Inclusive Design in eCommerce 101
Inclusive Design: Creating Accessible eCommerce Experiences for All
The world and its economy are increasingly taking place online, with around 20% of all retail purchases expected to take place on the net in 2024. With this in mind, the need for inclusive design in eCommerce contexts is more profound than ever.
What is Inclusive Design?
Inclusive design, and in the case of eCommerce inclusive web design, is the conscious curation of a website to accommodate for a diverse population. This means accounting for people from a wide range of different backgrounds, ability levels, and general walks of life.
Inclusive design can be used to account for:
- Race
- Gender Identity
- Age
- Sexuality
- Nationality
- Traditional Beauty Standards
- Ability/Disability
By taking each of these concepts into consideration, online sellers can maximize the usability of their platforms, along with the positive impacts of their design choices. In this blog, we’ll be focusing primarily on the need for inclusive design for people with disabilities or chronic conditions.
Inclusive Design vs Universal Design
It’s also worth noting that while inclusive and universal design might sound similar, they are not the same thing. Universal design is essentially an approach to product development, applicable to goods designed for use across every denomination. For example, mobile phones are the result of universal design principles. On the other hand, inclusive design is more applicable to platforms and interfaces, while the products in question might still be focused on specific audiences.
We’ve put together this blog to expand on the concept of inclusive design, focusing on the need for accessibility, and extrapolating the benefits businesses will experience once they prioritize these choices.
Understanding Accessibility in eCommerce
A massive element of inclusive design is accessibility, meaning that as many people as possible can physically access the website and its resources. While inclusivity can encompass a wide range of social and parasocial dynamics, accessibility is perhaps its most important pillar. By creating a truly accessible platform or system, designers ensure that users can browse products, learn more about them, and ultimately make purchases, regardless of age or ability level.
Creating an accessible web platform doesn’t just open up the business to a wider, more diverse audience – it also helps to build up a brand’s reputation for offering a satisfying experience.
The Scope of Accessibility Needs
When looking to incorporate inclusive design in the lane of accessibility, it’s important to consider the different disabilities or impairments that people might live with, along with how they can impact eCommerce experiences.
According to the CDC, around 61 million Americans live with disabilities, with there being countless different degrees and conditions that contribute to those numbers. It’s also worth noting that the disabled population of the US are highly active online shoppers, with the American Institutes for Research ascertaining that the disposable income of this population accounts for around $490 billion. This shows that online sellers cannot afford to disregard inclusive design and accessibility.
We’ve listed some conditions and how they might negatively impact an eCommerce experience.
Visual Impairments: Being legally blind of course means users cannot read website content, meaning they might need descriptive screen readers, alt text for images, and markups. Lower-vision users might have similar difficulty reading small text, especially if there’s a lack of contrast or tricky fonts.
Hearing Impairments: Whether deaf or only somewhat hearing impaired, people with these conditions require visual cues and text to navigate platforms. These issues can also make it harder for users to catch notifications or alerts, meaning further visual cues and alerts would be necessary.
Mobility Impairments: In the case of paralyzed or motor-impaired users, websites with complex navigation or checkouts can be very hard to navigate. Mouses, touchscreens, and keyboards can be particularly hard to use, inspiring the need for shortcuts, alternative inputs, and autocomplete options.
Cognitive Impairments: Issues like dyslexia and ADHD can make large lumps of densely written text near-impossible to navigate, while messy design can also feel overwhelming. Clear organization, simple language, obvious headings, and easy navigation are all helpful for people with these concerns.
Neurological Conditions: Conditions like ASD or Epilepsy can elicit similar responses to cognitive impairments, with flashing colorful animations, intrusive pop-ups, or rapidly changing visual effects triggering distress and even seizures.
Various conditions can impact an eCommerce experience, meaning there are just as many inclusive design considerations that online sellers need to be conscious of when putting together their eCommerce platforms.
Considerations for Designing Inclusive Websites and Mobile Apps
When considering how to develop an inclusive experience for customers, some pillars need to be considered. Along with the key principles of inclusive designs, there are also clear applications that operate within said principles.
Perceivability
Concept: This core principle is focused on ensuring that information and interface elements can be perceived by all users, regardless of their ability.
Application: Methods for increasing perceivability include including alt text for product images, providing audio descriptions for video content, and ensuring sufficient color consideration.
Operability
Concept: It’s important to ensure that user interfaces can be easily used and interacted with by any visitor, whether through the keyboard, mouse, touchscreen, or voice.
Application: There should be various usage methods, including keyboard shortcuts, filters for lists, and sorting options, all tied together with consistent labels, instructions, and simple checkout forms.
Understandability
Concept: Disability-friendly websites should ensure content and functionality are clear to users, avoid using too much complex jargon, and maintain a logical order of organization.
Application: Using things like clear and concise language, incorporating easily-read error messages, and providing clear help icons can ensure that everything is clear and easy to understand.
Robustness
Concept: This refers to ensuring that a website can adapt to the application of different technologies, with compatibility across browsers and assistive tools, allowing for flexibility and scalability.
Application: Robustness can be maintained with responsive layouts, interactive keyboard/touchscreen elements, and semantic HTML markup to ensure compatibility.
By maintaining the pillars of Perceivability, Operability, Understandability, and Robustness, online sellers can work towards building all-inclusive websites. It’s also worth keeping some best practices in mind, ensuring the applications of these concepts are successful.
Best Practices for Accessible User Interfaces & Optimization
Clear Navigation: Clear and intuitive navigation menus, leaving simple lines of usage, and adding search functionalities are all vital for ensuring users can easily locate products and information.
Consistent Layout: Keeping the visual profile and design consistent across every page, including any navigation tools, buttons, or forms, to provide a suitable, comfortable browsing experience.
Intuitive Navigation: Interactive tools like buttons, links, form fields, and other predictable elements make it much easier for all sorts of users to interact with the website from front to back.
Responsiveness: Websites should be laid out with flexible grids, responsive images, and media queries, meaning they can be used from all sorts of screen sizes and resolutions.
Accessibility Testing: To ensure that accessibility is consistent across different devices and browsers, designers should rigorously test websites to catch any barriers to usability or compatibility.
User Feedback: Making sure to solicit feedback from disabled users, completing usability testing and surveys is essential to ensure that the interface meets a diverse range of needs and expectations.
When employing these best practices for accessibility and optimization, the four pillars of inclusive design can be applied far more effectively. Remember, it needs to be a combination of assistive technology, widespread compatibility, and basic usability-focused design choices.
The Business Benefits of Prioritizing Accessibility in Inclusive Design
Accessibility and inclusive design also open up doors for companies operating within eCommerce. By creating the most accessible, easy-to-use platform possible, online sellers can allow the largest possible audience to find their goods and services. Accessibility can also have concrete impacts on website performance, with accessible platforms proving to have much better SEO statistics than sites that aren’t as compatible.
Finances & Legality
It’s also worth noting that lacking accessibility can lead to retailers losing significant capital gains. For example, retailers lost around $828 million in revenue over the 2021 holiday season due to their websites lacking accessibility. You should also consider the legal aspects that inform accessibility, taking into account the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and similar policies that prohibit discrimination against disabled users, requiring businesses and organizations to accommodate for them. Ignoring the guidelines could result in a company being sued by a user for inaccessibility.
Reputation & Loyalty
Word of mouth is still a powerful thing, so it’s important to forge a strong reputation within whatever industry you work in. Having a highly accessible website helps to attract customers with disabilities and older adults, with their positive experiences helping to build a strong reputation for the brand as a whole.
Examples of Accessible Websites
If you’re looking for positive examples to learn from, several websites are shining showcases of accessibility.
Each of these websites has made their interface friendly for a wide array of audience members, with some of them even showcasing clear statements of accessibility within their website’s copy. Through combinations of savvy design and sufficient technological integrations, these brands have fostered goodwill, loyalty, and a strong reputation amongst their customers and beyond.
Conclusion
Accessibility and inclusive design are vital for creating a robust, long-lasting eCommerce platform. By doing so, you not only widen your potential customer base but also set your business up for having a strong, positive reputation that complies with the laws and regulations of the economy.
If you’re eager to learn from the best and source new accessibility tools that could elevate your eCommerce platform, you should visit eCom Business Live. This expo will be packed with businesses exhibiting a wide range of eCommerce tools and solutions, ranging from SEO enhancers to website design experts. To take your eCommerce business to the next level, sign up for your ticket today and we’ll see you at the expo.