You are running a business online, and your ultimate goal is to boost your sales and ROI. To achieve this, you might have hired the best eCommerce development company to build an attractive website loaded with all the possible features – vibrant colors, font case, and other rich visual elements, etc.
However, the question that arises here is, will these efforts only bring leads?
Well, not exactly!
These would make your site stand out from its competitors but would not assure leads. ADA web accessibility compliance is the one crucial factor that should be there to give all consumers including those with disabilities or impairments access to your website.
You can only expect sales if someone comes to your site and have smooth access to all your offerings. So, making your website ADA compliance makes sense. Right? You can hire eCommerce website development company that has a proven history of work experience to ensure this.
Even there is a law, Americans with Disabilities Act, amended in 2009 that makes sure that people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else. And there is a specified list of businesses that need to adhere to their guidelines and ensure that everyone has equal access to your website.
Here in this blog, we will discuss web accessibility, its importance in eCommerce business, and the steps you can take to make your site ADA compliant. Let’s begin with its meaning.
What Does Web Accessibility Mean?
In general, accessibility means the ability to have access to something regardless of the condition. In practice, that means your online store allows people to use all tools, functions to consume online content, videos, product list, and online services.
Also, if you fail to follow the ADA web standards and consumers with disabilities, at any point, face difficulty in accessing your website, you might become vulnerable to hefty lawsuits for violating the act.
Why Accessibility to Your eCommerce Website is Important?
You must have heard a lot that ‘branding’ is vital to success in the business world. We too fall in love with brands than products. Isn’t it? And when it comes to shopping online, we prefer shopping from established brands like Myntra, Amazon, etc though there are many popular apps available for shopping.
This is why, establishing a good brand image is important and this is what, web accessibility helps in achieving. Making your website accessible to all including those 15% of the world’s population living with disabilities can make a big difference in your sales.
Let’s check out some of its benefits in detail below:
Increase Your Audience
Do you know 71% of people with a disability immediately abandon your site when not accessible? And over 15 % of the world’s population is living with disabilities. That means you are missing out on massive traffic to your site.
So, you can incorporate assistive features into your site to make it easy to use. More visitors to your site mean more chances you get potential leads. If your site includes assistive technology for disabled people and is accessible on multiple devices, you have a fair chance of making a profit.
Improve search engine discoverability
Getting indexed in all the search engines is the first rule to compete with your rivals. And when you remove all barriers that affect the interaction by people with disabilities to your site, you raise the chances of getting indexed in the top results.
For example: when you add a text-to-speech feature to your site, chances are higher that your site will be indexed in search engine results when a user who is blind tries to access services you too are offering.
Improve your brand reputation
Generally, it takes merely 17-50 milliseconds for users to build a perception of something. The first impression of your site could greatly influence how your brand is viewed and treated in the future. Dissatisfied customers are more likely to shift their interest in better services. So, making your website easy to navigate is a bonus in your success.
Helps to avoid accessibility lawsuits
As we have mentioned above, failing to abide the eCommerce ADA compliance could lead you to penalties.
You can start with using a free website accessibility checker to review the current state of your site. Evaluation of your site can help you improve your weak points by adjusting the navigation bar, adding alt tags, speech-to-text features.
What Changes Do You Require to Create an ADA Compliant Business Website?
First and foremost, you need to hire one of the top ecommerce development companies to ensure that your development solutions are in experienced hands. Skilled professionals have good knowledge of ADA website accessibility requirements and make sure to add all essential factors to your business website. They can help you ensure the following:
- Provide descriptive link labels to help users understand the content of a link or what they will find when clicking on a certain link.
- Prioritize text clarity to improve the readability of your site’s text. You can check out the guidelines of WCAG to have a better understanding of the required ratio of contrast between text and its background.
- Make sure the use of meaningful labels to help users understand the error while using your website. For example, some sites use red color to signify the wrong entry in the form. Normal users can get that idea, how about the one with color blindness. This is what a good eCommerce web developers understand and care well during development.
- Implement an intuitive keyboard navigation order in your website keeping in mind the modern-day user needs who rarely use the mouse to navigate your website.
- As per the accessibility guidelines, your site needs to have at least 44×44 px. clickable area for touch controls and the online retailers should follow this rule to increase their sales. For ex: if they face difficulty in accessing call-to-action elements, they end up leaving your site without making a purchase.
- Create a guide about using assistive technology to navigate and shop from your website for users with disabilities. Also, allow them to contact you if they face any trouble in shopping.
- This should be at the top priority that your website is accessible through different web browsers and devices. Making it mobile, laptop, desktop, and tablet friendly can increase customer satisfaction and retention.
By considering these measures, you can boost customer reach and build a strong brand image.
Or if you have decided to hire professionals, our guide would have surely given you an idea of things you need to care about in your site.
Conclusion
In an eCommerce business, ensuring the accessibility of a website is a victory of all. If everyone has fair and easy access to your site, the number of customers will increase and so is the sales. Also, it helps in preventing anxiety in customers. So, don’t cut your business from the massive audience with disabilities and hire the best eCommerce website development company to make your business meets all ADA compliant guidelines. If you are facing challenges in meeting ADA compliance, let us know! Contact us for the free quotes