Let’s imagine an ecommerce brand that sells electronics and hardware.
There’s an online shop where we can browse laptops, phones, phone cases & accessories, hardware upgrades, monitors, that sort of thing.
Now imagine we’re shopping for a new computer because we’ve been skating by with an 11 year old Macbook with 8GB of ram. We do all the research we need to, watch all the video reviews, read as many forum threads and comparison articles as we can.
We’re in (semi) desperate need of this new computer, don’t really care who it’s coming from, but we know that we NEED that thing.
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We start shopping on one site online, and are immediately bombarded with the browser asking for our location, a popup giving me a code for free shipping (free shipping is not a deal, but the standard), and an invasive tooltip asking me to create an account. We haven’t been on this site for 5 seconds, yet we’re immediately bombarded with things that distract us from the most important thing; making a purchase.
On a similar site, It’s hard to tell which variations of our betrothed laptop are available, because all the product photos are the exact same, despite differing configurations. We try to filter for the correct model, but the UI makes it hard to find the correct fields. And trying to browse on our phone later on when we have a window of downtime is pathetic; the navigation bar takes up an inch of the screen, the images are tiny, and it’s hard to read anything.
While on our third competitors website, comparing different models is clunky, difficult and invasive, rendering the feature useless. Why even give us the option if it doesn’t work right?
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Navigating back to our search results, we land on BackMarket.com, an online marketplace for refurbished electronics. With reduced prices and regular deals thanks to the store being a marketplace of different sellers, and modern web design, shopping on Back Market is easier than you thought.
You don’t even realize it, but you’re just breezing through the site, checking out multiple product listings quicker than you thought possible. Everything is easy to read, critical product info is easy to find, and all the photos are high-quality.
With the ability to browse the website with ease and find out everything you need, the decision to make the purchase is easy. All of a sudden, you realize you're a fan. You respect them because they respect you, by serving up an easy-to-use browsing experience, and not bombarding you with loads of distracting, cheap junk marketing.
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This is the reality of having fine-tuned UX on your site, and this was my experience trying to purchase a new work computer. I was blown away at how awful some of the browsing experiences were on big name websites. I couldn’t believe how much Back Market’s user experience stood out from the competition. Their UI was also clean and avoided distracting me, while still including branding that impressed upon me the identity of the company.
Back Market knows that serving up an experience like this for a customer isn’t just about making a sale, it’s about brand loyalty. Many consumers want to get in and get out, so designing an experience that makes tedious and complex processes like these efficient, is extremely valuable to the user.
With how much time you can spend online shopping, ecommerce businesses owe it to their customers to make the moment they’re sharing together as painless as possible, because if they don’t then someone will.
As of 2022, Back Market is valued at 5.7 billion dollars. With their business model working wonders, it’s a no-brainer to scale up using great UX & UI.
