The key to great usability for an online store is familiarity. People have already been buying goods online for decades now, they expect you'll view a certain process unfold when shopping on the net, and when a developer makes radical departures from the status quo, tears may ensue (regardless of how good the designer's intentions may be). Does this mean a developer 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 informative article analyzes the usability of components commonly found within most shopping website (e.g. the cart, the checkout process, etc). The idea isn't so much to be prescriptive and lay down hard and fast rules, but instead to spell it out what is going to be most familiar to shoppers. Creativity and deviation from the norm is a good thing online, otherwise things would get pretty boring. But being alert to the de facto standards on shopping websites allows you to make informed decisions when having a novel direction https://www.complasinternational.ie/.
The Login box - there's some variation in how shopping websites handle user log ins. Some sites require a person sign in before building a purchase, whereas others enable guest accounts. The obvious basics would be a username and password field. The sole pitfall here will be labeling the username field 'Email' ;.'Username' may be the more ubiquitous label, it helps cut-down on possible confusion which may arise if there have been say a newsletter subscription box near by.
A lot of the choices to be produced in this interface element relate genuinely to naming; do you call it 'Register' or 'Sign-Up'?, should you label your commit button 'Go' or 'Login'?, is your password recovery link called 'Password recovery' or 'Forgot your password?" ;.Whatever labels you select, you ought to favor brevity, generally nothing longer then three short words https://earsense.ie/.
Following a person logs in, there's a way to reclaim some precious screen real-estate by detatching UI elements which aren't needed anymore. Showing the shopper's name helps you to personalized the service and thus allow it to be a bit more friendly (nb. you could go with 'Welcome John Smith' rather than 'Logged in as: ...'). This really is also an excellent place to exhibit the 'My Account' and 'Logout' links since both these functions are logically related to the shopper's account.
Incidentally, a 'Logout' link is somewhat redundant since closing the browser window serves a similar 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 numerous directions.
This works great if the category hierarchy is flat, it saves space plus you know 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 you could use a splash to indicate a sub-category, nevertheless the drop-list option would start to get rid of a number of its eloquence.
Categories and sub-categories may be treated just like site navigation, that is essentially what it's (i.e. product navigation). Common approaches are to utilize CSS fly-outs or in-place expanding panels (much like Windows Explorer) https://heelboy.com/.
Being an added touch, I love to put a reset icon near the search button. This lets the user return the searching mechanism to its initial state without 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 has become fairly standardized these days. You have the product name with a hyperlink back fully product description, the price tag on the individual product, and the number the shopper really wants to buy.
I love to add a tiny bin icon so shoppers can certainly remove items from their basket which they no longer want. You could also put in a sub-total in the bottom of the shopping cart software, but I don't think this really is necessary since the user is likely to be shown a sub-total during the checkout stage.
Another feature which improves usability is feedback messages. It's important to let the user know when something happens consequently of their interaction with the system, for instance; showing a brief message when a product is added or removed from their cart https://www.pro-demo.ca/.
The product details page - one of the biggest decisions here is whether to have a product listing page as well as a detailed product description page. If you're just employing a listing page for products, you'd show short descriptions along side each product. The choice would imply that a shopper must click a product's summary to be able to see its full details.
Generally I decide this based on what 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, then the product details page wont be needed. However, this may have significant SEO consequences since each product doesn't have it's own name can be found in the browser page title-bar. It could be argued that the summary-on-listing page interface is more effective in terms of usability since a shopper gets all the data they desire with fewer clicks.
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