Developing UI/UX design guide for e-commerce mobile applications

Abstract

M-commerce is growing rapidly from year to year. Still, many companies whose business is solely depends on the e-commerce have not made any adaptations of their sites for mobile devices, let alone, developed a native mobile app. Important factors in the design of successful m-commerce applications are usability, native look & feel, high-resolution graphics, predictable and easy navigation, and trustworthiness that the application reflects. Stripping down the functionality is not an option and actually can negatively impact the overall user experience, especially if they used the website before downloading the native app. The goal of this thesis was to create a design guide that includes both aspects of user interface and user experience that are needed to be taken into account when developing native mcommerce application. The design guide was created based on the results of the usability testing by comparison between two apps, one build by deploying modern UI/UX approaches throughout, while another was build by following “outdated” UI/UX best practices. The research proved the validity of the modern UI/UX approaches in the context of m-commerce apps. All of the best practices that were under the usability testing were taken out and packed into the guide. The guide is covering all of the UI/UX aspects of the customer journey that is starting at app’s launch and ending at payment screen (i.e. only covering the checkout experience of an m-commerce app). The design guide is intended to be used by the UI/UX designer which is going through the process of designing m-commerce application from scratch.