How Accessible Ecommerce Website Designing Is Useful During COVID-19?

Having accessible web design is getting imperative in the new era of social distancing and with global communities remains unsure about actual time duration for being homebound, people are shifting more towards online shopping, information, entertainment, and socializing.

However there is one more side to this story, with web serving as present-time savior for people staying back at home, thousands of people with disabilities struggle for using the website that majority of us take for granted. So what is the reason behind the struggle? Simply say, its negligence.

Recent study on more than 10 million website found that majority of ecommerce web pages do not comply with global web accessibility guidelines. In fact, 96% of websites even don’t have standard menus even. Additionally, websites weren’t navigable through keyboard, and many didn’t have the appropriate coding that can communicate with screen readers or assistive technologies.

This lacking web accessibility is not good for people who are blind, deaf, or motor disabled and having a hope for getting benefiting from internet. What’s more, lack of webpage accessibility isn’t just problematic for physically able people, but also damaging the ecommerce business which totally depend on clients using their website for ordering.

Continue reading to know the reasons why web accessibility is crucial during the coronavirus outbreak.

1. High Profits

Just like the rest of the population, physically able people are also going online to survive during COVID-19 times. Ecommerce businesses thinking web accessibility as a burden to “comply” with aren’t thinking of the sheer number of people with disabilities.

An estimated 17% of world’s population—more than 1.1 billion people—have disabilities. That’s approximately one in seven adults in the United Arab Emirates, or 63 million people spending over $250 billion each year and during this current pandemic, much larger share of this $250 billion is getting spent via ecommerce channels.

2. Branding and Reputation

Being empathetic can make your brand stand ahead from the competitors. Whether its an online store or local brick-and-mortar shops, customers go for purpose-driven companies run by caring business personals. E-commerce companies having a reputation for authenticity and purpose sense grow three times faster than competitors with higher market share gains.

Websites failed in accessibility standards can also be taken as opportunity for brands to demonstrate a much required purpose: Making products available to everyone during COVID-19 lockdown. Enhancing a website’s accessibility can be a remarkable improvement that millions (or even billions) of people will definitely notice.

Several ecommerce businesses want to return something to the customers who’ve supported them and these times of COVID-19 pandemic have created a good opportunity for companies to prove that they always care about corporate social responsibility. Enhancing website to help people access crucial items during these quarantine time will definitely make a positive impact.

Looking to have a peek at some avoidable e-commerce web design errors and ways to fix them? Click here to know!!

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

People keep on looking for websites that’s easy to navigate and this search for new and better is even more aggressive during the COVID-19 crisis. This requirement for accessible e-commerce websites presents a good opportunity for ecommerce businesses: accessible practices including SEO tactics. It can be helpful by implementation of clear website navigation, alt text for images, transcripts for videos and podcasts, readable web copy, directional cues and internal site search. All the e-commerce businesses setting “accessibility” as primitive goal during the on-going pandemic will see their websites getting prioritized on Google more than competitors.

4. Innovation Is Key

It’s no secret that today’s cutting-edge business competition has increased the need of “innovate or die.” This scenario spurs many businesses to seek newer technologies like AI (Artificial Intelligence) and others to do something that surpasses as “innovative,” and set higher-standards in world markets. But most of businesses have understood innovation as nothing but a buzzword that’s difficult to apply in meaningful ways. However, COVID-19 presents a window of opportunity to turn lip service into action.

The primary driver for innovation is “alluring customer experience.” In a landscape where ecommerce websites have not reached to all the people, businesses utilizing the time to enhance their website accessibility are on innovative forefront. It’s helpful for blazing a good path for other businesses to follow. In this current environment of vulnerability caused by COVID-19, making improvements for website accessibility meets all the above criteria for innovation.

Conclusion

The term web accessibility will become common in coming times. Ecommerce businesses that are spending their time, effort and money to make their sites accessible sooner will definitely rise ahead of their competition. But it’s imperative to get it done from experts in e-commerce web designing like Pro Web. We’ve been renowned for developing robust e-commerce websites on platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, Prestashop for 8 years now!!