Your eCommerce Customer Account Pages Matter More Than You Think

Most business owners fret over the design details of their homepage, category pages, product pages and other critical eCommerce pages. However in the mix of getting all of the necessary features working, product data into your new eCommerce website, and design finalized there is often no attention paid to where the customer is actually logging in, viewing orders, and perhaps reordering more from your website. The eCommerce account pages are critical for success because they offer a place for customers to do many important eCommerce actions.

Why Account Pages Matter:

• They build trust
• They hold useful customer account information
• They make it easier to buy again
• They have useful order information
• They make it easy to save things you want to buy in the future
• They can offer discounts and rewards points

The account pages are a critical component to any successful eCommerce website, and a good eCommerce website will have robust and user friendly account pages.

Your Account Pages Should Do Many Things:

Know Your Customer Needs:

If you are a B2B eCommerce website your account pages will most likely need to be different than a B2C website. Additionally, every business is different and has different nuances, therefore your account pages should be highly tailored to your business model and the customer experience you want to provide. For instance a B2B account may have many different users connected to one central institution.
For instance Bank of America has thousands of branches. They would like to have each branch have an account but also individuals at each branch. All branches are connected to one master BOA account. Therefore they can track their total B2B expenses on the website, as well as each branches expenses, in addition to how much each individual is spending.

Integrate Backoffice Systems:

One of the reasons most eCommerce websites fail to do a good job with account pages is that they do not connect their eCommerce store to their back office system. Therefore the back office system is registering the order as processed, shipped, or some other status, but the customer has no idea because that information is not synced with their eCommerce account. This ties directly into my next point of not updating the order status for the customer in the account pages.

Order Status Is Critical:

Your order status is critical to keeping customers informed, comfortable, and happy about their purchase. If you do not email or update your customers about their orders they may worry they will never get delivered. Walmart does an excellent job of updating your as the order is placed, processed, shipped, and delivered.

Examples of Good Account Pages:

Amazon.com

Amazon is the king of eCommerce in the United States and has more account page functionality than any other eCommerce website. They have a huge number of links, which in some ways can be overwhelming, but demonstrates how many things you can do with an Amazon.com account.

Walmart.com

Walmart has made amazing strides in eCommerce of the past several years and is doing everything in its power to catch up to Amazon. It does a great job of updating you on the status of your order and also splits orders into different shipments to optimize shipping and the time it takes for your order to get to you.

Candy.com

Candy.com is a much smaller eCommerce site than the major behemoths like Amazon and Walmart, but it does a great job with UI / UX as a smaller player. It has a great rewards points program built into its account pages so that you can see your rewards building as you buy more candy.

Staples.com

Staples is a major leader in B2B eCommerce and has an amazing reordering and auto stock feature. Their auto stock feature is great for businesses who routinely run out of supplies and simply want to automate the office supplies replenishing effort online.


If you are concerned about your eCommerce websites account pages or would simply like to improve them, please don’t hesitate to email me or contact the team at Trellis for help.