Bristol is gearing up to host another great event this week, this time about the complex world of e-commerce and user experience. Taunton-based e-commerce design agency Evosite is the company behind the new eCommerce South West 2016, which happens on 20th October at the Paintworks Event Space, in Bath Road.

The line-up includes Matty Curry, Head of E-commerce at Lovehoney, and Lee Grogan, Senior Enterprise Consultant at Optimizely, amongst other names. Paul Randall, Senior UX Architect at Evosite, answered a few questions ahead of the e-commerce event, making us even more excited about Thursday.

🎙 You managed to gather a really interesting and diverse group of speakers to talk at eCommerce South West 2016. What can we expect from this line-up?

As this event is for individuals working in e-commerce, we’ve created a day full of talks that will allow them to look at their own sites in a number of ways and refine their own online experiences: from takeaways they can apply today, to innovations that will get them thinking about next few years of their online digital experiences.

🎙Tell us a bit about the keynote and what Matty Curry from Lovehoney, the UK’s biggest sex toy company, has planned for the event.

It’s easy to get lost in making minor improvements; meanwhile, there are tools that can make the process a lot easier. Matty’s talk will go in detail about topics such as revenue per session, persuasion architecture, and how some changes have to happen within your organisation, not your site. It’s 9am, you’ve had your coffee, you’re at your desk, what do you do?

🎙One of your talks is about virtual reality (VR) and UX. How does this connect with
e-commerce?

Virtual reality is all about creating an immersive experience, and brands are looking for ways to engage their audiences. Just like the growth of video online, VR has the ability to assist the sales process by giving visitors the chance to view products from all angles in a way that takes 360 degree images to another level. Imagine a fashion retailer, who can give you a seat at the catwalk front row, or a furniture store that enables you to imagine what that new sofa would look like in your home.

💭 “Whilst to some this may seem like science fiction, UX is very much science fact.”

If we are creating websites for our audiences, then we need to involve them in the process, at every step of the way. This could mean observing somebody looking for a product and learning how to improve the experience, or building a prototype and asking them to try it to see how effective it is before you go ahead and actually build it, saving time and effort and gaining confidence in the solution.

🎙Pretty much like the title of the last talk – “Be brave and experiment everywhere”, by Lee Grogan, is e-commerce and UX all about taking risks? Or can testing help us to avoid this?

I actually see it as reducing risk. If the first time your customers see any change is when it’s live, that’s a big gamble. Chances are a few people will have worked on it based on assumptions and best practices, but developing without engaging with your audience is risky.

It’s not all about ‘testing’ to validate something working either. Sometimes, the best ideas come from experiments that evolve and improve when you get customer feedback that you would have never had. If you do this before rolling out to everyone you are more certain the changes you make will have a positive effect.

Maria Santos, Head of Digital Ops & Data Protection

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