SUBMISSION-1

E-Customer Relationship Management

(Semester – I)

Site navigation path of any e-commerce website and

describe the process flow
NAME – Manisha Gupta

REGISTRATION NUMBER – 202104939

PGCM (DM)-2021

SYMBIOSIS CENTRE FOR DISTANCE LEARNING (SCDL)

Introduction:
Imagine, while navigating countryside roads with little to no signage, your Google Maps
application starts to malfunction and leads you on a longer and inconvenient path. After hours
of reaching halfway to your destination, the application shuts down altogether. Now, despite
knowing your objective, you’re lost. How would that make you feel? Most likely, frustrated.

Likewise, poorly designed eCommerce websites create a horrible experience for visitors. Due to
inconsistent or absent navigability, they cannot select or discover products within a sprawling
catalog.

So, what do these visitors do? You guessed it right – they leave.

Too often, eCommerce businesses prioritize aesthetics over functionality, treating design as
embellishments to beautify their website. As per research, 42 percent of people will leave a
website because of poor functionality, and these businesses need to reimagine their user
experience strategy. 

A key component of a good website experience is seamless navigation, especially for content-
rich and multi-layered eCommerce websites. 

Let’s look closely at how navigation structures for eCommerce websites are built and
implemented.

Types of Web Navigation Structures to Explore

Before implementing a website navigation structure, it’s crucial to determine what kind of
structure your eCommerce website needs. Most navigation structures can be put under three
primary categories – structural, associative, and utility.

Let’s explore each of these in more detail. 

 Structural

This type of navigation design follows the hierarchical structure of a website. It allows users to
move across different layers of the site. Structural navigation design further splits into two
parts.

1. Global Navigation
This represents the website’s primary pages and shapes the overall site structure. This type of
navigation helps the user find out if a website is relevant to them, orient themselves, switch
between pages, remind users of where they are on a site, and give an overview of the website.

2. Local Navigation
This represents page-level navigation and is a subset of global navigation. This form of
navigation goes into the depth of a product or category page, helping users gather context and
aiding them in discovering related pages, thereby promoting site exploration.

Associative
Associative navigation connects pages across different hierarchies. To understand this better,
let’s look at the three major forms of associative navigation – 

 Contextual
 Quick links
 Footer navigation

1. Contextual Navigation

A form of situational navigation that is either directly embedded into the text or is placed as a
related link, close to the main content. Leading eCommerce websites have automated this
through AI-powered product recommendations based on user behavior.
2. Quick Links

These are a subset of contextual navigation and give access to the entire website.
Usually, these links are connected to pages that are visited most frequently.

3. Footer Links 

A standard feature of any website and redirects users to information not relevant
to their shopping goals. These links include company details, careers page, FAQs,
terms and conditions, contact information, social media links, and even redirects
to corresponding international websites.

Utility

Utility navigation enables users to access areas of an eCommerce website that can assist them in
their shopping process. Examples of utility navigation features include a search bar, shopping
cart, linked logos, login and sign-up links, language/location selectors, customer support, etc.

To build an eCommerce website that provides an exceptional user experience, businesses can
combine two or more of these website navigation structures.
 Implement eCommerce Website Navigation

According to academic research, a proven and future-proof methodology to execute impeccable

website navigation design includes the following steps.

1. Collecting primary and secondary insight on on-screen behavior, i.e., understanding how users
interact with and maneuver through your website. Here, it’s critical for e-retailers to put the
customer at the heart of web design and to experiment, test, and learn to enhance user
experience constantly.
2. Conducting an audit of existing digital designs and comparing them with obtained behavioral
insight. This can help enterprises identify gaps in user experience and incorporate fresh and
optimized designs to deliver a superior shopping experience.
3. Testing new designs under control conditions to identify flaws and rectify them. Usually, this
will be a part of the design team’s standard testing process. 
4. Deploying and scaling an optimal design across a host of digital journeys once the right website
navigation structure has been identified.
 Ecommerce Website Navigation Best Practices

Creating an effective navigation structure and flow for your ecommerce website doesn’t need
you to reinvent the wheel—trial and error by e-retailers has brought to the forefront some best
practices that are proven to elevate user experience and help businesses achieve their key
performance indicators (KPIs). 

Let’s explore 8 such best practices, gaining a logical understanding of why these tactics work.

1.
1.
1.
1.
1.
1.
Start with a site map

Unsure of where to begin creating a web navigation structure? An excellent place

to start is with a sitemap of your website. A sitemap is an outline of all the pages
on your website and a perfect blueprint for your sophisticated navigation-
optimized web design. Sitemaps are also critical from an SEO standpoint.
 Visualization of the sitemap for a generic ecommerce website. (Source: Moqups)

You can build a sitemap manually through a text editor, automatically through third-party
sitemap generators, or your content management system. While doing this, follow a set of
guiding principles to delineate your site structure optimally and extensively.

2. Deploy responsive site navigation

It’s easy to make a case for responsive web design – by the latest estimates, mobile accounts for
at least half of all web traffic. Further, Google, which accounts for 94 percent of organic search
traffic, prioritizes mobile-optimized websites while ranking them on the results page. Therefore,
optimizing your website from a volume and SEO standpoint makes sense. 
While creating a responsive navigation structure, it is suggested to use a mobile-first approach.
Moreover, answer the questions around which type of menus to use, which links to show, font
and icon size, user behavior, and how it all translates to the bigger screens such as desktops and
tablets.

3. Limit the number of menu levels and options

Ecommerce businesses may have many categories and products to display and sell. However,
it’s essential to ensure that visitors are not overwhelmed by the sheer volume of options
available. This principle must also be adhered to while creating a website navigation structure.

An industry best practice is to limit the number of options across all navigation menus. Further,
large enterprises that cannot avoid showcasing a large volume of categories can use menu levels
in the top navigation bar – but not more than two levels. 

4. Make the primary navigation bar sticky

A sticky navigation bar is locked into place as the user scrolls down to discover your website,
preventing the need to scroll back up to navigate to another web page within the website. Sticky
navigation bars make browsing an eCommerce website much faster and simpler, especially
when there are many options to explore.
Nykaa uses a sticky primary navigation bar that doesn’t force users to scroll back up to explore
more categories and products. (Source: Nykaa) 

Some best practices while deploying sticky navigation bars include the use of collapsible
menus, avoiding hiding the search bar, and using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for simple yet
impactful coding of a navigation bar.  

5. Use widely accepted icons and symbols

Icons and symbols are used on websites to make information more visual and eye-catching.
Icons can improve the appearance of unordered lists, highlight features, convey visual
metaphors and synonyms, and aid navigation to utility features of a website such as a search
bar, login page, contacts page, etc.

When it comes to using icons and symbols, it’s best to use conventional icons that are familiar
to users and convey meaning without ambiguity. Straying from using universal icons can lead
to a poor user experience and higher drop-offs.
6. Make clickable elements recognizable

When it comes to web design, this is a fundamental guideline that cannot be ignored. Even the
most intuitively placed internal links to navigate web pages may be rendered useless if a user is
unable to determine whether the text is clickable or not.

A good practice is to set a strong and consistent visual cue for clickability using borders,
underline, differently colored hyperlinks, buttons that resemble physical buttons, and others.  

7. Make the logo clickable and lead to the homepage

This is one of the most commonly known and critical elements of good website navigation. In
fact, research shows that 95 percent of users know that clicking on a logo will return them to the
homepage of a website. Therefore, it’s important to have a logo that redirects visitors to the
homepage of an eCommerce website.

Another key factor to consider here is the location of the logo – research suggests that going
back to the homepage is six times harder when the logo is placed at the center of a page
compared to when it’s placed in the top-left corner. Further, the same study also indicates that
brand recall increases by 89 percent when the logo is on the left instead of the right.

8. Use analytics and heatmaps to improve

When it comes to website design, there may be a slip between the cup and the lip. No matter
how optimally designed, your navigation structure may not drive the business impact you’d
imagined. Here, analytics and heat-map tracking can be of assistance.
 This
heatmap of the ‘My Orders’ page on Flipkart shows how users interact with the page. (Source:
VWO)

For instance, using analytics tools like Google Analytics and heatmap tracking tools such as
Hotjar or Smartlook, website owners can identify exactly how visitors use their digital
storefront, identifying and eliminating bottlenecks that keep visitors from turning into
customers.

Design Your Website as Your Customers Want

Before executing a complete overhaul of your existing eCommerce website, it’s important to
consider what your customers truly want. For this, you must understand their needs and goals,
how they prefer to achieve their goals, and where they go when they fail or succeed in
accomplishing their objectives.

From deep analytics and multivariate testing to usability tests and card sorting, there exist many
ways to find answers to these questions. But the key is to focus not on what you want the
customers to do but what they want to do. Only then can you engage your customers and
empower them to take action!
 Upselling and cross-selling

Definition: Upselling is the practice of encouraging customers to purchase a comparable

higher-end product than the one in question, while cross-selling invites customers to buy related
or complementary items. Though often used interchangeably, both offer distinct benefits and
can be effective in tandem. Upselling and cross-selling are mutually beneficial when done
properly, providing maximum value to customers and increasing revenue without the recurring
cost of many marketing channels.

Cross-selling

Cross-selling identifies products that satisfy additional, complementary needs that are
unfulfilled by the original item. For example, a comb could be cross-sold to a customer
purchasing a blow dryer. Oftentimes, cross-selling points users to products they would have
purchased anyways; by showing them at the right time, a store ensures they make the sale.
Cross-selling is prevalent in every type of commerce, including banks and insurance agencies.
Credit cards are cross-sold to people registering a savings account, while life insurance is
commonly suggested to customers buying car coverage.

In ecommerce, cross-selling is often utilized on product pages, during the checkout process, and

in lifecycle campaigns. It is a highly-effective tactic for generating repeat purchases,
demonstrating the breadth of a catalog to customers. Cross-selling can alert users to products
they didn't previously know you offered, further earning their confidence as the best retailer to
satisfy a particular need.

Up-selling

Upselling often employs comparison charts to market higher-end products to customers.

Showing visitors that other versions or models may better fulfill their needs can increase
AOV and help users walk away more satisfied with their purchase. Companies that excel at
upselling are effective at helping customers visualize the value they will get by ordering a
higher-priced item.

Cross-selling and upselling are similar in that they both focus on providing additional value to
customers, instead of limiting them to already-encountered products. In both cases, the business
objective is to increase order value inform customers about additional product options they may
not already know about. The key to success in both is to truly understand what your customers
value and then responding with products and corresponding features that truly meet those
needs.