Catalogue Shopping Site Usability Tips

Online catalogue shopping is one of the most lucrative businesses on the Web. With a growing number of consumer patrons who would rather sit down in front of the computer; and would rather stay away from competing with the crowd in the malls, catalogue shopping online is a sure hit nowadays.

However, despite the increasing demand of online purchase, consumers are not spared of time-consuming, and sometime confusing online shopping experience. This is mainly due to a poor level of usability of most e-commerce sites. Sometimes a sale becomes a page exit from the website because the shopper was not happy with the online shopping experience.

If you are an online catalogue shopping site owner, it is just imperative that you find ways to improve the “user-friendliness” of your shopping website. That way, you can help potential buyers in finding what they are searching for. At the same time, you can have repeat customer visits.

Here are a few tips in order to optimize your catalogue shopping site for better usability:

Make use of headings, subheadings, and breadcrumb navigation.
This way you can assure the shopper that he is not lost in the site. It tells immediately what category of page he is in now. It also saves time and effort on his part.

Place the search bar on the top area of the page.
Ideally the search bar must be simple and plain for easy usage. Also, you can device it in a way that it can search per catalogue or category for easier search experience. Place this above the fold so users can easily take advantage of this when searching for merchandise.

Have your contact information or phone number placed on top of the page.
Of course it’s more convenient for you and the shopper to track purchases made online. However, allowing shoppers to contact you can help you establish relationships with your loyal customers. It also provides a certain level of security for the shopper when they see that the catalogue shopping site has a legitimate phone number and address.

Create a “show page” functionality in your site.
Shoppers must have an option to see a part of the page, for example a particular item in display, and a choice to show the entire page for each product category. This way you are giving your customers more buying choices to choose from.

Offering products is just as good as guaranteeing an excellent user experience for online shoppers. To aim for a user-friendly catalogue shopping website is in fact, a unique selling point, as well.