State of the Art eCommerce: Venditan & Baymard

About Baymard Institute

Baymard conducts large-scale research, amounting to over 42,000 hours, into eCommerce UX design using a variety of methodologies. Using both quantitative and qualitative testing, Baymard benchmarks over 640 different parameters across the top 60 grossing US and European eCommerce websites.  Their research is invaluable to eCommerce companies, identifying issues with usability that could be hindering their performance and providing the knowledge of how to fix these problems in a professional, thorough and accessible way.

Using Baymard’s research helps remove speculation and subjectivity when it comes to the initial design process and optimisation. Armed with this knowledge, we’re able to make the right decisions that boost conversions and sales by keeping the end-user in mind throughout the process.

eCommerce Design

Website design fundamentally answers problems that may be occurring on the current website. The most effective design work is based on facts; it informs everything from general usability to how users interact with certain elements and behaviours. For eCommerce companies, the primary driver is to generate sales, and therefore, make the buying process convenient and easy to complete for the customer.

When planning out what you want your new eCommerce website to look and feel like, you’re probably filled to the brim with wonderful ideas you think your customers will love. However, at this point you need to ask yourself; how grounded in fact is your opinion? And how do you know that this design will drive conversions and increase your sales? Without the right research, you don’t.

Finding the sweet spot between creative, great looking aesthetics and objective frameworks based on facts is important in creating the best experience on eCommerce websites for your users. This is where our partnership of using Baymard research comes in when leveraging UX best practices for eCommerce websites – leading to tangible results for our clients.

How it’s helping our clients

Baymard’s research benefits the fantastic companies we work with day to day, giving them an advantage in an already competitive industry. Working with retailer Schöffel, Baymard’s research inspired a number of the decisions we made when approaching improving their website. From redesigning their header, updating call to action colours to contrast their main brand colours, and increasing font size, to adding secondary images and size availability on hovering.

These design changes along with our own inhouse ideation on development saw a vast improvement in their conversion rates.  Within the three months after these changes were implemented, we saw an increase to 22.4% eCommerce conversion rate, not to mention an increase of 13.2% for their average order value.

While A/B testing has its place, doing this sort of testing in-house usually means dealing with smaller data sets. The larger data sets Baymard are able to test give a broader insight into the industry and large retailers in it, in an impartial way that is accessible for businesses of all sizes to use. For us, it’s also given us a better understanding of UX and eCommerce that filters through all the departments in Venditan from sales and marketing, to account management and development. This knowledge shows through when dealing with clients at all touchpoints in their journey with us.