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6 minutes read

The Importance of UX Signals for eCommerce

By Jose Gomez
By Jose Gomez
Other
6 minutes read

UX Signals are fundamental for any website. For search engines like Google, these types of signals are probably the most important way to find out if a website is actually delivering the right User Experience. Although this topic is strongly related to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), its scope is much wider.

For certain industries, like eCommerce, UX signals are fundamental to success. Users need to be able to find what they are looking for, not only on the search results of tools like Google but also once on the actual page. After all, it isn’t just about appearing on the search engine results page. The quality of the information a user finds when clicking should be relevant to their role as customers on your site.

If you want your eCommerce website to perform better, it is critical that you understand the importance of UX Signals. That is why in this post, we discuss what UX Signals are, why they are closely related to the User Experience, and how they can help you boost your eCommerce website’s performance.

What Are UX Signals?

UX signals are the different ways in which a search engine determines if a website is engaging users correctly through the right User Experience. By measuring the User Experience of a page, a search engine can calculate if it is valuable or not and can therefore determine where to rank it in the search results.

In other words, the different signals help a search engine like Google or Bing make sense of the value your website delivers to users. By doing so, they can determine the overall value of your website and also rank each individual page on the search results. For a page to rank high, it is important to focus on two things:

  1. Consider that each individual user needs to be able to find your website and each product page in the search results.
  2. If a user clicks on a search result that leads to your page, the content needs to be relevant.

Failing to meet these two requirements will most likely affect how a page is ranked. It will send the wrong signal to the search engine, and this will end up affecting the performance of your page in terms of search results. This will, in turn, lead to the loss of potential customers.

Ideally, you want customers not only to find your eCommerce website and specific product pages. You also want them to be able to find relevant information and help them finalize their transaction. While practices like SEO only help you rank well in search results, UX signals can help you achieve more complex goals.

UX Signals and SEO

It is common to confuse UX signals with SEO. Although they are intertwined, signals are more complex in the sense that they measure how a user interacts with a page. In that sense, UX signals go beyond common SEO practices like page indexing, keywords, and metadata. Signals also tend to consider other aspects like how a user interacts with a page.

While SEO is very important for any eCommerce page, for a really successful business, it just isn’t enough to excel in search results. For the case of eCommerce websites, you will need to monitor how your users behave. Luckily, there are many different tools that can help you with this.

Tools to Monitor UX Signals

Different tools exist to help you monitor how your entire website performs. However, you should also take notice of each individual page. This sounds like a daunting task, and depending on the size of your site, it can definitely require some time. 

Consider these powerful analytics tools to help you understand the signals of your website:

  • Google Search Console: this is a free webmaster tool that you can use to monitor your site’s performance. Google Analytics is also a great tool.
  • Ahrefs: although mostly used for SEO purposes, the ahrefs tool has many different features that can help you optimize your site’s UX signals.
  • Moz: another tool that is mostly used for SEO but can also be used to track your website’s signals.

The Two Main UX Signals

There are different types of UX signals. However, your eCommerce site can easily focus on just a couple of them in order to guarantee the best User Experience results. 

The two main UX signals are:

  • Click-through rate (CTR)
  • Bounce rate

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

The click-through rate (CTR) basically measures the number of users that click on the link to your page when they search for something. If a user is searching for a product or service, the CTR will reflect how many clicks your page on that specific product or service gets.

Consider the following example. A user is looking for bookshelves and decides to use a search engine to look for one. Among the results, your page appears, and the user decides to click on it. This would be considered as a number that possibly impacts your CTR.

Bounce Rate

The bounce rate of a specific page indicates the number of users that click on a result and then bounce back to the results. There are different reasons why this might have occurred, and it is difficult to determine exactly what the cause was. However, in general, one can conclude from a high bounce rate that the specific page is failing to engage users.

A good CTR indicates your page is getting users’ attention, and they are clicking on it. However, this isn’t enough. Your eCommerce website demands a greater engagement on behalf of users. To achieve this and reduce your bounce rate,you need to work on your overall User Experience. This might include improving the quality of its content, taking care of SEO aspects, polishing the web design, and possibly working on the entire user journey to help ensure a smooth transaction.

Some of the best practices to improve your bounce rate are: 

  • Include a section of recent posts that might interest potential buyers.
  • Organize your site’s information architecture.
  • Add clear call-to-action buttons. 

UX Signals for eCommerce Businesses

There isn’t a single way for eCommerce businesses to build their optimal User Experience. However, one of the best ways to guarantee your website’s success is to work with an expert web development company that has the right knowledge and experience. A web development expert can seem expensive at first, but if they manage your project correctly, you will quickly see the return on investment.

By working with an expert, you will reduce the time necessary to learn the fundamentals necessary to optimize your signals, and most importantly, you will minimize the risks involved in improving your site’s UX signals, helping guarantee your customers the proper User Experience they deserve.

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