Top UX & UI Design Tips for Black Friday 2024

With Black Friday drawing closer, online retailers are pulling out all the stops to prepare for the frenzy of shoppers who aim to capitalise on the year’s biggest shopping event. To help you get the most out of your sites this year, we’ve compiled our essential tips for purchase optimisation.

1. Make Navigation Intuitive

Employing natural, easy-to-use navigation lays the foundation for a strong ecommerce site. As with all aspects of user interface design, the focus here should be on the user, namely, guiding them from entry all the way through to making a purchase. How can you achieve this? 

Ensure that the primary navigation is clearly structured into relevant categories and subcategories so that users can visit what they need directly, rather than having to second guess the location of what they’re looking for.

A natural and familiar search experience should also be offered on the site so that shoppers spend less time having to navigate through menus in the first place, and more time being guided towards converting and making a purchase. 

This can be achieved with positioning the search interface above the fold, using a clear and uncluttered design approach. Gifting the user some power here in terms of filtering on lowest price and highest relevance will further steer them to the basket. 

But what about shoppers who have landed on the store who don’t necessarily know what they want to purchase? In this case, not only is it imperative to use premium imagery to showcase the quality of product available, it’s vital to place this above-the-fold within the design so buyers can then click through and discover the full range of the catalogue without any friction. Featured carousels with auto-play sliders and parallax effects can be deployed to highlight your store's flagship products.

2. Prioritise Clean Design

A design that is clean and free of clutter is an essential in optimising your store for Black Friday. Buyers are often switching between several outlets when making their purchase - the design that focuses only on the essential elements of the purchase journey (the product page, the price detail and the checkout process). 

On the product page, visual hierarchy is super important. Building trust in the customer with regards to both the product and the brand is a ‘make or break’ affair here and structuring the information so users can both scan and read in depth is a good insurance policy. 

Clear, descriptive headings with non-complicated labelling of features allows shoppers to identify with what they’re about to purchase. Prices can be shown in bold clear colours within close proximity to the product title, so there are no surprises for the buyer when they come to check out.

3. Optimise for Relevant Platforms

It goes without saying that the majority of users will land on your site via their phone - so prioritising the mobile experience is always the optimal strategy. Ensuring all components are inherently responsive at their core is the best way to guarantee a seamless user experience. 

For categories and sub-categories, dropdowns and accordion menus are key; and having these expand on tap/click helps to abstract away lower levels of detail that aren’t always required to be visible. Also, sticky navigation can be used to ensure the user can always find their way back to core pages, ensuring that all tap-targets are designed with ample space in mind.

Implementing secure mobile payment systems such as Apple Pay and Google Pay will help to build a seamless check-out experience to help promote instant purchases across shoppers. Showing these logos as early as possible in the check out process can help the user visualise how they will be able to finalise their purchase before they get to the final check-out screen.

4. Build Customer Trust

To further reduce buyer friction, utilising a strong testimonials section to build customer trust is an absolute must. This is often one of the first things buyers will check for social proof ahead of making a purchase. 

Including avatars of buyers and a dynamic feed of reviews rather than a manually curated one is another way to boost these trust signals. Clear and readable typography showing positive statements from happy shoppers will assure customers that they can have confidence in your store and grab a black friday bargain.

Furthermore, adding secure badge icons at the check out stage will help put your buyers at ease, safe in the knowledge that their payments are being handled securely with the latest technologies. 

Including iconography from well-known and trusted third parties such as Visa Debit, MasterCard or Apple Pay for example, will additionally facilitate that trust-building.

It’s also important to ensure Returns or Exchange Policies are easy to locate and written in natural language so that they are easily understood. Buyers are often browsing in a rapid fashion and so having these crucial policies at their fingertips will help them reach a purchase decision sooner. 

5. Optimise the Checkout

On Black Friday, there’s no time for a complex check-out experience with many compulsory fields. We’re all familiar with the feeling of giving due care and attention to making sure we’ve found the right product only to be blocked by an obtrusive check-out process. 

It’s key to style form labels for shipping costs and delivery times very clearly, with web appropriate sans-serif fonts, so nothing is left for the user to second guess.

Keep things effortless for the user through allowing guest-check out or Single sign-on (SSO) to create that ‘one-touch-transaction’ experience.

Using visual elements such as determinate progress bars with nodes that become increasingly opaque to signify the completion of the check out process is an effective technique to provide visual feedback to the user. An informed shopper will be more likely to trust the store and follow-through with the purchase.

Summing Up

As we’ve seen, there are plenty of opportunities to capitalise on for optimising your store ahead of this year’s Black Friday event. As well as getting the basics right such as ensuring your store’s interface is uncluttered and easy to navigate generally. It’s important to not overlook the minutiae such as including entrusting iconography from third parties, ensuring rich media is optimised and adapting those form input fields.

For an in-depth look at how to elevate your SEO strategy this Black Friday, check out our exclusive resource.

If you’d like to learn more about how ICS-digital can help you enhance your Black Friday sales strategy, please reach out at info@ics-digital.com.