Simplify online shopping for senior citizens: 16 UX ideas

As more seniors get savvy with their screens, it’s time to make sure your eCommerce game is on point for this growing group.

Before you dive into the UX, let's understand these senior shoppers.

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16 UX Ideas to Make it Easier for Senior Shoppers

Senior Shoppers Are More Connected Than You Think 

• 86% of online seniors spend at least six hours a day online.
• Seniors own an average of five electronic devices.
• 82% of seniors use a smartphone daily.
• While internet use declines with age, it does so more slowly than often assumed.
• Senior eCommerce customers resemble millennial and Gen X shoppers in their online activities.
• 91% of older adults use the internet to stay in touch with family and friends.
• 87% of seniors track their finances online.
• 73% of seniors use the internet for health and wellness information.
• 88% of adults aged 55+ watch YouTube weekly.

Who are these ‘Digital Seniors’? 

Online shopping among seniors is on the rise, and it's clear that older adults are becoming more tech-savvy. 

To keep up with this shift, we need to make sure online stores are easy to navigate. 

That's where accessibility experts come in. 

They can help us fine-tune our websites to be more user-friendly and identify any potential hurdles that might make online shopping difficult for seniors.

The U.S. Census Bureau expects that by 2035, there will be more people over 65 than there are kids under 18. 

Plus, by 2030, one in five Americans will be of retirement age. 

As this older crowd grows, so does their comfort with technology. 

Many folks currently in their 40s, who have been using the internet for years, will be approaching retirement by then, conscious of how their spending habits can affect their retirement savings.

Even those who aren’t big online shoppers today will have plenty of time to get into eCommerce before they hit retirement.

How Do Older Adults Like to Shop?

Understanding certain shopping traits of older adults is key to improving their online shopping experience.

Here’s the lowdown:

• Cautious Clickers: Seniors are like the thorough detectives of online shopping. They research, compare prices, and read reviews like pros. They also trust recommendations from friends and family—so if you can get a thumbs-up from their inner circle, you’re golden!
• Store Shoppers at Heart: Even though they’re diving into online shopping for essentials, many still love the in-store experience. They like to touch and try before they buy. So, think of online shopping as their go-to for routine buys, but they still cherish the store experience for new or special purchases.
• Need-to-Know Info: They prefer having all the juicy details upfront. Taxes, shipping costs, and any important info about the products—make sure it’s all clear and easy to find.
• Simple Wins: If the shopping journey gets tricky or frustrating, they might just bail. So, keep things simple and user-friendly to keep them coming back.
• Trust is a Must: Building trust is key. Older shoppers want to feel confident and secure, so make sure your site and service inspire confidence.

16 UX Ideas to Make it Easier for Senior Shoppers

1. Avoid hidden menus

In terms of navigation, senior online shoppers are looking for ease and discoverability. 

Hidden menus and hamburger menus tend to make them spend more time hunting down for categories and sub-categories, leading to increased frustration. 

The antidote:

Easy-to-spot dropdown menus with visual cues like arrows to ascertain discoverability. 

Here’s how activewear brand Lagatta, whose target audience is older women, gets this right. 

Need to read more? Here's Boost conversions with the right Navigation Menu (Ideas + Examples)

2. Create cognitive ease (through linear information & visual flow)

What may seem apparent to younger shoppers, isn’t so for older buyers. 

For example, while a young millennial might make complete sense of a column of clickable anchor pictures followed by a banner on a sitewide sale, an older shopper might get confused. 

The idea then is to keep information, both textual and visual, as linear and simple as possible. 

Costco ensures this in a number of ways:

They keep the navigation menu easy to understand 

Notice how in the example below, the “shop” mentioned next to the hamburger menu helps discoverability. 

Offer step-by-step instructions to make content accessible

Here are a few snapshots from their pet medication page, which offers clear distinction so that medical terminologies are clearly understood. 

They’ve also listed medication based on the letter it starts with, to aid easy sorting and choosing. 

3. Pay close attention to color, contrast & font (for improved visibility)

Research shows that between the age of 25 and 60, people’s ability to view and use websites declines by about 0.8% every year. 

This makes it necessary for you to alter the color and contrast of your eCommerce storefront in ways that increase usability. 

For color:

Remember that from the point of usability, seniors resonate with color play only when it is supported clearly by text. 

So let’s say you want them to NOT TAKE AN ACTION. 

In this case, you’ll have to color code and support it with the right message. 

In our example, Seniority tells a shopper WHAT THEY NEED TO DO EXACTLY, the color green giving the go-ahead to click “here”. 

For contrast:

While the minimum recommended contrast between text color and background color is 4.5:1, for senior shoppers, it might be good to notch it up a bit and pin it at 7.0:1. 

For fonts:

Big fonts that can also be customized is one way you can create better visibility for the vision impaired.

4. Focus on micro-copy to highlight benefits (& ask for information)

Covid-19 ensured seniors aged 65 and above spent 49% more in online transactions than the year before. 

But despite this shift, senior shoppers tend to be looking for the same big reason to shop at one place over another: Trust. 

While building your eCommerce storefront to be senior-friendly, you’ll have to ensure the microcopy you use is able to build this trust. 

Here’s a look at some microcopy from AgingCare:

Notice how the brand takes care to offer in-depth detail about the product. 

In a slightly smaller font, it also talks about what AgingCare does and how it’s a participant in the Amazon Associates Program to convey integrity. 

You'll love: How to write product descriptions for mobile: 22 proven ideas (with examples)

5. Navigational breadcrumbs can offer better contextual orientation

One of the pressing difficulties that senior shoppers experience is short-term memory. 

This can impede them from precisely remembering what they’re doing within the pages of a particular category and how to make their way back to “home”.

Navigational breadcrumbs, in enough detail, can offer them ongoing context about where they are on your site. 

Senior.com ensures they have breadcrumbs throughout their website. 

6. Highlight all important assistance links & icons

It’s one thing to have a website with no assistance resources and quite another if the shopper does not know that the website does have such resources. 

While a young millennial shopper may instantly recognize the chat symbol on the live chat button, a senior shopper might struggle if it’s not spelt out. 

Seniority, for example, doesn’t just offer the live chat icon. 

They ask the question – “How may I help you today?” – alongside.

ElderStore, on the other hand, drives the focus of shoppers towards their customer support number (notice the language they use to communicate: Talk to a REAL person):

7. Prioritize established payment methods (more than new options)

Senior shoppers, though more adept at online shopping now than before, don’t easily trust payment methods – unless they’ve used them before or heard of them from trustworthy sources. 

So while younger shoppers may convert more easily when they’re offered more payment options, older buyers tend to look out for familiar and recommended methods. 

Ensure to bring in payment via banks and Paypal and in case you have enough scale, then COD as well.

Fact: 26% shoppers aged 65 and older were still preferring cash to pay.

8. Make accessibility a priority in your UX design

Since disability (visual, cognitive and otherwise) is a given among many senior shoppers, designing your eCommerce store for accessibility becomes crucial. 

Here are a few to-dos when you’re trying to prioritize accessibility:

Ensure links are identifiable and clickable

This way shoppers who use screen readers would know how to navigate. 

For this to happen, the site’s markup language will need to label links by using native HTML language appropriately. 

Label links consistently across the site

This becomes vital for shoppers using screen readers to distinguish between link destinations. For example, if you tag a link as “women’s apparel” at one place and

“women’s clothing” at another, while both are supposed to lead to the same destination, this can be confusing. 

Optimize for a 44x44 pixel clickable area

According to the web accessibility guidelines, this ensures any CTA button is clickable without older shoppers needing to be too precise. 

9. Limit pop-ups & other distractions

Most senior shoppers love a sense of familiarity and security while they’re on their browsing and purchase journey. 

In short, they like to be on the page they CHOSE to come to unless they CHOOSE to go to another page out of their own volition. 

Pop-ups and icons expanding on their own with messages can be distracting from this point of view. 

What you can do instead:

Especially if you were thinking a pop-up could help you seek feedback or offer a discount – do it through a sticky clickable icon, which allows the shopper to be in control.

Here’s an example from Senior.com. 

Once the sticky icon is clicked, it expands into a box asking for more personal information. 

Dive in deeper with: Make your mobile payment page “conversion-friendly” (13 UX hacks)

10. Leverage error messages to offer next steps

The last thing you want is your senior shoppers panicking after they see an error message or not knowing what to do next. 

Confusion can often be a big reason for older shoppers dropping off an eCommerce site – and to avoid that, you’ll have to find ways to leverage your error messages to:

• Help them discover more of your products
• Tell them how to get back to the homepage
• Explain what the error means and how they can proceed next

Here’s an example you could take inspiration from:

11. Make your forms super easy to fill

The longer it takes older shoppers to navigate through the various steps in browsing or purchasing, the likelier it becomes for them to jump off. 

This is the reason why designing forms will need extra attention from your side. 

Here are a few steps that are non-negotiable:

Limit the number of form fields

If the customer’s address is not necessary for the action, don’t have separate fields for it. 

Optimize form fields for mobile usage

Make your form fields large (so that they are touch error tolerant) and have enough space between the fields. 

Use in-line validation to drive attention to invalid inputs

Alongside, offer error messages to ensure the shopper knows when to edit the information they’ve entered. 

This is how succinct liveWELL manages to keep their preliminary homepage form:

Here's a super helpful read: Low form conversions? Making any of these 10 mistakes?

12. Add a personal touch 

Offer step-by-step guidance through the shopping process. 

The virtual assistant could suggest items based on previous purchases or preferences, and explain how to complete tasks in a simple, non-technical language.

Implement a feature that remembers user preferences, such as favorite brands or frequently purchased items. 

The assistant could then suggest these options proactively, like, "I remember you love this brand. Would you like to reorder?"

Also, integrate a feature where the virtual assistant can share shopping lists or purchase ideas with family members or caregivers, making it easier for senior shoppers to get help.

13. Use videos to nudge products

Fact: 88% of adults ages 55+ watch YouTube every week.

On the homepage, feature short, engaging video clips to introduce new products or highlight popular items.

Include clear, simple demonstration videos on product pages that explain how to use the product. 

These videos can help build confidence in purchasing decisions by showing exactly what the product does and how it works in real-life scenarios.

Offer video tutorials that guide users through the shopping process. 

For example, a video could walk them through adding items to their cart, applying discount codes, or completing a purchase. 

This would be especially helpful for senior shoppers who might be less familiar with online shopping.

Encourage customers to watch video reviews from other senior shoppers. 

Seeing a peer talk about their experience with a product can be more relatable and reassuring than reading text-based reviews.

Provide customer support through video chat or pre-recorded FAQ videos. 

If a senior citizen has a question about a product or needs help with their order, they can watch a video that walks them through the solution or speak to a representative face-to-face.

14. Make your store accessible with voice-activated navigation 

Fact: 37% of consumers aged 55 years and older use voice search to learn about local businesses.

Reduce the need for typing – let senior citizens search for products using voice commands. 

For instance, they could say, "Show me kitchen appliances," and the assistant would display relevant options. 

Enable a hands-free checkout process where senior shoppers can confirm their cart items, choose a payment method, and finalize their purchase using voice commands. 

For instance, "Proceed to checkout," followed by "Use my saved credit card," and "Place order."

Ensure that the voice-activated features are compatible with popular smart speakers like Amazon Alexa or Google Home. 

This way, senior citizens can shop through their devices without needing to interact with a screen at all.

15. Be mindful of the ‘back’ click 

Online shopping for senior citizens can be confusing. 

They may not be as familiar with navigating complex websites, so accidentally clicking the back button could lead to confusion. 

They might lose their place, forget what they were doing, or end up on a page they didn’t intend to visit, causing frustration.

If they hit it accidentally and have to start over, then it reduces the likelihood of them completing a purchase on your store.

You can create a section for "Recent Pages" or "Recently Viewed" so senior shoppers can quickly jump back to any previously visited page without using the back button.

For actions that require additional information (like adding an item to the cart or viewing product details), use pop-ups with easily clickable close buttons instead of navigating to a new page. 

This keeps the senior citizen within the same context and reduces the need for backtracking.

Make navigation buttons large and clearly labeled, so senior shoppers can easily identify where each button will take them. 

Labels like "Go Back to Previous Page" or "Return to Product List" can replace generic back arrows, offering more context.

16. Reassure customers after an action 

Many seniors might feel anxious about making mistakes online, such as accidentally adding the wrong item to their cart or not completing a purchase correctly. 

Positive reinforcement through reassuring feedback encourages senior shoppers to continue engaging with the site. 

When they feel supported and confident in their actions, they are more likely to explore further, make purchases, and return for future shopping experiences.

After the older adult completes an action, such as adding an item to the cart or placing an order, provide an immediate and clear confirmation message. 

For example, "Item added to your cart!" or "Your order has been placed successfully!" with a friendly checkmark icon to reinforce that the action was successful.

If the senior shoppers performs a significant action, such as deleting an item from the cart or leaving a page, provide a gentle nudge with a message like, "Are you sure you want to remove this item?" or "Don't worry, your changes have been saved." 

This reassures them that their actions are being tracked and they won’t lose progress.

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