If you run an online retail website and find it challenging to keep visitors on long enough to make a purchase, it’s worth reviewing how your web design supports a seamless shopping experience. Specifically, consider checking how convenient it actually is to shop on your site.
Doing so can be especially important now that consumers expect everything to be at their fingertips on demand. Insights from McKinsey reveal that 77% of buyers prioritize convenience when choosing where to shop online, making it especially vital to ensure you have the right website features in place.
For ideas on where to start, consider looking at the eyewear industry. Its products—which range from glasses and sunglasses to contact lenses—are constantly in demand because they can act as both medical devices and fashion accessories. To make them more accessible, the industry has been quick to adapt to online shopping trends, and as a result the global eyewear e-commerce market was worth over $39.19 billion last year.
You can learn more about how to create the seamless shopping experiences you need by learning from its successes. Here are a few case studies from the eyewear industry that offer web design tips you can try.
Contacts Direct: leverage popups
Previously, we’ve discussed how popups need strategic implementation if you don’t want them to feel spammy. For example, displaying exit-intent popups that inform visitors of time-limited sales—but only if they’ve added something to their cart and don’t decide to buy it—can prompt them to head to the checkout instead, helping boost conversions. In a similar vein, popups can make shopping even more convenient for visitors when done right.
Contacts Direct simplify how visitors order contact lenses online, as it has designed its website to prominently display daily, multifocal, toric, and even colored contacts from brands like Acuvue and Precision1 and facilitate purchases made with discounts, vision benefits, and in-store pickup services. The retailer also provides dedicated memberships that offer added convenience.
To encourage signups, Contacts Direct uses a popup that activates as soon as visitors access its homepage. This informs them that they can get an exclusive, members-only discount on annual, automatic contact lens supply renewals if they sign up before a certain date. In this case, the popup gives Contacts Direct’s customers an opportunity to immediately streamline their purchases in the long term, making for more seamless shopping experiences.
Zenni Optical: streamline navigation
Since eyewear comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, frame materials, and even lens technologies, the sheer amount of product listings required to cover them all can overwhelm buyers and make site navigation more difficult. If you sell a similar number of products, you may thus already be following the same best practices you’ll find on most eyewear sites—detailed navigation bars that break offerings down by category.
However, why stop there? You can go even further by using emerging technologies to streamline navigation even further. Zenni Optical, which specializes in selling affordable yet stylish glasses, is always quick to adopt new tech. In fact, two years ago, it became one of the first in the eyewear industry to use AI to improve product navigation on its website.
Now, buyers who want to search for glasses online can use Zenni Optical’s AI-powered image tool. After taking a picture of a pair they’ve seen in real life or on screen, they can upload it to the Zenni website—and this tool will find the closest match available from its catalog. By integrating what’s essentially its own version of Google Lens into its web design, Zenni Optical has made finding and buying the right pair of glasses faster and more convenient.
Walmart: provide interactivity
Content is also crucial for encouraging customer engagement, retention, and conversion through web design. Beyond building trust and authority with your audience, it gives customers the information they need to make confident purchases. However, you don’t need to limit yourself to blog posts. Walmart shows you can also add fully interactive content to your site.
Given the constant demand for eyewear, even this major US retailer has gotten in on the action. Now, its Walmart Vision Centers offer everything from eye exams to prescription glasses. Of course, Walmart also operates its own website for customers who need or prefer to shop remotely.
To fully engage those buyers, it offers virtual eyewear try-ons that help bridge the gap between physical and online shopping experiences while emphasizing the latter’s convenience. Powered by augmented reality, this feature measures the face, then superimposes digital twins of eyewear frames through a user’s camera. Accurate down to how it matches that user’s lighting environment, it can closely mimic a model’s real-life appearance to ensure that what customers buy online is truly what gets delivered to them—showing how interactive content can make shopping experiences even more seamless.
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