A review of usability guidelines for e-commerce website design

E-commerce websites often fail in their primary objective of making purchasing easy for customers. This paper reviews recommendations for making a website more usable and improving its conversion rate. General issues that are important to users are to create a home page with clear calls to action, support the navigation process, create an effective page layout and writing style, optimise the checkout process, design for responsiveness or mobile use, make the website accessible, demonstrate credibility and promote user trust, minimise page load times and manage customer reviews and feedback. The broader issue of considering the whole user experience is discussed and the need for designers to strike a balance between usability and business goals.