Originally, Black Friday and Cyber Monday saw retailers (online and offline) holding flash sales for just 24 hours.  However this year, some retailers such as Amazon are starting early. The online retail giant announced they will be running sales for 8 days starting on 22nd November (a whole week before Black Friday). Amazon won’t be the only one, and if you have an Ecommerce site you may choose to extend your sales period too.  In doing so the pressure put on your website will be spread over a number of days, making it easier for your website to handle (less likely to crash). That being said, with the amount of competition out there, other areas of poor user experience could turn potential customers away. 

What is user experience?

User experience or UX in terms of your website is how a visitor navigates your site. Whether this is easy for the visitor, or leads to a desirable action, depends on the design. From a business owner’s perspective you want the design to keep the visitor on the site and complete your chosen goal. The goal is generally, buy a product, submit contact details or share your page. 

If the user experience of your website is poor it is likely to be reflected in your bounce rate. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who don’t visit any other page than what they landed on. A high bounce rate (which is bad) could damage your ranking and Google. Google will see it as the site is not providing you with what you were after based on what you searched. 

Great user experience is important all year round but with the increase in traffic in the build up to Christmas it could put you above your competition.

What are the components of great user experience?

• Secure – this one is a biggie. Visitors are becoming more savvy when shopping online and know that you should avoid shopping on a ‘not secure’ site. See our previous post all about SSL certificates for more information.
• Fast loading  –  although obvious, it’s surprising how many websites take longer than the optimum 3 seconds to load. The last thing you want is for your customers to give up waiting and look for an alternative supplier.
• Clear call to action – tell your visitor what you want them to do. If they have to dig deep to subscribe to your newsletter or download a whitepaper, then the chances are they won’t.
• ‘Continue shopping’ – there’s nothing more annoying than putting an item in your shopping back and not being able to go back to the page you were on. This is a sure fire way to prevent people making multiple purchases!

Why Zeus Digital

A beautifully designed website draws visitors in but a well developed one keeps them there. At Zeus Digital, user experience is at the forefront of our creations. A great user experience delights your visitors and keeps them on your site. If you want to ensure you have a website that not only attracts, but also keeps your visitors then get in touch.