UX for Business

A Simple Business

Let’s Start with an Ecommerce Site

OK! Now we’re talking. A design with an actual business model.

An ecommerce site can be huge (like Amazon) or small (like stores selling baby clothes on Shopify), but from a UX perspective they are all rather similar. They create value by offering a bunch of products (user value), which users find via categories (in the menu) or by searching. When users find something they like, they put it in their cart or bag by clicking a button to save the product. After saving things they want, the user goes through a checkout flow, which ends with a purchase (business value).

Notice that an ecommerce site has both a structure when looking for products and a flow when the user is paying. Interesting! This mixture of information architectures means we have stepped up a level in complexity, and because of that, we will see more complex behavior in our data.

Different sites will sell different things and require different designs but fundamentally create value in the same way.

Understand the Brand!

One of the defining characteristics of ecommerce is that the marketing and brand matter a lot.

One of the reasons all ecommerce sites are similar is that users are not using it because they like the store. Usually, successful ecommerce sites are successful because of the brand, or the unique products, or because they have become trendy in general. ...