The important thing to great usability for an online shop is familiarity. People have now been buying goods online for years now, they be prepared to visit a certain process unfold when shopping online, and when a designer makes radical departures from the status quo, tears may ensue (regardless of how good the designer's intentions may be). Does this mean a designer is locked into reproducing the same old shopping interface again and again? Definitely not, but conforming to certain standards will probably help the user.
This short article analyzes the usability of components commonly found within most shopping website (e.g. the cart, the checkout process, etc). The idea isn't so much to be prescriptive and set down hard and fast rules, but rather to describe what will probably be most familiar to shoppers. Creativity and deviation from typical is a good thing on the net, otherwise things would get pretty boring. But being conscious of the de facto standards on shopping websites enables you to make informed decisions when having a novel direction https://www.complasinternational.ie/.
The Login box - there is some variation in how shopping websites deal with user log ins. Some sites require a person log in before building a purchase, whereas others permit guest accounts. The most obvious basics would be a username and password field. The only pitfall here would be labeling the username field 'Email' ;.'Username' is the more ubiquitous label, it will help cut-down on possible confusion which could arise if there have been say a newsletter subscription box near by.
All of the choices to be manufactured through this interface element relate genuinely to naming; do you call it 'Register' or 'Sign-Up'?, in case you label your commit button 'Go' or 'Login'?, is the password recovery link called 'Password recovery' or 'Forgot your password?" ;.Whatever labels you decide on, you should favor brevity, generally nothing longer then three short words https://earsense.ie/.
After having a person logs in, there is a chance to reclaim some precious screen property by eliminating UI elements which aren't needed anymore. Showing the shopper's name really helps to personalized the service and thus ensure it is a tad bit more friendly (nb. you may go with 'Welcome John Smith' instead of 'Logged in as: ...'). This really is also an excellent place to exhibit the 'My Account' and 'Logout' links since both these functions are logically related to the shopper's account.
In addition, a 'Logout' link is somewhat redundant since closing the browser window serves an identical purpose (assuming the session has expired), but a logout feature will help alleviate any security-related concerns a shopper may have.
The item search mechanism - the textbox for product searching is pretty straight-forward, but product browsing can go in several directions.
This works great if the category hierarchy is flat, it saves space plus you understand the UI wont behave unexpectedly if the item list gets long. But what when you have sub-categories (e.g. Fishing->Hooks, Fishing->Knives, Fishing->Bait, etc)? Sure you could use a sprint to point a sub-category, but the drop-list option would start to lose a number of its eloquence.
Categories and sub-categories may be treated the same as site navigation, that is essentially what it's (i.e. product navigation). Common approaches are to use CSS fly-outs or in-place expanding panels (much like Windows Explorer) https://heelboy.com/.
Being an added touch, I prefer to put a reset icon close to the search button. Allowing the user return the searching mechanism to its initial state and never having to go all the way to the browser refresh button or press the F5 key.
The shopping basket - the structure of a shopping cart software is becoming fairly standardized these days. You have the item name with a hyperlink back fully product description, the buying price of the individual product, and the number the shopper really wants to buy.
I prefer to include a small bin icon so shoppers can very quickly remove items from their basket which they no further want. You might also put in a sub-total at the end of the shopping cart software, but I don't think that is necessary since the user is likely to be shown a sub-total throughout the checkout stage.
Another feature which improves usability is feedback messages. It's crucial that you let the user know when something happens as a result of these interaction with the device, for instance; showing a short message when a product is added or taken off their cart https://www.pro-demo.ca/.
The item details page - one of the biggest decisions here is whether to have a product listing page in addition to a detailed product description page. If you had been just using a listing page for products, you would show short descriptions along with each product. The alternative would mean that a shopper has to click a product's summary to be able to see its full details.
Generally I decide this based on what much information will probably be shown with a product. If it's only expected a few lines will appear for every single product's description, then a product details page wont be needed. However, this could have significant SEO consequences since each product doesn't have it's own name appear in the browser page title-bar. It could be argued that the summary-on-listing page interface is more efficient when it comes to usability since a shopper gets all the information they desire with fewer clicks.
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