The important thing to great usability for an web store is familiarity. People have now been buying goods online for a long time now, they expect you'll visit a certain process unfold when shopping online, and when a developer makes radical departures from the status quo, tears may ensue (regardless of how good the designer's intentions may be). Does this mean a developer is locked into reproducing the same old shopping interface again and again? Not necessarily, but conforming to certain standards is going to help the user.
This informative article analyzes the usability of components commonly found within most shopping website (e.g. the cart, the checkout process, etc). The concept isn't so much to be prescriptive and lay out hard and fast rules, but alternatively to spell it out what is going to be most familiar to shoppers. Creativity and deviation from typical is a great thing on line, otherwise things would get pretty boring. But being alert to the de facto standards on shopping websites lets you make informed decisions when going for a novel direction https://www.complasinternational.ie/.
The Login box - there's some variation in how shopping websites handle user log ins. Some sites require a person log in before building a purchase, whereas others allow for guest accounts. The obvious basics would have been a username and password field. The sole pitfall here would be labeling the username field 'Email' ;.'Username' is the more ubiquitous label, it can help cut-down on possible confusion which may arise if there were say a newsletter subscription box near by.
All the choices to be made through this interface element relate to naming; can you call it 'Register' or 'Sign-Up'?, should 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 need to favor brevity, generally nothing longer then three short words https://earsense.ie/.
After a person logs in, there's a way to reclaim some precious screen real estate by removing UI elements which aren't needed anymore. Showing the shopper's name helps to personalized the service and thus make it a little more friendly (nb. you might choose 'Welcome John Smith' rather than 'Logged in as: ...'). This is also a good place to exhibit the 'My Account' and 'Logout' links since both these functions are logically related to the shopper's account.
Incidentally, a 'Logout' link is somewhat redundant since closing the browser window serves a similar purpose (assuming the session has expired), but a logout feature can 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 a number of 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 if you have sub-categories (e.g. Fishing->Hooks, Fishing->Knives, Fishing->Bait, etc)? Sure you could use a splash to point a sub-category, nevertheless the drop-list option would start to reduce a number of its eloquence.
Categories and sub-categories could be treated just like site navigation, that will be essentially what it is (i.e. product navigation). Common approaches are to utilize CSS fly-outs or in-place expanding panels (much like Windows Explorer) https://heelboy.com/.
As an added touch, I like to place 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 is now fairly standardized these days. You've the item name with a hyperlink back fully product description, the price tag on the average person product, and the quantity the shopper desires to buy.
I like to include a tiny bin icon so shoppers can simply remove items from their basket they no further want. You could also add a sub-total at the end of the shopping cart, but I don't think this really is necessary since the user is likely to be shown a sub-total through 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 the interaction with the device, for instance; showing a short message when an item is added or removed from their cart https://www.pro-demo.ca/.
The item details page - among the biggest decisions listed here is whether to have a product listing page along with a detailed product description page. If you're just using a listing page for products, you'd show short descriptions along with each product. The choice would signify a shopper must click a product's summary to be able to see its full details.
Generally I decide this based how much information is going to be shown with a product. If it's only expected a few lines will be for every single product's description, then a product details page wont be needed. However, this may 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 with regards to usability since a shopper gets all the information they want with fewer clicks.
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