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E-commerce and confinement: has UX become the answer to new consumer trends?
Thomas Huber
21/1/2020
8 min reading
Council
21/1/2020
8 min reading
Council
The arrival of Covid-19 at the beginning of the year has had a major impact on consumption patterns. Following the period of confinement and the one we are currently experiencing, this change in behavior has become a habit. In fact, there was an increase in online purchasing during the confinement period, and even in the post-confinement period. This phenomenon was particularly encouraged by the closure of non-food stores and by consumers' desire to protect themselves against health risks. Given this increase in the use of e-commerce sites, UX should not be neglected in corporate strategy. Calling on the services of a UX Designer can help you strengthen your position and stand out in a competitive environment.
According to Médiamétrie's Observatoire des Usages Internet, 40 million Internet users made online purchases during the 1st quarter of 2020. More than three-quarters of Internet users (76%) made at least one online purchase in the last 7 days during the confinement period. This proportion is not only higher than that observed during an "ordinary" period (one out of two Internet users is a buyer during a month in a normal period), but it is even higher than that observed after May 11, the date of the first phase of decontainment in France.
With the first confinement, and reinforced by the second, consumer habits have changed. Purchasing via e-commerce sites has become essential, due to the risk reduction, anxiety reduction and sense of security and belonging engendered by online versus in-store shopping. What's more, faced with the impossibility of buying non-essential items in stores, turning to online platforms was the most convenient solution for consumers. In terms of essential purchases, for 31% of those surveyed by Médiamétrie, buying online enabled them to cope with the constraints of confinement and avoid exposing themselves to health risks.
The question arises as to whether these habits will be maintained once the health crisis is over. However, online purchasing is a practice that was firmly established in French habits long before the health crisis. What's more, a significant proportion of online shoppers will continue to buy online as a precaution against a possible return of the virus.
To meet consumer expectations and survive the economic crisis following the pandemic, some companies had to rethink their strategies and consider omnichannelity. In the food e-commerce sector, marketplaces for small shops also saw an explosion in demand during the containment period. New sites have also been launched, and brands still absent from e-commerce (discount, organic, fresh produce, etc.) are considering their online presence. Some retailers, present only in markets, now offer home delivery of baskets of fresh fruit and vegetables.
Consumer demand for online service is not limited to the food sector. Today, 74.7% of online shoppers expect their local shops to offer a delivery service. In the absence of a delivery service, some businesses offer click & collect, such as many booksellers and non-brand clothing stores. It wouldn't be profitable for them to offer a delivery service, but having a click & collect service enables them to make their customers' daily lives easier, and to maintain a minimum level of activity in times of crisis.
The aim of this omnichannel approach is not the cannibalization of online versus physical shops, but the complementarity of a physical store and an online service to maintain an optimal shopping experience for the French.
The decline in resources allocated to UX is a cause for concern, with some sectors greatly impacted by the Covid-19 crisis.
What if it was a mistake to put UX on the back burner during this period? With online shopping on the rise, small and large marketplaces alike have every interest in optimizing their shopping experience with the help of our UX Design Agency. UX plays an important role in transforming a visitor into a consumer, with the aim of improving the user experience and making it pleasant and useful. UX works on 3 elements that make up a brand: its usefulness, its closeness to the user (its ability to create common languages), and its hedonic dimension (generating pleasure).
What better way to stand out from the crowd than to offer an impeccable shopping and browsing experience? Internet users will naturally be more inclined to return to a platform offering a quality user experience.
Most well-known marketplace platforms like Airbnb, Amazon and Etsy attribute much of their success to a user-centered design approach.
An online shopping platform must take into account the needs of these online shoppers. Customers must feel comfortable and satisfied with their experience from start to finish.
It's important to take into account a few UX best practices to highlight your marketplace and stand out from the crowd.
Confinement has driven new consumers to buy online. With the massive influx of novice individuals onto e-commerce platforms, security is the key to encouraging them to buy. To achieve this, networks and databases storing customer information need to be secured by a reputable company. Consumers can thus rest assured that their credit card information will not be stolen, or that their personal address will not be compromised. The comfort level of buying from a company increases when the consumer feels secure.
The easier it is to buy something, the more people buy things. Simple, easy-to-use navigation not only encourages sales, but makes the experience much more pleasant than having to understand how the e-commerce site works. Don't hesitate to simplify your pages and use menus to categorize your products. Don't forget to reduce the number of pages in your conversion tunnel. The fewer pages you have, the faster visitors will complete their shopping carts.
The differences between home and online shopping are many, but one important aspect is seeing the actual product or service in action. Human interaction will always have a personal aspect when it comes to shopping, but designers need to achieve this digitally. Product photos, the look and feel of a website or app, and aesthetics are all very important to design. One tip is to use photos and videos on product pages. The customer needs to imagine the product in its environment, and the absence of the product in real life needs to be compensated for with as many visuals as possible to fill the need for physical projection.
UX as an integral part of e-commerce platform strategy during and after containment
Covid-19 has had a major impact on consumer habits. Purchasing paths have become digitalized, and marketplaces have seen their user numbers increase.
New players have entered the market to survive and adapt to new consumer habits. Click & collect, home delivery services... The presence of both large and small retailers continues to grow, with the trend towards omnichannel sales.
To differentiate themselves and stay competitive, e-tailers need to call on UX Designers to optimize their platforms and relaunch new products. The key asset for online sites is to focus on the user experience through UX Design.
Sources: Qubstudio ; Baromètre trimestriel de l'audience du e-commerce en France 1er trimestre 2020 (Médiamétrie & Fevad) ; Medium
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