

In fact, retail businesses that made the jump to digital before the pandemic, recovered (from the initial shock) in the first few weeks of the pandemic itself. Some are even expecting sales growth upto 20% this year! As statistics and reports worldwide continue to make the case for the digitization of retail — it’s become clear that A.I. and automation tools for retail are no longer a good-to-have, they’re a must-have..

Here are the ways AI can reduce cost for the online retailers.

1) Automated Product Tagging:

                Automated product tagging is a process of analyzing and labeling a product image in an e-commerce catalog by detecting visual attributes, automatically. 

For instance, if a product catalog has an image of a violet dress, image recognition and Machine Learning (ML) technology can ‘tag’ it as ‘Knee-length, V-neckline, 3/4th sleeve, violet sheath dress”. 

All the retailer needs to do is to ‘approve’ these automatically-generated tags with one single click.It decreases the time taken to tag catalogs, improves the accuracy of both the tags and search engine results on sites. More importantly, it can save up to 90% on operational costs.

2) Reduce Photoshoot Costs:

               Why are retailers and fashion brands looking to reduce photoshoot costs? Primarily, the cost of photographing hundreds or thousands of products is massive. 

The overall time, manpower and energy spent in the process of photoshoots can be channeled for other productive objectives. Taking into account that retailers are constantly looking to scale their brand, a high-cost & slow output process can be a significant hindrance.

Reducing photoshoot costs is one step towards being more efficient and growing as a business.However, there is no escaping the need for high quality product imagery, especially in fashion retail. 

Shoppers need to see photos of products on models before making purchasing decisions. 

Here is where the role of AI comes in. With Automated On-Model Fashion Imagery, the cost of photoshoots reduce by 75%! 

It is a solution that enables you to take basic product photos—and transform them into high quality on-model product images. This means that the majority of photoshoot costs are now removed. Retailers don’t have to pay for models, stylists, make-up artists, post production, and many other expenses! And since Automated On-Model Fashion Imagery is AI-powered, it is also much faster than the regular retail photoshoot process.

3) Personalization

There are multiple layers to personalization that haven’t been explored by retailers across the globe. The retail world today is highly fragmented – an increasing number of retailers are entering the arena with products placed competitively. Shoppers, for their part, are readily switching to brands that have focused on personalization to give them unique experiences.

Did you know that customers are willing to pay up to 16% for personalized shopping experiences? Shopper experience is now what makes or breaks brand loyalty. Personalization at scale (in which companies have personal interactions with all or a large segment of their customers) often delivers a 1 to 2 percent lift in total sales for grocery companies and an even higher lift for other retailers, typically by driving up loyalty and share-of-wallet among already-loyal customers (for whom data are more abundant and response rates are higher). 

These programs can also reduce marketing and sales costs by around 10 to 20 percent.Not only that, successful personalization programs yield more engaged customers and drive up the top line.

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This post clearly explains how automated product tagging will help fashion retailers to keep a clean and well-managed catalogue, which helps them to better indexing of the product in the search engines, more accurate results for the searches and increase in sales.