Guide your customers through your shop as if it were their living room, not a labyrinth!

If you manage to guide your customers through your online shop without them having to think much, but rather being able to see at a glance what they need to do next, you have succeeded. You have a really good online shop with excellent user guidance. More about this in today's podcast with your conversion hacker, Jörg Dennis Krüger.

TRANSCRIPTION OF THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST

My name is Jörg Dennis Krüger, and, as my tour guide at reception just said:

Yes, I am the Conversion Hacker. 

And today's episode of the Conversion Hacking Podcast is actually about the topic of leadership. Namely user guidance. I say it all the time in everyday life, “The site has no user navigation at all,” and then people always look at me stupidly and say: “Yes, look, there is navigation!” And I say: “Yes, the navigation bar takes up, let’s say, maybe 2 percent of the total screen space on your screen.” 

And then a navigation bar also has “About us” and “Information” and perhaps “Sent” and so on, so that the part that is actually really relevant for the user shrinks to a minimal part. 

And if we look at it in the mobile version, where the entire navigation system is hidden behind a hamburger menu, then we can forget about it straight away. That's no use, because we really have to actively take the user by the hand. That means he needs a way to click somewhere relatively quickly. 

Very easy. We need to show him something where he can immediately say “I want that”, click on it and be done with it. How do we do that? We don't do a big slider or teaser at the top. We show the categories or products with meaningful images, which we also label properly, which have good contrast, and where I don't have to scroll to get more information. The customer has to immediately understand what it's about and then they click on it. 

This is user guidance. User guidance must be implicit. Explicit user guidance, where the user has to read something first, or where they perhaps have to somehow go through a configurator in order to then be guided, is always the second choice. 

User guidance really means taking over the thinking from the user on every page and quickly and implicitly showing them where to click and what is interesting to them. 

And of course that also means reducing the selection as much as possible and only offering what is relevant. So when the user comes to the page, they see their six tiles and say, “I want these,” and they have already made their decision. So he is in the categories and is not overwhelmed with 500 different filters, but perhaps with a few very explicit filters that work well. 

When the customer clicks on any filter, he sees the products he wants and directly sees the differences between the products and selects the respective product. On the product page he gets all the advantages. He should find a nice merchandise basket button that looks nice and is easy to find. He should also find some supporting elements below so that he doesn't have to scroll down any further to get more information about the shop. 

Then go to the shopping cart, where of course you have to find something that takes you to the shopping cart or to the checkout. The fact that the checkout symbol or the shopping cart symbol then has a small number is not enough at all, but the customer must then be actively shown where to checkout. 

We now have a “slide in cart” in many shops. Shopify, Shopware and WooCommerce offer something like this as standard. Then he sees that and can click on the checkout, buy, and that's it!

And everything that disrupts this process, everything that causes the user to have to think, that confuses him, and asks himself: “What do I have to do now?” “What does that mean?” “And here?" 

All of this is no longer user guidance, and it ensures that users drop off. Or that they simply can't find the right products and then search and don't buy and so on. Because of course a shop shouldn’t be a labyrinth. A shop simply has to have a clear route.

By the way, I'm currently writing a book about it, it just occurred to me. It should be finished soon. So the content is already finished, but it's still being proofread and so on. I should ask, because that's exactly what I'm talking about in this book, that you shouldn't confuse your customers. 

Confusion and user guidance are both opposite poles. When a person is well guided, he is not confused. If someone is confused, they are not being guided well, and we find that everywhere in the shop. This means that on every page your users visit, you have to ask yourself: “Does he understand this?” Is it that clear?” “Does he know what he has to do here?” And the best thing to do is ask someone. Show him the page for five seconds, then take it away and say, "So, what's this about?" Where would you click?” And if the user then says: “Yes, what do I know, can I see it again?” Wrong! Bad! Redesign page! Doesn't work. 

Because five seconds is pretty long. Until then, hardly anyone looks at a page if they really want to click on something. And if you're still thinking after five seconds, you haven't understood it. And of course you can also “simulate usability tests” to find out information. But you can achieve a lot with best practices, simply guiding users properly on every page of the shop. 

Of course it's the same at check-out. So I often see checkouts only have one page. They are so complex that they only confuse, whereas a good multi-page check-out can be simple. This means that I see my page, the payment method, I agree to what I see and can continue to PayPal. 

And if I go further: shipping method, the customer decides, for example. E.g. simply DHL, and further. And when summarizing, the customer looks at it, understands what is meant and is guided further. Oh, that’s also user guidance: “Buy now” button at the end. Or maybe not just that, but “Buy now and go to PayPal”, or “Now go to Klaner”, etc. 

This also helps a lot so that the user understands where he is going and that he is prepared for it and then actually pays. The customer shouldn't be confused if the page doesn't confirm anything, but has to be loaded first, and so on. Also important to note: PayPal sometimes takes a while to get the screen to the next page, and then buyers may abandon after they have already clicked on “Buy Now”. 

Yes, that's why user guidance is so incredibly important. And there’s that good old usability book “Dont make me think” by Steve Krug. It's actually, not a particularly good book, but that headline, that title, the intuitive web "don't make me think," that's actually exactly what I mean. Even though this book is now incredibly old (from 2006), the basic idea is still completely correct and important, that you really guide people through the page in such a way that nobody has to think. 

In this respect, feel free to get the book or listen to the 15 minute version on Blinkist, it's definitely not a bad idea. And then really internalize it all, look at the entire shop and optimize it accordingly. That's how it works. 

Yes, well, of course you can talk to me too. Make an appointment at jdk.de/termin, then we can talk about it and think about how we can implement this for your shop and what the process can be. Because you have to implement something like that so that it really works, and design something so that you don't have to put 1000 developer hours into it and so on. There's a lot to take into account. 

But here too “Don’t make me think”, if you look at my pages you will also see that everything is very clearly laid out. There is very little confusion there. I always try to reflect on everything multiple times, how I take users by the hand, how I specifically show offers, and I test a lot. 

And so you always get the best results for your shop. It ensures that users really walk through the shop as if it weren't a shop at all, but rather their living room and they know where everything is, where they could also walk through blindly. 

So much from me for today! Thank you for being there. Remember, five stars on Spotify, Apple, iTunes and everything else out there. Feel free to leave a comment on jdk.de/Podcast and follow me on Facebook and Instagram under Jörg Dennis Krüger. 

Yes, and then until next time, your Jörg Dennis Krüger!

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