6 UX Tactics to Boost Your Online Sales

The main goal of a business with an online presence is to get more conversions. Scratch that – the only reason why businesses work so hard on their online presence is to boost sales. That’s why we work to promote our brand, get more traffic, and boost the user experience (UX). Everything revolves around it – the website, social media campaign, and brand recognition campaign. If you’re looking to boost online sales, too, this article is for you.

UX has a crucial role in making more sales online. Almost half (44.5%) of the companies compete based on the experience of customers. To be more, 73% of customers agree that this is the biggest factor that drives their purchasing decision.

This is exactly what this article will discuss – effective UX tactics that can improve the shopping experience for your customers and bring you more sales.

But first, let’s see why UX matters for businesses.

Why user experience matters 

UX refers to how your customer interacts with your business. If UX is a box, it is filled with everything from the user visiting your site, to what they do on your social channels, to their purchasing options, the order fulfillment, the support, and more. 

Great UX can do wonders for your business. Some of the reasons why you should invest time and effort into improving it are:

• Good UX fosters user retention. Up to 88% of consumers won’t return to a website after a single bad experience. This on its own is a big reason to implement the tactics below.
• It helps you differentiate your brand. In a competitive market, it’s not easy to stand out. The online market is such a place. If you want people to choose you over others, you need to make sure that their experience is good across the entire customer journey.
• It reduces costs. One good UX strategy or a small change to your site that translates to a better customer experience can give you a big return. Research shows that, for every dollar invested in this, you get $10 to $100 in return. That’s one of the best ROIs you can get.
• It keeps people on your website. Make it hard for visitors to find the information they need, such as your prices or list of products, and they won’t stick around to look for it. But, with a website optimized for the user experience, you can keep people on your website for longer and improve bounce rates. 
• It increases conversion rates. There you have it – the main reason why companies promote their business online! If visitors are happy with your website, they are more likely to convert into buyers. If they like the overall experience, they are more likely to return for more. 

Top tactics that will help you boost your online sales

Marketers know how important UX is, but the challenge is real – there’s no written rule as to how to offer visitors the best experience. Still, some tactics have shown amazing results for brands. Let’s take a look at them. 

1. Train your team to write UX copy 

The information that people see on your website can affect their experience tremendously. This is why the first step you need to take to boost sales is to improve your website copy. Learning to write UX copy for the web is not hard today thanks to sources like UXCel. Offer your team the opportunities and means to learn to create UX copy that appeals to the audience and prompts them to convert. 

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Writing for better user experience can be divided into:

• Microcontent such as headings, subheadings, preview texts, meta texts, and email subject titles
• Microcopy that gives users the information they need to navigate a digital product such as your website intuitively

As you can assume, mastering the two, especially the second, will make it easier for visitors to find what they are looking for on your site. Not to mention, quality copy on your site is good for SEO rankings, so it’s a win-win. 

2. Motivate your employees with games

A lot of the experience of users depends on how your employees treat them and how well they work. This is why engaging your team is one of the best tactics today. If you want to boost employee engagement to improve the experience of your customer, gamification is a great method.

Gamification is a technique that business owners use to boost their employees’ productivity and engagement. The idea is to apply game elements in the workplace, a non-game context. These elements can include, but are not limited to the following:

• Points for completing tasks, achieving certain results, or completing a training course
• Badges for exemplary behavior
• Accomplishment rewards such as vouchers, discounts, etc.
• Leaderboards

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To use sales gamification in the company, consider organizing an internal competition where your team will be encouraged to get to a new level, win points, and claim the rewards you put in as an added incentive. Doing this can boost employee morale, increase communication in the workplace, and create a more positive culture. 

3. Use chatbots to improve your customer service

Customers today are accustomed to speaking to chatbots as long as they answer their questions or solve their problems. As a matter of fact, 68% say they like to have chatbot options because they don’t have to wait for an agent to get a response. This is even more important if your company doesn’t work 24/7. In that case, customers will be able to get answers even if your agents aren’t available at the moment. 

Chatbots are especially popular with millennials:

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Here are a few of the reasons why chatbots are used to improve website UX:

• Cuts cost by as much as 30%
• Answers over 80% of the frequently asked questions faster
• Offers a 24/7 business availability
• Gives your agents the chance to focus on more demanding and challenging tasks.

4. Have human customer support, too

Chatbots are really trending today and they make support more affordable. However, this doesn’t mean that you should fire your human agents. On the opposite – the majority of customers would still prefer talking to a live agent and choose to even wait a bit over getting an instant, automated response from a bot.

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So, why many will love the option to talk to a chatbot and get a response fast, this won’t suffice for all types of users. There will also be customers that want to talk to a human. Not to mention, chatbots can only do as much – they won’t be able to resolve every problem or answer every question!

This is why it’s important to hire and train your support agents to handle queries professionally and successfully. 

5. Always ensure a fast loading speed 

Website visitors won’t stay long on your website if your pages load too slowly. It won’t matter what else you have on the site – people don’t like pages that take too long to open. Over half of a website’s visitors will leave the page if it doesn’t load within 3 to 4 seconds.

This sounds a bit unfair, but it’s the reality. This is why one of the most important tactics for improving the UX is to improve the loading speed of your website’s pages. Here are some ways to do this:

• Optimize your images and compress them if they are too big
• Cache the web pages and store copies of your site’s files
• Choose a good hosting solution

6. Simplify and streamline the checkout experience

Online businesses often deal with abandoned shopping carts. These are an epidemic in the online business community, one that annoys more than anything else. After all, you got people almost to the finish line and in the end, something made them leave your page just before they converted. 

Sometimes people will leave the cart because they were distracted by something else. This isn’t something you can fix unless they are standing right beside you (which is unlikely) – and maybe not even then!

However, in most cases, people abandon shopping carts because of a cumbersome checkout process. If your checkout is complex and hard to navigate, people will get frustrated and give up on buying from you.

Keep in mind that most consumers today are used to the landscape we call ‘swipe to order’. To ensure a more seamless experience that meets their expectations, try to do the following:

• Stop making sign-up obligatory. By allowing guest checkout, you’ll retain the customers that are sick and tired of making accounts every time they want to buy something. Try to entice them with special deals and VIP programs to convince them to sign up, but don’t make it obligatory.
• Apply coupon codes automatically. If the shopper has to go back to the homepage to see the coupon code again and insert it in the order form, they might decide to leave your website. This is frustrating. Since you’re already offering the discount, just apply it to the order automatically.

A distraction-free, optimized checkout process can reduce cart abandonment rates significantly.

Have you been doing UX website design the right way?

Ask yourself this question for each of the 6 points in this article. If the answer is no to any of them, you have the next move that will boost your online sales. Keep in mind that this is an ongoing process. It can be challenging but if you work on it, it can do wonders for your online sales.