The key to great usability for an web store is familiarity. People have been buying goods online for a long time now, they expect to see a certain process unfold when shopping on the net, and when a designer makes radical departures from the status quo, tears may ensue (regardless of how good the designer's intentions may be). Does this mean a designer 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 article analyzes the usability of components commonly found within most shopping website (e.g. the cart, the checkout process, etc). The theory isn't so much to be prescriptive and set down hard and fast rules, but alternatively to describe what is going to be most familiar to shoppers. Creativity and deviation from the norm is a great thing online, otherwise things would get pretty boring. But being alert to the de facto standards on shopping websites enables you to make informed decisions when going for a novel direction https://www.complasinternational.ie/.
The Login box - there's some variation in how shopping websites cope with user log ins. Some sites require a person sign in before creating a purchase, whereas others enable guest accounts. The obvious basics would have been a username and password field. The sole pitfall here will be labeling the username field 'Email' ;.'Username' could be the more ubiquitous label, it can help cut-down on possible confusion which could arise if there were say a newsletter subscription box near by.
A lot of the choices to be made in this interface element relate to naming; do you call it 'Register' or 'Sign-Up'?, should you label your commit button 'Go' or 'Login'?, can be your password recovery link called 'Password recovery' or 'Forgot your password?" ;.Whatever labels you select, you must favor brevity, generally nothing longer then three short words https://earsense.ie/.
Following a person logs in, there's a chance to reclaim some precious screen real-estate by detatching UI elements which aren't needed anymore. Showing the shopper's name helps to personalized the service and thus make it a bit more friendly (nb. you can go with 'Welcome John Smith' in place of 'Logged in as: ...'). That is also an excellent place showing the 'My Account' and 'Logout' links since both these functions are logically linked to the shopper's account.
Incidentally, a 'Logout' link is somewhat redundant since closing the browser window serves an identical purpose (assuming the session has expired), but a logout feature will help alleviate any security-related concerns a shopper may have.
The product 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 product list gets long. But what when you have sub-categories (e.g. Fishing->Hooks, Fishing->Knives, Fishing->Bait, etc)? Sure make use of a dash to point a sub-category, nevertheless the drop-list option would start to reduce some of its eloquence.
Categories and sub-categories could be treated exactly like site navigation, which will be essentially what it is (i.e. product navigation). Common approaches are to use CSS fly-outs or in-place expanding panels (much like Windows Explorer) https://heelboy.com/.
Being an added touch, I like to place a reset icon near the search button. This lets an individual return the searching mechanism to its initial state and never having to go all how you can the browser refresh button or press the F5 key.
The shopping basket - the structure of a shopping cart software is now fairly standardized these days. You've the product name with a hyperlink back to the full product description, the price of the patient product, and the amount the shopper desires to buy.
I like to include a tiny bin icon so shoppers can certainly remove items from their basket which they no further want. You might add a sub-total at the bottom of the shopping cart software, but I don't think this is necessary since an individual will be shown a sub-total throughout the checkout stage.
Another feature which improves usability is feedback messages. It's vital that you let an individual know when something happens consequently of their interaction with the machine, as an example; showing a brief message when a product is added or taken off their cart https://www.pro-demo.ca/.
The product details page - among the biggest decisions here's whether to have a product listing page as well as a detailed product description page. If you were just employing a listing page for products, you'd show short descriptions along with each product. The alternative would imply that a shopper needs to 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 each product's description, a product details page wont be needed. However, this could have significant SEO consequences since each product doesn't have it's own name come in the browser page title-bar. Maybe it's argued that the summary-on-listing page interface is more effective with regards to usability since a shopper gets all the info they desire with fewer clicks.
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