Designing Your eCommerce Configurator User Experience

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Designing Your eCommerce Configurator User Experience

A configurator’s user experience is its soul. Without it, the configurator will be useless and will not tempt any user to buy a product. In order to make sure that the user’s experience on the configurator is pleasant, you should make sure that it is as responsive as possible.

Let’s use the example of a customized car configurator. It allows users the complete autonomy to adjust a plethora of elements of the car that appears on their screen. They can change interior details, exterior details, wheels, and adjust colors too. Some configurators even allow users to make adjustments to the accessories.

People highly appreciate these details as they show how much effort the company is making to win them over. In most cases, these efforts do not go unnoticed, and people end up buying what the company offers.

Numerous manufacturing teams claim that product configurators have increased their Marketing qualified leads by 40%. Chief Revenue Officers and Sales VPs have also noticed improvements from nine percent to thirty percent.

The Number One Thing to Avoid for the Configurator’s User Experience

Configurator designers often prioritize style instead of adding substance in the configurators. Although aesthetics do have their place in a configurator, they are far from a priority. Making a configurator too sophisticated and advanced does nothing but overwhelm the shoppers. Trim down on non-trivial features to make sure that users have a swift experience on the interface.

Developers often want to attain perfect choice rendering and visualization. Although that is not a bad thing, it makes the configurator quite sluggish even if the connection is fast. People do not have the patience for unresponsive interfaces, and they end up abandoning it for a better alternative. After all, what good is an e-commerce product configurator if it cannot do the one thing it is meant to – make things simpler and faster for the online user.

Remember This to Improve Customer Journey

Every brand's configurator has a different nature. Still, its purpose for existing is to either help customers find products suitable for their needs or inspire them to explore a particular product. Oftentimes, customers tend to fall in the middle of these states. Although they probably do not want to buy a product at the start of their journey, they could end up buying it after they customize it. Properly designed configurators help to achieve these goals swiftly.

A well thought out product configurator can help shoppers to break down their potential products to see if they would really benefit from it. This increases conversions significantly.

The Configurator Should Respond to the Adjustments of the User

There are instances when customers do not have the knowledge and technical details necessary to choose a certain product. This uncertainty leads to choice paralysis, and the user ends up leaving the interface without making a purchase. An exquisitely designed configurator would provide users with adequate information regarding the product. It would help them decide which product would suit their needs the most. The configurator should provide adequate information to the users based on their request. It should respond and guide customers quickly because, if the users find the interface to be too annoying and slow, the chances are that they will end up leaving the configurator without making a purchase.

Designing an Engaging Experience for Customers

Keeping customers engaged is the only way to win their trust. A proficiently designed configurator can help brands accomplish precisely that. Meaningful product customization is perhaps the most important thing to ensure engaging user experience. Configurators have to make sure that the customization process is swift and uninterrupted, and customers should not feel annoyed or stuck at any point.

 

Determining the Purpose that the Configurator Serves

Just like any shop feature, being aware of the configurator’s purpose is vital to make sure that it provides users the best experience possible.  Ask yourself these questions to determine the configurator’s purpose:

-        What is the brand’s target group?

-        On which devices should the configurator be compatible with?

-        Would the configurator have a fixed procedure or execute orders step by step?

Figuring out the answers to these questions will come in really handy to boost your configurator’s user experience.

Offering Suggestions

As discussed earlier, sometimes customers do not know what they are looking for. Suggestions and recommendations could help them make decisions. Design the configurator in a way that offers users relevant recommendations and suggestions based on their present and past searches. You could even take things a little further and offer suggestions for products that would combine well with the product they are currently planning to buy. It makes for a fun and pleasant user experience and clears away confusion to a certain extent.

Visual Appeal

Although functionality is far more important, you simply cannot ignore visual appeal for a configurator. In fact, it would be fair to say that it works synergistically with the configurator’s feature. People will not pay much attention to the functions if the configurator looks boring. Visual appeal is a vital part of the user experience as, without it, the brand that the configurator represents does not have any identity. Make sure that you keep the brand’s tone, theme, services, and products in mind when designing the configurator. It will help establish its identity and invite more users.

Visible Proof

Shoppers should be able to look at their creations and customizations in progress. The configurator should provide as many angles to view the product as possible. It should also offer features that let customers rotate the products on screen through their devices. It will help to eliminate guesswork by tenfold. Once they are done, there should be a final image of their creation, followed by email confirmation and checkout.

Sharing, Saving, and Comparing

Design the configurator in a way that lets users save their particular creations without actually purchasing them. Not every customer knows what he or she wants. Comparing the work after saving it allows them to decide with a calm mind. It also lets them share their progress with family members, colleagues, and friends, which also helps to increase the brand’s visibility.

Responsive Feedbacks

Your configurator should offer suggestions to the users based on their various design decisions. Make sure that the suggestions are clear and non-intrusive. You could make these suggestions even more helpful by providing explanations and tips through an extra icon or button.

Bottom Line

A configurator that offers excellent user experience can win customers over and increase conversions by tenfold. Keep the above-mentioned considerations in mind while designing to make a configurator that assists customers throughout their experience on the interface.

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