Buying and selling products over the internet has gained huge momentum as evident from the growth of eCommerce stores in the past of couple years. Online retail sales and US eCommerce revenue has projected to reach over $226 billion in the current year.
I just joined the eCommerce customer’s club and visited many of these sites. After carefully analyzing a couple of eCommerce websites, I noted down 5 major things which can prove to be detrimental for the conversion rate of the site which in turn leads to a lower number of sales and hence a lower profit.
Poor Graphic & Design
A mature look and feel for your website is a vital thing which any eCommerce site must provide their customers with. Good graphics and a professional design shall go a long way in gaining visitors’ trust. Website’s likeability is proportional to its revenue. If the visitor doesn’t find the look of the website pleasing enough, chances are he will bounce from your website.
Lack of shopping info
Customers must know the exact amount they are going to pay for a product. Add shipping cost beforehand to your product rather than going through a complex procedure where customer first submits credit card info and then system calculates the shipping costs. This might be way too cumbersome for your customers and can be a huge turn off.
Presence of unnecessary stuff
Avoid having broken links, irrelevant images, useless pages etc. Make sure that all the links and images on your website are accessible without any hitch. Make the product description crisp and clean. Highlighted features describing the product is way better than huge chunks of paragraphs.
Lack of support for the customer
Nothing is more annoying for your customer than finding that there is no one available to clear his doubts and inquiries regarding the product he wishes to buy from your eCommerce website. Make sure that you always remain in touch with your customer and make your customer feel that he is always at your reach. Provide mobile device support to your website and a customer care helping along with a live chat option.
Its important to choose the appropriate size for a text or an image. Make sure that fonts you use and images you insert are well visible to the visitor. Highlight important factors such as price and key features. Use images which clearly show the customer your product. Make the customer feel like “I get what I see”. Use multiple images in perfect size. A picture is worth more than a thousand words.
Always remember that a there are thousands of eCommerce sites competing and a customer is just a click away from your competitor site. So don’t leave any stone unturned in trying to please the visitors on your website because visitors will lead to customers which in turn would will lead to repeat customers.
Guest Post Contributor - Jason Adams. Looking for premium quality and affordable office furniture in Pompano Beach, Florida ? Check out officefurnitureonline.com
Nice ! I would like to add 2 more points.E-commerce sites should also be build with good Page Navigation and also should have Related Products Widget visible in the side bar or under the Page.
Gowtham recently posted..Nokia 6111 Specifications and Price
Yes Gautham thanks for adding such nice points ! Relevent intrest widget is really necessary
E-commerce sites must be easy to navigate and loading time must be very less other wise customer will be left with out seeing the site.However thanks for the share.
I have to say my most frustrating experience is a lack of detail. Just yesterday, I was on a major retailers website looking at waste cans and couldn’t believe to only detail was “Beautiful Chrome Wastecan”, no dimensions what so ever. I can’t tell you how quickly I switched over to another site to continue my search.
Ohh that’s’ really bad ! UX is important otherwise you will loose your existing customer also !
Though this article is enough to serve as a check-list for anyone who wants to build an e-commerce site. But there is one point I want to add. I’ve seen that on most ecommerce site not adequate attention is paid to SEO. Killer design, good navigation etc, these factors will only matter when you have succeeded in bringing people to your site. And visitors will only find your site if it’s ranking among top sites in SERPs. This is the whole point of SEO. So don’t neglect this factor as well.
Ivana recently posted..What is b2b ecommerce software?
Yes SERP is another important factor