Moeez: And we are back folks with yet another panel discussion in this day one of Prepathon 2025. The previous activity was good. I mean I was expecting some tricky questions but I think you guys tackled it very well and you guys were fast as well. So congratulations on that. So now we have another panel discussion. The topic for which is, less is more, minimal UX for better e-commerce results. And for that I have two amazing guests with me. The first one is Raitis Sevelis, and then we have Bogdan. So thank you so much for being here Raitis and Bogdan. It’s a pleasure to have you both on Prepathon this year. And what do you think about the Prepathon? How are you liking it? And how does it feel to be here?

Raitis Sevelis: Oh, hi everyone. Yeah, what I love is I was joining and looking at what is happening in chat, and I think that the fact that there is like real conversations going on and people are actively participating, this kind of shows that the topics are really relevant and people are really interested in how to improve their products, how to make e-commerce work better.

Moeez: All right. Bogdan, you want to say a few words before we get into the questions and the panel discussion?

Bogdan Condurache: Hey, hey everyone. Thank you for the invite. I’m glad to be here and talking to you guys. It’s been quite fun to see this event and also the crosswords puzzle. I’m not good at it. I didn’t guess anything. So yeah, maybe next time I’ll be better prepared. So yeah, thanks for the invite and I’m sure we will have a great discussion today.

Moeez: All right, I can see a lot of people are already hyped for this session. Savv says that he loves, WP Bakery is your product. Philip says that he loved the topic itself. UX obviously is such a stickler for many companies I think that they work with. And then Sandy B says they’re going to be glued for this session. So a lot of people, Fati says that he loves this topic and he’s been looking forward to this one since the beginning. So a lot of people are already hyped up for this session.

So without any further ado let’s really get into it and start off with the question. So Raitis and Bogdan, since this session is about UX and how to get more out of your e-commerce stores, my first question is how does a minimal UX directly impact conversion rates and checkout completions compared to feature-heavy design? I mean we come across e-commerce stores where there are so many prompts and heavy menus and busy product pages, and then we see minimal stores with just a good product picture, minimal on the text, and then a very good compelling CTA. So, how does a minimal UX directly impact conversion rates? Bogdan, if you want to go first on this one.

Bogdan Condurache: Sure. I think this part of minimal UX will probably not apply to every store out there. Maybe some stores, maybe the Amazons of the world will need more than a minimal UX. But for most stores right now that we as designers and builders are doing, I think minimal UX is very important to focus on the conversion path. Don’t add an extra button, an extra banner, some sorts of popups that will just make the users pause or question or maybe click away not knowing what to do. Very simple hierarchy with a funnel focused on the checkout and the conversion path. It’s very simple, stripped away from the non-essentials. And I think this is what people are hoping to find in a store.

And for example, I’ve just ordered something a few days ago and between the product page where I clicked to add to cart and go to checkout, there was an extra page which kind of got on my nerves because it said something like, are you sure you don’t want these other products that go well with your product? And that kind of annoyed me and I wanted to just click away and not do anything because the next button to go to the effective checkout was kind of hidden and I didn’t like that one, and I thought did this page really do something for me or just annoy me. So I think stuff like that that you try to upsell is maybe useful in some cases but if your brand is something that needs a minimal design, something very cool, something typography based mostly and contrasty, I think those types of distractions are not the way to go.

Moeez: Awesome. Raitis, your thoughts.

Raitis Sevelis: Yeah. Well, first of all, I took my pen to document what Bogdan has to say because actually during the panels, it seems like we are experts, we come to the panel, but during the discussion, you kind of uncover usually some interesting things, interesting thoughts that you just write down. So I very much agree with Bogdan on the distractions. So we are living in a society where there are really short attention spans. You need to grab attention within a few seconds and keep that attention. So look at how kids and younger people use social media. So it’s this habit of scrolling, switching, liking. So the same rules basically apply to e-commerce.

So if you introduce a lot of elements, a lot of distraction, it takes the attention away from the main goal, the conversion path. And while there are cases also, I think Bogdan mentioned Amazon, which is a bit different. But usually when people think about e-commerce you initially start to think okay that’s Amazon, those kind of things, but all the microtransactions, all those services and so on, this is also e-commerce, and there that grabbing the attention is extremely important to make sure that people make that microtransaction to purchase some credits. So this is where that minimal UX is extremely important.

Moeez: Awesome. Moving on to the next question. It’s more about the less is more, the topic itself. Why is less is more such an effective principle in e-commerce UX especially for today’s generation of buyers? I mean if you talk about the Gen Z’s, the younger people, this, you mentioned it yourself in your answer that they have a shorter attention span, so apart from that why is less is more such an effective principle in e-commerce UX considering that group of buyers that are still young, that are still in that stage where they’re sort of earning their buying power and moving up that stage?

Raitis Sevelis: Maybe I can continue as you mentioned. So, first of all, that’s a habit of young people, and, well, less is more is not really that new a concept. It has been in UX for a long time. I think I heard that somewhere around 15 years ago, people talking about it, but again, that’s when I heard it. I think that if you are able to provide that user experience to the customers that basically allows them to quickly make a purchase instantly without any effort, you secure that customer as a loyal customer. So in fact, if there are no obstacles and everyone is happy at the end of the deal, there is a way higher chance that that customer will come back.

And we are talking again about the product for the subscription services, that’s a completely different story, again you need to make sure that it’s extremely easy to purchase those things, and extremely easy to use the product and so on. So make sure that people don’t churn because we all know that your cost per customer acquisition is way higher compared to keeping the existing customers.

Bogdan Condurache: Yeah. And on top of that, I fully agree. These generations, Gen Z and Gen Alpha, you need to be careful not to annoy them with anything, not add extra stuff that’s not useful because they are not used to this kind of distractions, and maybe not like myself as a millennial, I’m used to maybe reading a bit more, maybe studying a bit more of some stuff. Nowadays with TikTok, you just scroll scroll. If you don’t find something in three seconds, it’s gone.

So basically the UX for e-commerce right now needs to be very smooth and make the process super simple, not go overboard with text. Maybe use more visual cues, imagery, stuff like that that’s useful for them, or video or some sort of five seconds showing the product in some way that completes the details for them without having to read three paragraphs of text. So with these generations and maybe with us, we don’t have the time anymore to study and to spend. We are all busy of course, and making it simple without jumping through hoops is something that I think every website in general should have and especially with e-commerce where you need to just buy something quickly.

Moeez: Awesome. Let’s move on to the next question and it’s about mobile first. In a mobile first world, what minimal UX elements are absolutely non-negotiable for e-commerce stores?

Bogdan Condurache: I can go first because I’ve recently designed something for an e-commerce shop and I think in mobile the add to cart button needs to be, maybe even sticky in the product page. Let’s say when you scroll something with the details, but maybe in the bottom you need the add to cart button so you don’t need to find it again. These are stuff that maybe increases your conversions. Also, the search in the mobile app needs to probably be visual. I’ve seen something recently with some results when I’ve searched something showing the actual thumbnails of the products and the small text instead of just lines of text where you maybe don’t tap right, only in the text. Maybe do it like a bigger stuff, these are cues in UX and UI that’s really helpful with e-commerce, make them bigger, make the products that are in the search more visible.

Also, the navigation needs to be super simple with mobile. The hamburger menu doesn’t need to have super involved categories or stuff like that. Maybe four or five items like home, shop, cart, and the count, something like that. And of course, as usual, large clickable CTAs, so you can just go there. So I think these are some of the elements that should be very optimized for e-commerce in a mobile first world.

Moeez: Awesome. Raitis, you would like to share your thoughts on this one?

Raitis Sevelis: If we are very very specific. I would maybe even add like voice control. It’s something like a crazy idea because we see that people start to use that more often. Yeah, we will probably touch somewhere the elephant in the room, the AI. But yeah, voice control gets bigger. And I would maybe even rephrase the question, it’s not about the elements that you must have. It’s vice versa. I think this was the quote that the good user interface is not when you add more things but when there is nothing that you can take away. You’re left with the very basics, and I think for the mobile first we are talking about, you need to have only the very basics because as Bogdan said things need to be big for a better experience so it’s easier to click, the very basic information with an easy option of course to go as deep as you want and discover things, but very basic functions. So this is where we talked that mobile first is definitely minimalistic user experience.

Moeez: Got it. Very insightful. And before I move on to my next question, I just want to jump into the comments and see what people have said and asked so far. So, Sor is sharing his love, he uses WP Bakery for his website. Thank you so much for sharing that thought. Amelia has a question. So, does this help the user achieve the primary goal? If I remove it, what happens? Amelia, if you can be more specific about your question, you can follow up on this one in the comment section and we can take it then and answer it more properly.

Curtis has a question. So, the UX is substantially affected by the images seen along the UX. Do you have a tool or sources on where we might obtain images that can be used during the UX? Raitis, if you want to take this, or Bogdan.

Bogdan Condurache: I’m not sure what Curtis is referring to, but maybe he refers to not overloading the user experience with too many images, but as a tool or sources, I’m not sure about this.

Raitis Sevelis: I think with the images, it’s definitely, you need to use the images only if you really need them. So you don’t really solve user experience things with images. So especially in minimalistic e-commerce they are serving a specific thing. So basically to showcase the product, in most of the cases those are the only images that you have. Everything else of course, like we use pictograms, icons, those kind of things, but they are to complement usually text.

Bogdan Condurache: So yeah, what I’d maybe say here, even though maybe it’s not about this question, sometimes when you need to say something regarding your product maybe you can use an image. For example what I’ve seen recently, or for quite some time, instead of saying this product has been ecologically sourced materials or something like that, you might use a badge of some sort of eco-friendly in green or something like that without having to write a paragraph of text saying this was eco-sourced. You know, maybe add a badge, maybe add something visual that in an inch of real estate space kind of conveys the purpose of your idea. So this might also mean a minimal UX, and people will notice it, but will not have to read a paragraph of text. So maybe this is an idea with images that can help the UX without being overwhelming.

Moeez: Awesome. Thank you Curtis for that question. If you think that this hasn’t been answered yet, you can follow up on the question and ask it again in the comment section. Thank you so much for the answer on this one, Raitis. Let’s go back to our panel questions and I just want to touch on the point of friction points. Where do you see the most friction points in today’s e-commerce stores and how do you think the minimal UX concept can solve them?

Bogdan Condurache: I think the friction point is either in product discovery, maybe it’s hard to find the product, maybe your search is not good enough, maybe the structure of your categories is too deep. I think two levels maximum of hierarchy, like a main category and a subcategory and that’s it. If you go, of course, there are websites that need to go deeper and I think that’s not our discussion here, but for most stores, not going too far with the structure of your website might mean an easier product discovery, which is good and stops this friction point.

And also I think that the cart and checkout page needs to be very clear, and maybe you don’t want to see unexpected costs like extra shipping, taxes or VAT here in Europe versus what you’ve seen in the product page. That creates a friction and the negative idea that I’ve kind of been tricked into going here and buying stuff, and this part, I think full pricing transparency should be the key here and it reduces the friction. In my mind this is very important, what you see is what you will pay.

Raitis Sevelis: Yeah, I agree with Bogdan, and basically Bogdan started from the top and slowly down the funnel. So the transparency is definitely in many cases an issue. So what Bogdan mentioned about the prices. So people check the data of an average e-commerce website, you will see that there are a lot of people just leaving the website at the checkout process. And there are basically two things, usually the reason for that is basically the transparency with the pricing. So different taxes being added and different other costs. Or very, how to say, pushy upselling. This also creates negativity.

We in the European Union for example, being transparent with the prices is a bit tricky because we need to calculate that, and basically that’s a chicken and egg problem. So you cannot provide a final price before you kind of know where the user is from. So but to know where user is from you should kind of ask the user to register. Of course you can determine by IP and so on but that’s not 100% precise. There are, especially now that a lot of us are digital nomads, so you never know where you’re coming from, what payment method you’re using and so on. And the second is the payment process itself. So this is where the problem also usually comes to light. So you basically need to make sure that it’s extremely easy for people to pay. I’m already giving you money. So make sure that it’s not a problem for me to give you money.

Bogdan Condurache: Yeah. And also on this one, I have a small example that kind of shocked me when I saw it. We’ve built a store for a partner of ours and they wanted four shipping methods or providers, very similar but four different ones for some reason. They wanted that and we built it and we’ve seen that many people didn’t know what to do there and kind of stumbled between the differences. The pricing with shipping wasn’t that much and it didn’t really make sense to have four of them when they were super similar. And we’ve seen some friction there and we said let’s just put one or two maximum, and that sped up the checkout quite significantly. And we never thought of that but, because sometimes too many choices when they are very similar makes, how is it called, it’s a problem when you don’t know what to choose basically.

Raitis Sevelis: It’s analysis paralysis or something like that.

Bogdan Condurache: Choice paralysis. You don’t know what to choose and you close the tab and you go away. So that’s quite tricky. Too many options. So that might be a friction point. Just be certain that you have two or maybe one if it’s the greatest option you want for your users, and just put the option for sure for shipping.

Raitis Sevelis: There is this usability standard, not the standard but recommendation, I think it was, correct me if I’m wrong, something like seven items, that’s what people are ready to accept.

Bogdan Condurache: Yeah, so seven, it’s the choice, you know the color choice or variation, the menu for example as well. Yeah, the categories, if it’s more it’s harder.

Moeez: Awesome. I want to also touch on the fact that a lot of e-commerce stores tend to have this storytelling that might get compromised when they implement the minimal UX principle. How can they tackle that? How can they make sure that they keep on implementing this minimal UX strategy for their e-commerce stores while they also keep intact that branding element and that storytelling element within their e-commerce store as well so that there is no tradeoff?

Raitis Sevelis: Well, I think that your brand needs to grow with the technologies and with the time. So it can be the case when hey, we developed our story and brand like 10 years ago and keep on telling it the same way. Yes it’s the same story but, you know, people carved things on stone. Then they discovered paper. Now we are watching movies. So the same thing happens here. So new technologies, new methodologies, frameworks, ideas that also transform the way how you deliver your message. You need to adjust it. So make sure that you have specific brand directions described for your e-commerce platform.

And talking about storytelling, storytelling shouldn’t be a 500 word paragraph, you might do that with an image or with a short video. So basically brands need to adapt to this very visual and sped up world that we’re living in. So maybe just do something for your users that’s minimalistic and conveys the idea.

Bogdan Condurache: Also maybe use microcopy which could be like a line of text based on your brand identity and stuff like that. And I think this is very powerful when you personalize it towards the user. For example, I had a while ago a very cool email from a jeans brand that, I wanted to buy some jeans and I put them in the shopping cart and left them there for a few days and suddenly an email came back and said, you’ve got great taste but you’ve left the jeans in the bag, and some sort of that. But that line where it said, “You’ve got great taste, Bogdan.” Of course, I knew it was something generic and every product of theirs was something cool that says about me that I have great taste. I immediately understood what they did there and they personalized it with my name in the email, but I liked it and I said, yeah, maybe I’ll click this one because you guys did a great job with the microcopy and it got my attention.

Super simple, but instead they could have written a two-line paragraph that you forgot this item that is still in your shopping bag for five hours or so. I wouldn’t have clicked on that. So it makes all the difference how you do this microcopy and personalization and storytelling, the brand was this type of out there and more friendly and not super corporate, and it fit their brand perfectly, that line, you’ve got great taste, come and get your jeans or something like that, super nice. And I think this minimalistic approach works quite nice and the big brands are doing that for years.

Moeez: Yeah, that’s an excellent example. So really nice point, work done on the microcopy, and the example was very nice. I think that is something that we can really take away from this session, is that using microcopy, using those little tiny sentences, and it actually worked because Bogdan bought that pair of jeans.

Raitis Sevelis: There is this joke which probably reflects what Bogdan just said, it’s like, user interface is like a joke, if you have to explain it, it’s not that good. So the same basically refers to your brand story. If you’re not able to tell your brand story in a short way, well, maybe you are doing it in a bit wrong way. So you try to reconsider basically.

Moeez: Awesome. So let’s move on to metrics. How do, what’s your approach to testing minimal UX decisions and are there metrics beyond bounce rate and conversions that actually matter?

Bogdan Condurache: I think conversion is the most important one. You need to keep an eye on conversions, and then maybe on the speed of the user journey, like from when they got to your website to how much time they are spending, which is not necessarily bad if they are spending a lot of time, but if they’re spending a lot of time and not going to the checkout and completion, that’s a problem. Time to completion. If it’s fast, the lower the better. The minimal UX will help with that for sure. And of course, the website speed needs to be fast. Everything in there should be working perfectly, not missing clicks on buttons or stuff like that. But I think this time to checkout, time to completion, from where they get to the landing page or the product page or even homepage to the final one, should be interesting to go and find how you can improve that.

Raitis Sevelis: With user experience it feels, hey, it’s a bit hard to measure on the emotional side. What I see that many brands are not really using is customer satisfaction rate. So with customer satisfaction rate, instantly people think okay, should I use it only at the end of the conversion? Not necessarily. The idea of the customer satisfaction rate is that you apply it to a certain path and then at the end you ask the user how satisfied you are, how quick and easy it was to complete that certain task, and this is the way how you can basically measure a certain path within your e-commerce process. So that would give a bit of, if we’re talking that time to conversion, what we basically named, all those are quantitative metrics. So with customer satisfaction rate we are talking a bit of quality metrics, a bit different. And of course, such things as manual screen analysis, we have plenty of tools like Hotjar. Or Microsoft had that Clarity thing. So that’s also the way how to basically measure things.

Moeez: Yeah. Exactly. Awesome. Let’s again dive into the comments and see if people have any questions for Bogdan and Raitis. So Marvin here asks that is tab-based checkout, like cart, address, and then checkout, is it a good minimal UX practice? Is it something that you guys would recommend?

Bogdan Condurache: No. I’m not a fan of tabs to be honest. Maybe if by tabs you are referring to something that’s on the screen and you will get to them via next, next. That’s probably a good thing to let the user know that there are a couple more steps into this process. That’s very good. And I think it helps. But don’t go into the idea that you’ll need five steps to complete this. Just make it as simple as possible. If it doesn’t require three steps, do it in two. Do it in one. Why not? You don’t need extra steps just because it looks nice in a minimalistic UI style just to have three steps. Why the three steps? The best carts that I’ve seen are just one step and mostly click click. They already know my account and I’m off. Not necessarily just log in, then go into the shipping, then go into the billing address, then into the whatever. Don’t go that way. Maybe it’s more information in a single page, but do it in a way that just doesn’t require five steps. That’s my opinion at least.

Raitis Sevelis: Yeah. So the question is probably also like what do you have in those steps? It’s also important. It can be one step, it can be three steps, five steps, any number of steps. You can definitely go wrong how you display information within those steps. So that’s something to consider. But I’m maybe not that strict about the steps. Of course, if I would see like plenty of steps, that would scare me a bit. But if you still want to use steps and you have it because of some specific reasons, then making that clear how many steps there are is probably very important, because that’s one of the, probably what we skipped on the frictions, is uncertainty. So will I end that process now? How fast, what’s happening next? What is going to happen when I click this button? Am I going to the next step or are my card being charged or what?

Bogdan Condurache: Yeah. And also this could be A/B tested, like trying a few weeks, a few months with the address in between, because I’ve actually just seen Marvin’s question which was cart, address and checkout, which makes sense. Maybe the address is not a mandatory step which could be included in the checkout part. The cart is obviously something that needs to be its own separate stuff, but maybe you could try without the address step in the middle. Just include it maybe in the checkout and do it simpler like that. I don’t think it’s a problem necessarily, but it adds a bit of clicks. But as Raitis said, if you make it clear and it’s obvious that you’re at this step and you only have another step, that’s perfect. As long as you know that the journey is two or maybe three steps.

Moeez: Awesome. Thank you so much Bogdan. With that we can conclude this panel discussion. I think it was really insightful. I think this was one of the best sessions that we have had today. I think a lot of people in the chat will share that opinion as well because they were already looking forward to this session because of the topic and obviously because of the guest speakers that we had today in this panel discussion. So thank you Raitis for your time. Thank you Bogdan for being here and being part of the Prepathon.

Before I let you guys go, just wanted to know your few words on how do you think about the Prepathon, about this event, and if you have any few words to say about this online event.

Raitis Sevelis: Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I love the energy that is happening around. I also want to thank Bogdan. So, well, first of all we look alike a little bit to be fair. That’s the fact number one. And I think, yeah, I really enjoyed the discussion, love the ideas that Bogdan shared and I truly hope that the few things that we managed to share in this time may help some of the people to improve their websites. I think that’s the main goal.

Bogdan Condurache: Yeah. Congrats on the event. It’s a great idea, an amazing idea, and everyone should take a look at the sessions and the panels. It’s quite nice and I think these discussions about web in general just bring ideas and work for people that want to build more and know more and find out other people’s ideas and where are we going? Even with this minimal stuff, with the AI, probably with everything that’s going in the world, there’s so much noise, so much, so many opinions. Sometimes the opinions in social media might be a bit skewed towards some people’s interest or stuff like that. I think here at this event, it’s quite nice. You can hear people’s actual thoughts about stuff and products and experiences and the web. So you guys are doing a great job and thank you everyone for listening to us for more than half an hour.

Moeez: All right. Thank you both. Thank you Bogdan for those kind of words and obviously for being here and being part of our online event. As for the audience who are watching, don’t go away because in the next session we are going to be auditing online stores live on stage. So at the start of the day we asked a few people to send over their online stores if they wanted to be audited and we got a few and we are going to be auditing them in the next session with a UX expert from DigitalOcean. So, make sure to stick around especially those who submitted their online stores in the comment section, because you would want to know if you have any improvements in your online store, if you have any things that you can work on to make it more successful and more profitable. So, stick around. We will be back in just a few minutes.