If you want to make your e-commerce site more profitable, understanding and optimizing ecommerce user flows is critical, because all the traffic in the world doesn’t matter if you can’t successfully guide users from landing page to purchase.
In this article, we’ll break down what user flows are, why they matter and how to design them for better results.
Key takeaways
- An ecommerce user flow diagram shows the path a customer takes to complete a task on your site, highlighting areas for improvement.
- User flows should be aligned with each stage of the customer journey, from awareness to first click to final purchase, ensuring smooth navigation from every point of entry.
- Optimizing key user flow elements, like navigation, product categories and the checkout page, leads to fewer drop-offs, less cart abandonment and higher sales.
Understanding the basics (and importance) of ecommerce user flow
Let’s start by getting a clear definition of what a user flow is. Simply put, it’s the steps a user takes through your website to complete a particular task.
An ecommerce user flow is a specific use case where the flowcharts you create are related to tasks like discovering a new product or buying something on your site.
Imagine walking into a store where nothing makes sense—aisles are disorganized and essentials are hidden behind unrelated products. Frustrating, right?
That’s the same feeling your website visitors—aka potential customers—get when your user flows aren’t well thought out.
Well-designed user flow diagrams help you visualize these pathways for different users, identifying areas where they may face friction and, in turn, pinpointing areas for improvement.
Driving more sales is the process of optimizing every click, scroll and interaction to deliver the best possible user experience.
For examples and more basics, take a look at our what is a flow diagram deep dive.
User flows and the customer lifecycle
Here’s the thing, visitors at different stages of the customer journey have different needs when they get to your site.
A new visitor in the awareness stage may want to explore your brand, while someone in the purchase stage is ready to buy.
To optimize the user experience, you have to know what’s driving customers to your online store in the first place and create your user flows to accommodate.
There needs to be alignment with user goals and navigating to them.
Here’s what that might look like in practice:
- Awareness: Users are likely to be exploring options and gathering information. User flows should provide easy access to relevant content and resources.
- Consideration: Users are comparing different options and evaluating their suitability. User flows should highlight key differentiators and provide clear comparison tools.
- Decision: Users are ready to make a purchase. User flows should streamline the checkout process and minimize friction.
- Purchase: Users have completed the purchase. User flows should provide clear confirmation and next steps, such as order tracking or account management.
By mapping user flows that match these stages, you address user needs at each point in the journey, ensuring that the visitor can easily complete the same task, whether browsing or buying.
What makes ecommerce user flows different?
It might be tempting to just grab a user flow template from anywhere, thinking "tomayto-tomahto, what’s the difference? ", and start building.
That’s not ideal and here’s why.
Ecommerce user flows differ from other flows on other sites because they’re transaction-focused. The goal is to streamline the flow from product discovery to purchasing.
On the contrary, a university website, for example, is going to be much more information-heavy. Where you or your kid attend college is a much weightier and time consuming decision than buying a Dwight Shrute bobblehead.
Even other ecomm sites may sell products in ways that don’t apply to your business—like bulk selling or custom orders.
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Key elements of effective ecommerce user flow design
UX design details vary depending on the site, industry or user journey stage your building for but there are several key components and pages that should always be covered if you want to optimize user flow.
Let’s take a look at how Nike brings everything together to create a powerhouse of ecommerce user flow.
Home and landing page
First impressions matter.
Your home page and landing pages should immediately capture attention and direct users to the product categories, popular products or offers they’re looking for (or you want/need them to see).
That means clean design, prominent CTAs, detailed product descriptions and an intuitive layout.
Nike definitely catches attention with their stark, high-contrast photography and the clearest CTA imaginable: "Shop".
There are a number of advantages to doing this:
- Clean designs are easy to scan. CTAs are easy to see and users can quickly zero in on what they want to do.
- Faster-loading layouts convert more. Research shows that pages that load in 1 second convert 3x higher than those that convert in 5 seconds.
- Simple designs are easier for search engines to crawl. This helps boost your SEO ranking and gets your site in front of more users.
Streamlined navigation and product categories
Think of user-friendly and intuitive navigation as a well-marked road through your online store.
Navigation should be simple and clear, with categories that make sense and a search bar that leads people to the right products quickly.
Tough to get simpler than Nike’s navigation, which expands to more granular product categories as you hover over the main parent pages plus breadcrumb navigation so you know exactly where you are on the site at all times.
Speaking of search, your site’s search functionality is an essential tool, not an optional one, for user experience and fast tracking user flows.
A good search system anticipates user needs, providing accurate results even if the user enters vague descriptions. Nike cleverly includes popular search terms when you click the search bar to guide casual browsers.
To do this you need:
- Detailed descriptions of products
- Well thought out categories
- Category pages
Nike crushes all of those.
For example, a user might only type in "trail running". To ensure the right stuff pops up, the good shoe slingers at Nike include exactly those words in the product descriptions..
Smart search will guide them directly to their options without unnecessary steps. HubSpot has a solid breakdown to help get yours right.
Checkout process
Your checkout page is the money page, literally, and it’s the last place you want someone to hit a snag.
Any unnecessary friction here needs to be resolved ASAP because when a potential buyer hits a snag, it’s likely they’ll bounce from your site altogether.
According to Statista, 26% of shoppers in 2024 will abort a purchase if the site asks them to create an account, while 22% would quit if the purchasing process was too complicated.
That’s a quarter of your potential online sales.
Here are some ways to reduce checkout friction:
- Allow guest checkout
- Accept multiple payment options
- Have a single page for checking out
- Easy to fill in forms that collect the bar minimum of data
- Transparent price calculations (including shipping and discounts)
- Highly visible CTAs (e.g. "buy" buttons)
How to create a e-commerce user flows that improve UX & boost sales
With an understanding of the key parts to focus on in your user flow design and how they intertwine with user journeys, you can get into the building phase.
The clearer you can make the path from entry to entering payment details, the better.
Remember, this is an iterative process, perfecting user flows takes time.
Map out your current ecommerce user flows first
Use a Diagram Maker to map what’s happening now, being sure to consider variables like:
- Where people enter and leave your site
- What brought them into the site
- The devices they’re using to browse the site
- Whether they’re new visitors or repeat visitors
- The paths they can take to perform a specific task
- If you’re losing their attention and why
Keep in mind that there are multiple pathways to the same product that will be dependent on where someone is in the customer journey. It’s also a good idea to chart out each individual task flow within a user flow.
6 steps for reengineering user flow for ecommerce
With your current flow mapped, you can start the work of simplifying things for your customers.
Is there a way to provide necessary information earlier so they don’t have to complete as many steps?
Here’s how:
- Do user research and understand the customer journey
- Define your goal and the user’s goal
- Determine how users find you
- Do keyword research
- Create your flowchart
- Share, get feedback and finalize
Check out our comprehensive user flow guide for more details.
The goal of all this: reduce cognitive load
When you start building your user flow, remember that you’re trying to make the site as intuitive as possible in order to reduce cognitive load:
Cognitive load is the amount of active mental processing needed to complete tasks. In the same way that a computer will run slower when doing too many things simultaneously, your prospects’ brains get bogged down when you ask them to focus on too many things at one time.
If your visitors are easily able to find what they need, pay for it, and arrange shipping, then the user experience is optimal. On the other hand, if friction is introduced at any step and it becomes difficult to buy from you, then user experience tanks.
Put simply, as cognitive load increases, user experience decreases; and sales suffer.
By reducing cognitive load, you can help a person focus on what they want to buy rather than wasting mental energy figuring out how to navigate the site.
Implement changes the right way—step-by-step
There’s only one proper way to implement changes to your website: gradually.
Change too many things at once and people may get confused with the new layout, increasing the frustration level and making them more likely to bounce.
Prioritize the most critical issues first and A/B test options individual variables to see if each change is beneficial. Use the insights gained from the feedback you gather and data analysis to inform decisions on what needs to change and how.
But how do you know which issue is the most critical?
Prioritize changes based on impact
Focus on changes that will have the most significant impact on user experience.
Navigation is often one of the most impactful ecommerce user flow elements and can be simplified by organizing menus more intuitively to reduce clutter, for example.
The purchase process is another, since a place customers are highly likely to leave your site from.
Look at your data and see what’s affecting your performance the most and tackle those first.
If your team is working in the Agile framework, user stories are going to be a helpful guide for establishing what needs your attention most urgently.
Potential challenges and solutions in ecommerce user flow design
Improving flow across your website or app for customers ain’t easy. It involves hard work, critical thinking and, most likely, changes to your information architecture, which means it’s a place where things can go wrong.
Let’s address the issues and give you some solutions.
Resistance to change
Change of any sort can be scary; especially when it can affect someone’s job performance. It’s tempting to keep things as is for fear of making things worse. That kind of attitude can be debilitating to an organization, resulting in stagnation and a failure to keep up with ever-changing buyer habits.
The way to overcome this is with analytics, the best thing to do is to show stakeholders or supervisors the numbers. Present hard data that shows them a) the benefits of optimizing user flow and/or b) the consequences if you don’t.
Overcomplicated navigation
Navigation is more than just a collection of menu items. It’s a map. A floor plan. And it’s something your visitors pay attention to.
A study by Clutch.co found that 38% of consumers look at a page’s layout and navigational links when they first enter the site.CXL noted that website users spend about 6.44 seconds looking at the main navigation menu on a site.
The point? Don’t scare people away with a navigational maze!
As HubSpot points out, the Awwwards website is a bit of a nightmare with not one, but two, different menus.
Simplicity wins. Overcomplicating navigation can confuse users and lead to drop-offs, so it’s best to ensure that your site structure is logical and easy to follow.
This is where understanding the interplay between user flow vs sitemap becomes important.
Lack of clear calls to action
The last thing you want a user to say is, "what now?" Because if they do, they’re going to leave.
The same Clutch.co study noted that 42% of people will leave a website because of poor functionality, which includes CTAs and on page navigation.
Nearly half of your site visitors will leave if you don’t give them enough breadcrumbs to follow. That’s why you need to constantly guide your users with clear, consistent and compelling calls to action that create an obvious path to the next step.
Ignoring mobile users
Sticking with Nike, take a look at how crisp they make product pages on their mobile site. The product shines and the CTA couldn’t be clearer.
Can you imagine if you had to browse their entire site on a version not purpose-built for mobile…yikes.
According to live data from Dynamic Yield, as of August 2024, 71% of new ecommerce website users were on mobile devices and composed 78% of returning visitors.
User flows, and by extension customer journeys, should also take into account the device someone is using to log on to your site. If they’re faced with unresponsive design, it’s likely you’ll lose them and the business they would’ve brought. Lean into optimizing ecommerce app user flow and mobile-first design.
Measuring and analyzing user flow success
Given how much we’ve mentioned data in this article, it’ll come as no surprise that tracking and analyzing it is crucial to your success. Collecting accurate and timely information about how many users are visiting your e-commerce site, where they’re going, what they’re doing, etc. matters.
It’s a crucial starting point for building efficient user flow diagrams and will help you identify which paths lead to higher conversions.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track
KPIs are metrics used to assess how well something, in this case your website, is performing in a variety of different areas; from sales to marketing and beyond.
Shopify lists over 70 ecommerce KPIs on their blog, but we’re only going to focus on the ones most relevant to building smoother user flow:
- Bounce rate tells you what percentage of users immediately leave after seeing your site.
- Time on site measures the average time someone spends on your site. Defining a “good” or “bad” ToS depends a lot on the context.
- Conversion rate isn’t just more sales: it’s how many people take a positive action, like registering an account or learning more about a promo, for example.
- Page views per visit informs you of the average number of pages a user visits in a single session. Again, subjective depending on the user’s purpose.
- Cart abandonment rate tells you what percentage of users ditch their carts mid-purchase. It doesn’t tell you why, but it’s a sign you have to investigate.
Tools for analyzing user flow
Tools like Google Analytics allow businesses to track user actions and identify significant points in their journey: things like drop-in and drop-off points, common destinations as well as bounce and engagement rates.
Google Analytics has a nifty Funnel Visualization report that shows you exactly where people go if they leave the cart before checking out.
You can find the Funnel Visualization report in Google Analytics by going to Explore > Funnel Visualization. You can use their standard template or create a custom report.
Google Analytics also includes useful e-commerce reports for tracking shopping, product and checkout behavior.
This data-driven approach ensures that the sales funnel is as smooth and frictionless as possible, increasing shopper satisfaction en route to higher conversion rates.
Interpreting data for informed decisions
Data is only valuable when interpreted thoughtfully and applied effectively. It’s all about understanding what those numbers mean and how they influence user behavior.
For example, high bounce rates might suggest that CTAs aren’t clear, important product detail is missing or navigation isn’t isn’t hitting the mark for visitors. Or, perhaps the landing page doesn’t match the user expectation from their search or the ad they clicked on.
Best practices for continuous improvement
To keep your ecommerce store firing on all cylinders, you’ll want to live in a constant state of intentional adjustment and improvement. You never know if there’s a better way to organize things or when a change in buying habits will demand changes from you.
Here are a few tips to help you do that effectively:
A/B test different aspects of user flow
Regularly test different elements to see what works best. This could include experimenting with page layouts to determine which design is most engaging, analyzing different CTAs to identify which drive higher conversion rates and evaluating navigation structures to ensure people can easily find what they’re looking for.
The proper way to A/B test is to only change one thing at a time, whether that’s the CTA or the navigation. If you change too many things at once, it’ll be difficult to know which element is benefitting the user.
Gather user feedback
Photo credit: Joyce Carol Oates website example sourced from Hotjar… Thanks!
Feedback is what makes or breaks your user flow changes, so note what people tell you. It helps you understand not just how folks navigate your website, but the reasons behind the choices they make. This understanding is key to designing flows that resonate with what user expectations and how they naturally behave.
One great way to collect these insights is through quick surveys and polls. By popping in a one- or two-question survey at key moments in the user journey—like right after they complete a purchase—you can gather some really useful feedback.
Stay up to date with ecommerce trends
The ecomm landscape is a constantly evolving one, driven by rapid technological advancements and changing consumer behavior. To stay competitive, you have to be aware of the trends, like mobile-first design, UX design trends, personalized shopping experiences and, of course, AI integration.
But you shouldn’t just jump on the tech bandwagon and slap stuff on because it’s new. Review trends with a critical eye and see what makes sense for you and your customers.
Leverage purpose-built user flow tools
Creating stellar ecommerce website user flow requires the right user flow tools.
Slickplan’s Diagram Maker is built for effectively visualizing user flows. By creating a detailed visual representation, you can identify potential issues, improve efficiency and optimize overall design.
After your flowchart is perfected, you’ll want to build out a wireflow then grab a UX prototyping tool to create mockups of your updated ecommerce website. You can even smart animate between layers in your Figma user flow prototype to see how the UX would feel.
Next, you’ll test the prototype with a small number of people to see if you got it right. Ideally, your testers should be able to accomplish any task within a few steps from beginning to end, with all the information and functionality they need available.
Conclusion
Optimizing user flow for ecommerce is key for improving UX design and, in turn, increasing conversions that drive revenue.By understanding the importance of frictionless flow, addressing common pitfalls and continuously measuring and improving navigation, you can create more enjoyable shopping experiences for your customers and fulfill business goals at the same time.
Start improving right now by auditing your current user flow with our Diagram Maker.
Think visually. Improve UX with Slickplan
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Frequently asked questions
Why is UI/UX important for an ecommerce web design?
UI/UX are crucial for ecommerce web design because they directly affect overall experience and conversion rates. A well-designed interface with intuitive navigation, clear CTA and great user flow encourages users to explore and make purchases. While poor UI/UX can lead to frustration and abandonment, damaging your reputation and bottom line.
What is a good bounce rate for an ecommerce or retail website?
A good bounce rate for ecommerce/retail websites is generally between 20% and 45% according to Adobe. Lower is better, but it varies depending on industry and product. Hotjar recommends aiming for 50% or less sitewide. Optimize page load times, navigation and product information to improve bounce rate.
What is the user flow of an ecommerce app?
The user flow of an ecommerce app usually involves these steps: user lands on the app, browses products, adds items to cart, reviews order details, goes to checkout, enters payment information, confirms order, receives confirmation. The goal is to guide users seamlessly through this process to maximize conversions.
What is Shopify Flow and e-commerce automation?
Shopify Flow is an automation tool that helps you streamline tasks and processes within your Shopify store. This includes everything from automating order fulfillment to customer notifications to inventory management and more. E-commerce automation, in general, means using tech to automate repetitive tasks; saving time and creating efficiency.
What is the difference between user journey and user flow?
Both terms are related to user experience; user journey refers to the entire customer experience from initial awareness to post-purchase satisfaction. User flow focuses specifically on the steps a user takes within a product or service to achieve a goal.
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