 "Anand Chandrasekaran")
With e-commerce players in India wooing buyers by offering heavy discounts, delivering a superlative consumer experience to time strapped and low on loyalty consumers is becoming all the more critical from the word ‘go’. Also, chances are higher that unlike a brick and mortar store where an unsatisfied customer tends to move on to a different store to pick up the brand that she desires, the same customer facing glitches on an e-commerce website will not think twice before hopping on to a competitor’s website. Recognising, this key behavioural pattern of consumers, e-commerce players are investing heavily in improving the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) for consumers.
For instance, Jabong launched a new user-centric and responsive-designed app/website in August 2015. It launched the user-centric new design across front-ends, be it web, mobile web or apps. The base architecture of separate front-end and service-oriented architecture helps it in launching apps for new form factors like mobile and tablet, and all kinds of internet of things devices. The move has seen the online fashion retailer’s conversion rate going up by 12 per cent, meanwhile its bounce rate has gone down by almost 16 per cent.
Emphasising the importance of providing a seamless experience to the consumers through a website or app, Jabong spokesperson, says, “The technology architecture should be built in a way that it enables quick and relevant responses to the requests. Time is of great essence here. The performance metrics, download speed of the page, screen and objects associated need to be optimised for a smooth and satisfying experience to the user.”
According to Arun Goel, vice-president (VP) Products, ShopClues, “While designing a website or an app, it is important to understand customer intent and offer relevant product discovery and selection options. Also, it is equally important to make a website or an app language independent so that even if a customer does not understand a particular language say English or Hindi, she can still complete the buying process by relying on images and easy navigation.”
Players like Flipkart and Snapdeal are investing significant time and money in enchancing UI and UX for website as well as mobile users for delivering a seamless consumer experience. For instance, in Flipkart’s case, one of the key area or element which contributes greatly to consumer is the recently introduced option of image search. “In our user research we found that people who were buying clothes, shoes, accessories etc. often found it difficult to describe what they were looking for. Different people also described the same t-shirt or sneakers differently. To solve the problem, we allowed users to upload pictures of a product they wanted to buy and discover similar such products on our platform,” says Surojit Chatterjee, senior VP and head of consumer experience and growth, Flipkart. In addition, the company significantly improved conversions by streamlining the checkout experience in its mobile app. It moved to a single page checkout experience, ensuring the page loads fast by reducing overall numbere of steps involved in the buying process.
Another major e-commerce player, Snapdeal too refreshed its UI/UX earlier this year across web, wap and app, thereby enhancing navigation, browsing and purchase. The company claims that post the move Snapdeal’s app crash rate has come down to less than one per cent as compared to the industry average of less than four per cent. The page load speed on desktop has also increased by 25 per cent. The company launched Snapdeal Lite, a faster version of its mobile platform. Snapdeal Lite also integrates smart solutions in a faster interface. For example, if a customer comes on the mobile platform through a slower connection, this information is captured for reference and they are taken to Snapdeal Lite by default the subsequent time they access the platform. Snapdeal has also introduced a host of product discovery features like Findmystyle.in and Snapdeal Search for cluster and image-based searches for an enhanced browsing and search experience.
As is the case with the entertainment industry, e-commerce too faces the challenge of building a dynamic and flexible UI which is capable of supporting and delivering rich media content to users in different formats and multiple devices. For example, online fashion store, KOOVS.COM serves rich media content to users as per their device capability, network (provider) strength and geo-location. Mary Turner, chief executive officer, KOOVS GROUP, says, “Due to extensive usage of graphic media, we are using content delivery networks so that images and videos load faster. UI is network optimised so that lighter content is used when network speed is low such as when a customer is using 2G. And last but not the least, page load times should be minimised to within a few seconds. If pages take too much time to load, users lose interest in the site.”
Outlining the key challenge before e-commerce players as they go about making UI and UX experience dynamic, Kartik Chandrayana, CEO, Twin Prime a leading technology solution provider says, “There are two items that impact user experience — one, what you do on the device/app (keep the UX clean, pick the right image size, cache content locally, understand your user funnel etc.) and the other is performance, i.e. delivering the content over the wireless network. While players do all the right things when it comes to device/app related strategies, however, their inability to control the volatility and variability in mobile networks is what fails them.”
Flipkart’s Chatterjee, says each media delivery vehicle comes with its own set of strengths and challenges. For example, on mobile, the screen size is limited, typing is error prone and difficult, interruptions are high, network connections are flaky and patience is low. On the plus side, mobile also allows you to be more intelligent with users as it provides unique set of capabilities including camera, sensors such as GPS for location, gyroscope/accelerometer for movement detection, vibration for haptic and feedback etc. “Therefore, while working on UI and UX, it is important for the players to design experiences for multiple delivery platforms by keeping the user environment and context in mind.”
Even as e-commerce players leverage fast evolving technology to deliver superlative consumer experience, there are certain do’s and don’ts that need to be taken care of while designing UI and UX interfaces. For Turner at KOOVS.COM, no matter how logical any enhancement may look, it needs to be validated through consumer testing and A-B testing before the formal launch. Ditto for Flipkart as Chatterjee says, “User feedback is critical. It trumps all — always test your solution with actual users. Use data to make choices in design. Use technology to solve them at scale. Simplify choices the user has to make at every step in their journey. Most importantly, stay clear of focusing on short-term revenue opportunity at the cost of user experience.”
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Two factors are extremely critical in establishing a great user experience for an online commerce platform. First, a seamless and consistent discovery and navigation experience across multiple platforms - web, wap and app - that allows users to access products and services through a channel of their choice. Secondly, intuitive and quick technology solutions that deliver a glitch-free experience, factoring in issues like network strengths, traffic loads, amongst others.
Another critical element of a delightful user experience is ease of transaction and payments. In our case, the introduction of the Freecharge wallet and solutions like 'On the Go Pin' which make online and offline transactions faster and error-free are some of the exciting developments in this space.
The merit of a platform lies in its strength and smartness, which leaves the user with a great experience. Hence, it is crucial for online commerce platform to invest in regular debugging, stress-testing and feedback exercises to refresh the platform. Customer experience involves understanding what customers want and knowing when they want it. Therefore, it is imperative to provide fast site performance, easy navigation and search, mobile-first experience and innovative delivery services for seamless, hassle free shopping experience in digital marketplace. Snapdeal provides its users with a flexible and customisable platform that lends itself to everything from discovery to transaction, logistics to analytics.
Anand Chandrasekaran
Chief Product Officer, Snapdeal
Chief Product Officer, Snapdeal
