How to create a good fashion website with UI and UX ?
More than 1,6 billion people are shopping online (Statista, 2021). It’s a huge potential for online stores.
When it comes to fashion websites, customers pay for more than just products: they pay for experience and aspirations. The emotions created by the fashion websites play an important role and make that customer will take out their credit card and purchase more.
But for a fashion website, it’s more than just user-friendly, responsive and quick-to-load that customers are looking for.
This is why fashion brands are attentive to UX and UI design approaches when it comes to their website building and design.
But what are UX and UI design?
UX design (User Experience) refers to the study of the user's expectations and needs for the creation of a website and/or a mobile application. It is therefore a question of taking into account the user's feelings when he or she navigates on a digital medium. The three words to remember when talking about UX design are understanding, optimisation and satisfaction.
According to Magnus Revang (2007), a good UX design can be qualified in 6 steps:
- A site that is easy to find (hence the importance of SEO)
- A site that is accessible on all media
- An attractive design
- Ease of use
- A credible site (users must feel reassured)
- An efficient and clean site
The UI design (User Interface) refers to the graphic environment in which the user of software, website or application evolves. It serves to improve the interaction of a user with a product and thus to promote engagement. UI design focuses more on the visual to attract the user's eye and encourage them to stay on the page.
To stand out in the crowd and prosper, sites have to be a combination of a great UX and UI.
But what are the secrets of fashion retailers to apply these principles on their website :
- An eye-catchy homepage: it’s the first thing visitors see. A successful homepage will engage users, communicate the brand’s message and build relationships and trust. Also, the homepage must encourage users to explore the store, so a good practice is to never show product price on a display, which could be considered as too pushy by users.
- Great navigation: the website must be easy to use. An easily-navigable store will make that visitors will spend more time on it. Navigation must be consistent, straight forward and intuitive.
- High quality of visuals and videos: attractive, high-quality, large photos and images are what users expect. All the visuals must look good on desktop and mobile devices of varying screen sizes. By the way, photography always comes first. Fashion retailers need to have pictures of their products before starting to build their website because the pictures will define all the styles of the website. If they put placeholders before taking them, fashion retailers take the risk to have a website that will look visually inconsistent.
- Drool-worthy product pages: as more and more brands sell online, fashion web design becomes increasingly to that of e-commerce stores. Impressive product pages play a big role in turning visitors into buyers.
- Enable guest sign-in: to collect data from the customers.
- Mobile-friendly design: people do not always consult websites on desktops, and fashion retailers understood that proposing a mobile version of their website is the best way to encourage customers to purchase on any type of device.
- A strong call to action: they are indispensable for driving the engagement of users. Various formats and forms can be used, as on-page buttons and sign-up forms. For example, it can take the form of a pop-up page that will to first-time buyers about a discount that is a giver to newsletter subscribers.
- Interface simplicity and white spaces: they help websites to deliver their message to users quickly and efficiently as they don’t get distracted. Good fashion websites use negative spacing to their advantage. It means they use generously white and empty spaces. Empty space, or negative space, represents luxury and exclusivity in customers subconscious. On the contrary, the fastest way to kill the design of a fashion website is to fill all the empty space with icons or call-to-actions.
- A good fashion website has a comprehensive fashion brand identity: fashions retailers need a consistent visual fashion branding, which means that they can not only have a logotype but a full brand identity package (colours palettes, fonts, icon sets, background colours, key visuals, packaging, brand asset, etc.)
- A fashion apparel website needs to be visual: fashion is visual, not textual. The text must be heavy. A fashion website has to be minimal. More text than necessary and the traffic will start bouncing.
- It should be unconventional: the design of a fashion website can not be templatish, you need to be different from your competitors. But fashion retailers must remind that an unconventional fashion website also means an unconventional brand identity.
Fashion websites have so many other ways to attract customers and lead them to purchase even more each time. The fashion industry is dynamic, and the website design requires not only attractive products but also exquisite designs and visual effects so that the users can feel the great shopping pleasure as they felt in real store from websites.
#marketing #webmarketing #fashionmarketing #digitalmarketing #UXdesign #UIdesign #fashionindustry #webdesign
Elise Pluquin
References :
- Magnus Revang "The User Experience Wheel", User Experience Project, April 17, 2007, http://userexperienceproject.blogspot.com/2007/04/user-experience-wheel.html
- Fashion Digital Marketing Agency "UI/UX: What makes a Good Fashion Website", Netgains, January 2, 2019, https://www.ilovefashionretail.com/user-experience/what-makes-a-good-fashion-website/
- Sveta Yurkevich "10 Best Fashion Website Design Examples", Agente, https://agentestudio.com/blog/best-fashion-website-design
I really agree with you about the importance of the user experience and the user interface but I think that the user experience is more important to consider for a brand. Today, the majority of customers pay far more attention to how items make them feel. In fact, we all know that customers expect more than the product’s attributes when they’re purchasing something. They pay for their ambition and experience. If there is a gap between the customer’s expectations and the product or service experience, he or she might look for another brand. It’s essential for a fashion brand to differentiate itself by developing a good user experience so they can target and attract more customers.
ReplyDeleteManon Bally
User experience is probably the most important factor when running an online fashion website. If the user is not satisfied with his/her experience, they are very likely to look elsewhere where their needs are fulfilled. Many brands rely on loyalty to help them through tough times, but neglect user experience. As a result, they lose consumers that they could have kept because they did not pay attention to the details and finer parts of their operation. For that reason, we see many companies start out very strong, but fizzle out because they forgot what got them in the top spot in the first place. If user experience is not up to par, the whole company will suffer.
ReplyDelete