Top ecommerce UX tips for the holiday shopping season

November and December are the two busiest months of the year for the majority of online retailers.

These ‘peak months’ also take in Black Friday and Cyber Monday, typically the two biggest online shopping days of the year.

For ecommerce sites, this means increased traffic volumes and lots of opportunities to drive sales. It also contains unexpected pitfalls for retailers, as poor site performance and a frustrating user experience can deter shoppers.

Good UX matters at any time of year, but when shoppers are looking for Black Friday bargains and Christmas presents, a smooth user experience and easy purchase process can really pay off.

If they’re comparing prices and products between sites, and your site is faster and smoother, this can make the difference.

Here are a few key areas to consider during the holiday season…

Site speed and performance

During busy periods, ecommerce sites need to be able to handle many times the normal volumes of traffic.

Some of the biggest names in online retail have been unable to deal with traffic volumes in the past, with sites crashing and slowing down.

The cost of this can be a huge loss of potential sales, as visitors head for competitors instead.

Load testing can help you anticipate issues caused by heavy traffic. Do this in the run up to big sales events and you’ll have time to fix any issues that arise.

Site speed should be a general consideration anyway, as a slow site detracts from the user experience.

Use of gift finders

Gift finder tools should make it easier for shoppers to identify the right gift for friends and relatives, helping them to narrow the options and speed up the selection process.

Some gift finders can look like an afterthought or just a marketing gimmick, but the best will genuinely help users, providing useful ideas for presents.

Having enough filters to provide a decent but manageable number of product recommendations is key.

Here, Firebox allows users to filter by gender, price, recipient’s interests and more. It also helps to show the number of matching products in each filter, as this helps the user to narrow the results, and to avoid searches returning no results at all.