It is really important to get the user journey right on your website and getting this right will reap you big rewards. Don't worry, I am not trying to sell you the merits of getting a usability study done, far from it. Hopefully by now you are beginning to learn that my blogs are geared to trying to enable you to do things and not think all this web stuff is some kind of black art.

So, back to getting the user journey right…

We have all been into a physical shop and had good and bad experiences, well this exactly where to start. To be honest, I really think that food supermarkets are the ones to look at when it comes to getting tips for getting the user journey right for your website. In the blog post I am just going to highlight some of the similarities:

• Promotions and Deals
  • The Supermarket: You walk in and the first thing you see are some promotions, some great deals – buy one get one free, by 3 for £10 and so on. You did not walk into that shop needing any of those promotions, but you see what a great deal they are and you know you will need them at some point, so you pop one of them in your basket and off you go.
  • Your Website: If you do not have some promotions on the homepage of your Magento website now, then get some on there. They are dead easy to set up through the Magento Administration Panel and you can either get your Magento Freelance Developer to put in a promotional carousel or block on the homepage or simply setup a new category called 'Deals' or something like that. Having deals on your website will also serve as 'stickiness' i.e. a way of bringing back customers to see what new deals you have.
• Where do I go?
  • The Supermarket: As soon as I walk in, seen the promotions, I will now look up to the ceiling and across the rows – why? – because the supermarket has helpfully put signs up on every aisle telling me what is sold in them – canned foods, pet food, wine & spirits etc. Great, now I can go directly to the aisle rather than walking up and down, of which I do not have time to do.
  • Your website: If you do not have a clear navigation system at the top of the page showing the potential customer what kind of stuff you are selling and where therefore the product you are looking for is, then they are likely to leave the site. Don't start cluttering this with About Us, Contact Us, Useful links etc, if they want to know this stuff then they will look for it and most probably either in the top right of the header, for the contact information or the footer. You don't see supermarkets cluttering the space with information about them.
• Finding a specific product
  • The Supermarket: In the supermarket (more often than not) they will always have helpful staff on the shop floor ready to take your questions or more importantly, for you to ask them where the birthday cake candles are.
  • Your website: You must have a good and very visible search box. Make sure your search box allows for mispellings, unfortunately not everyone can spell the name of products well.

I am going to leave this here for now, but I will return to this article to give you more similarities. As I said, just think about a great shop experience you have and then look at your website and see if it is doing the same.

Be back soon.