Amazon is consistently ranked higher than social media platforms when it comes to usability, and the annual sales figures reflect that success. So, what can smaller e-commerce traders learn from Amazon’s UX? There are many tactics you can incorporate into your own sales platform to reduce barriers to sale and make the process enjoyable for customers.

Desirability

The first step is to ensure your website has something useful or desirable to offer. Users will often report a willingness to return to websites with lower-quality UX if the content provided is worth it. Barring page unreliability and slow loads times (which both sound the death knell for most customers), providing quality products and services can help customers forgive lesser UX flaws.

But that doesn’t mean that flaws should be left as-is. Amazon’s UX department works with content providers and marketing research teams to complement the products with a smooth sales experience.

User-generated content

Amazon is a hive of user-generated reviews. The company encourages customers to leave reviews and rewards frequent contributors with social recognition (a ‘top reviewer’ pin on their content). The constant flow of honest reviews, along with the ability to discuss those reviews in nested comment threads provides people real-time interaction and commentary on the quality of the products. It creates a social atmosphere that confirms a buyer’s choice to use the website as a good one. If you can create reviews and conversation on individual item pages you should see increased sales.

Search

Amazon’s UX is notable for its diverse search options. Customers can use responsive drop-down menus to explore categories or use a search bar to specify requests. Category filters and sorting options all help to navigate customers to their desired items as quickly as possible. In addition to text-based search, image-based search using device cameras can also help match physical items to online listings. The further integration with voice assistant Alexa allows customers to find products on Amazon hands-free. Your site may not be able to provide this level of functionality, but you can make sure your search options are comprehensive and product specific. Use solid keywords to help searchers find what they are looking for.

Just one-click!

Reducing barriers to sale is often the holy grail of ecommerce. Once the hard work of directing the customer to the website is done, the last thing you want is to send them away with poor UX. Organise your website to items can be found with the fewest clicks possible. Amazon offers a one-click purchasing function that all but eliminates the sales funnel. Every additional screen and data field that must be navigated reduces the likelihood of a completed sale.

You can incorporate many of Amazon’s most successful UX traits into your ecommerce website and see an increase in your sales conversions. Try it today.