Shopify User Experience Tutorial
What is user experience and why does it matter?
In a word, user experience is the feeling someone has when interacting with your webpage.
Think of the ambiance in a clothing store. Just as staff, music, and lighting shape customer experience in a shop or boutique - design, usability, and performance determine Shopify customer experience online.
It’s important, and you want to get it right. Customers will return to your webpage if you can provide them with a standout online experience that is both accessible and in good taste.
The more aesthetically pleasing your Shopify user experience, and the more efficient your Shopify customer service, the more customers will see long term value - not just in your products or services - but in you.
Provide customers with quality design. Offer a pleasant experience. Make them feel in good hands. They’ll come back.
Whitespace and readability
Ensuring that the customer can fully understand your store information easily can lend to a positive buying experience. Shopify theme designers and developers attempt to create a pleasant and user-friendly space.
But some of this falls on you, the end user of the theme.
A well-designed Shopify theme will include ample whitespace and make reading and viewing any information a delight. But be wary of how your store’s content might crowd or interrupt the flow of a page.
With too little whitespace, your webpage appears cluttered. With too much whitespace, your webpage is tedious to navigate, or your content might not seem well-connected or logical.
With the goldilocks amount, you will improve readability and enhance your Shopify’s user experience.
Widows and orphans
Be mindful of widows and orphans - short lines of text left dangling alone at the start or end of a paragraph. They can cause customers to miss a word, or feel like they have to re-read the sentence to get its meaning. They are also often considered an eyesore.
Information density
Shopify users don’t pore over every bit of content before their eyes - they scan.
Even a foolproof Shopify theme can be overstuffed with images and contain wordy, unhelpful text or writing that’s difficult to read, or full of typos.
Choose high-quality photos that say something about your product. Cleave unnecessary text. Read what you’ve written out loud to make sure it makes sense and feels right to you. Make sure you can understand it the first time you read it.
Customers use headings and sub-headings to orient themselves, so use them to guide them – not confuse them.
If a lot of technical information is required, place it in an area that the reader understands is for technical information and try to make it as readable as possible.
Simplifying your store navigation
No matter the number of products available in your store, you want to help your customers find what they’re after as quickly as possible, with as few clicks as possible. You can do this by simplifying your Shopify navigation.
Smart categorization is important. You don't want to build your store into a maze, so don’t classify your products in a way that could confuse customers. The longer it takes for customers to find what they’re looking for, the easier it is to lose them.
Think from the perspective of your customer. Your product knowledge is endless; theirs is limited. What distinguishes one group of products from another may be obvious to you, but not to them.
For example, it’s safe to assume that a customer of the Dinosaur Store has some knowledge of the product. However, they may not know which dinosaurs are from which prehistoric period - Jurassic, Triassic, or Cretaceous. So these might be ineffective ways to group the dinosaurs.
It is also difficult to show a user the difference between the the prehistoric periods, as each period contains a variety of dinosaurs.
But, your customers are more likely to know whether the dinosaur they’re after is a carnivore or herbivore, and it is much easier to show what differentiates between these types of dinosaurs.
If you organize products based on recognizable categories, customers will find their product with less time and effort.
User interaction and expectations
The same way you expect to find the produce section in a designated part of your supermarket, Shopify customers expect to locate your products with ease.
Polishing your Shopify’s links
When a user’s mouse hovers over a button or a link, they have already begun to visualize the webpage they’ll visit once they click. It’s crucial that your link takes theme there, and not somewhere that will surprise or confuse them.
Don’t bait your customers with links labelled “click here for more info” – always be as transparent as possible. It’s ethical, professional, and helps your customer begin to trust you.
Perfecting your Shopify theme settings
Even if you don’t use all of the options available to you in your Shopify’s theme settings, it is good practice to be familiar with what they do. Be as familiar as you can with your entire store. Wherever possible, make sure you’ve polished.
After you’ve uploaded your product photos and toyed with your collections, customized your fonts and colours, go through your store piece by piece. Dig through every nook and cranny. Is it perfect?
Regularly revisit your photos, about page, blog posts, and other copy to see if it still professionally communicates what you do and what your customers need to know.
