The critical role of UX in ecommerce SEO
The critical role of UX in ecommerce SEO
Online retailers work hard to make their stores stand out from the competition. One of the main points they should focus on is offering the best user experience. Combined with a proper SEO strategy, this can lead to great results. Search engines like Google prioritize user satisfaction, so integrating UX and ecommerce SEO helps improve search rankings and build a long-term relationship with your customers.
Traditionally, SEO focused on keywords, backlinks, and technical factors. However, Google’s algorithms also focus on user engagement and satisfaction. A great UX is not simply an add-on but the foundation of your SEO efforts.
As Steve Jobs famously said, “Design isn’t just what it looks like and feels like — design is how it works.” High-quality UX/UI design can increase visitors’ time on a website and lead to better conversion rates. Such metrics indicate to search engines that the site effectively addresses user needs, which could warrant higher rankings.
Customers seek a seamless experience when buying something. A great UX can influence those purchasing decisions and set your brand apart from competitors in a market with similar products and services.
As another business leader, Dr. Ralf Speth, ex-CEO of Jaguar Land Rover, famously said: “If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design.”
A website’s design, performance, and functionality directly impact its conversion rates. A well-executed user interface can boost conversions. Such enhancements attract more visitors and convert them into loyal customers. There are many sections on your online store that could benefit from UX improvements.
For example, abandonment of shopping carts is a big issue in ecommerce. There are many reasons why users leave their carts without buying. Most of these are tied to the buyer journey, but many customers also leave their carts due to issues with the store or the buying process UX. In numbers: the Baymard Institute found “that 22% of US online shoppers have abandoned an order in the past quarter solely due to a “too long/complicated checkout process,” while 17% left because of technical issues on the site.”
Improving page speed is also one of the pillars of UX. Portent found “that the difference in ecommerce conversion rate between blazing-fast and modestly quick sites is sizable. A site that loads in 1 second has an ecommerce conversion rate 2.5x higher than a site that loads in 5 seconds.”
These are all things you can fix in your UX strategy. In a well-known study, Forester Research showed that businesses can expect up to $100 in return for every dollar spent on UX. For many retailers, investing in UX and ecommerce SEO can drive business growth.
Since mobile has far eclipsed desktop traffic in market share, optimizing for mobile is more important than ever. At the start of 2024, Statista calculated that smartphones were responsible for 77 percent of retail site traffic globally and for generating two-thirds of online shopping orders.
Creating a positive first impression is critical for ecommerce businesses. Research suggests that users form an opinion about a website in just 50 milliseconds. Key factors influencing these lightning-fast judgments include visual complexity, prototypicality, and exposure time. Prototypicality refers to how closely a website aligns with users’ expectations based on familiar design patterns. Exposure time is the brief period visitors initially see and evaluate a site.
Websites that are visually simple yet stick to common conventions are perceived as more appealing, even within this short exposure time. As visitors spend more time on a site, the familiar structure becomes as influential as its simplicity. Focus on these design elements to make visitors happy and improve engagement.
Recent insights into Google’s NavBoost highlight the role of user behavior in search rankings. NavBoost analyzes user interactions, particularly click patterns, to refine search results based on user satisfaction. Metrics such as “good clicks” (indicating user satisfaction) and “last longest click” (where users spend the most time) directly correlate with UX.
A positive user experience leads to higher rates of good clicks and lower bounce rates. This shows that UX is important in establishing trust and credibility through Google’s E-E-A-T framework (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness).
UX and SEO are one. You might even call it SXO: Search Experience Optimization. Search engines prioritize websites that offer good user experiences. That makes sense because it aligns with their goal of delivering valuable content to users. A focus on UX boosts user satisfaction and could enhance search engine rankings. Those rankings could help drive traffic and improve conversions.
There are many things to do if you want to enhance both UX and ecommerce SEO, here are just a couple of them:
Today, it would be foolish not to integrate UX into your SEO strategy. Focus on user experience design and combine it with proven SEO strategies. This helps ecommerce businesses improve search visibility, engage users, and support long-term growth. This approach helps customers find and appreciate online stores, which leads to loyal customers and increased revenue.
The post The critical role of UX in ecommerce SEO appeared first on Yoast.
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March 28, 2024
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