Online shopping presents a major challenge for retailers, or etailers as they are sometimes known, and WordPress has emerged as an increasingly common ecommerce platform for online shopping. A major component is the ease of use of the WordPress ecommerce site by your traffic – if surfers are finding it difficult to navigate around then they are not likely to stay for long. Indeed, the decision to remain on a website takes split-seconds to make and unlike shopping in the real world, to get out of one store and into another miles away simply takes one click of the back browser button.

Web usability is the concept which deals with this issue. How easy and convenient is your site for doing business with – how enjoyable and useful is the website user experience, how well does it minimize time, frustration and effort on the part of users and most of all, how effective is your website at taking money off your traffic.

There are four principal areas to consider when making your WordPress site more user friendly:

-Clarity of Purpose – this requires that you make sure your website is extremely clear as to what it is about – as soon as a surfer lands on your homepage, it is clear what you are selling and offering. Many surfers will find your ecommerce site through search engines and by inputting key terms, e.g. car covers; if you are ranking high enough for “car covers” then you really need to be very clear as soon as the surfer comes to ecommerce site that you sell them and have all your best offers and products on view to the user;

-User Help & Support – users need to find what they are looking for and what they need and do this very quickly. This entails building an excellent link structure to every part of your ecommerce site and especially of the vital pages, i.e. product categories, ordering and payment. You also should provide the search facilities to help them locate what products and services they are looking for quickly;

-Present Site Content – ensure your products are front and center on your homepage and any landing pages you are using. It is imperative that your best-sellers and any special promotional offers are highlighted immediately for the user so they can see what you are selling and what offers you have as soon as they hit the page;

-Simple Design Wins – Flash coding has made an impression on web designers – they love it because it is smooth, dynamic and from a design perspective, very aesthetic. Users on the other hand are frustrated by long loading times and an inability to “get on with the action” and hit the back browser long before the introduction has finished. Do not allow design to take over site – use design to enhance the appearance and functional form, but never allow it to dominate the show – your products and business should be doing that.

Make sure you have plenty of feedback opportunities for your customers to let you know what they think – the good, the bad and the ugly. Customer and visitor comments are vital to helping you understand the mechanics of user behavior and helping you to optimize your WordPress ecommerce site to maximize their enjoyment – happy visitors make happy customers.

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Category: Business
Keywords: wordpress, shopping, shopping online, wordpress site obstacles