Online shopping industry often faces the problems and difficulties that are hard to understand and solve. One of them tells us about the situation when visitors leave your website unexpectedly, without buying goods or services you suggest.
This is a quite critical problem, as in most cases online retailers have no idea what has happened. You offer high-quality products, take care of your brand and promote it actively, but something turns off customers. The point is that even the smallest detail and the most meaningless issue may affect sales negatively.
Website usability problems are a mystery for non-technical online business experts. But such things as load time or user experience define the successful sale and build your road to the leading positions. Find out what are the common issues and make your store better with us!
Do You Have a Website, but People Do not Buy from there? Let's Analyze the Reasons
Sometimes everything you need to do to increase sales is making customers journey more seamless. You may think that if the visitor browsers you website nothing can go wrong. But in fact, a lot of unpleasant things may happen before visitors try to reach the checkout. Some of them are obvious, others are not. But the better you understand website features and problems the more likely you will fix the issues and guide your customer to the purchase.
This article is your irreplaceable assistant. Here, we prepared a list of top problems for you to ensure that none of them takes place on the pages of your website.
Indecently Long Page Load Time
What step do you take if a web page is loading for too long? That’s right, you simply close it. Your visitors do the same with the pages of your website. This trouble is considered to be the most common, so we decided to present it on the top of critical website problems list.
People expect the Internet pages to load as fast as possible. According to the research, half of the Internet users agree to devote not more than 2-3 seconds for waiting, and after this time they go looking for another online store. Let’s proceed with more precise numbers: 79 percent of customers that have visited slow website will never come back again, no matter is it is eCommerce website or not. And 64 percent of those who will not return for another purchase are ready to make a deal with the competitors. As you can see, those numbers are impressive and influential, and the problems with website’s speed may damage your sales considerably.
Yes, it all looks quite scary. It is hard to recognize that visitors may abandon your website just because of 1-2 seconds. But you can always improve your website’s speed and make them stay and spend money at your store. A few simple steps will help you do this and keep your head above the water:
- Analysis
The very first step to the improvement is to analyze your website’s speed. Get acquainted with Google Webmaster tools, Google’s Page Speed Insight, install the special plugins and build the picture of what goes wrong.
- Optimization
Optimize the size of images to provide the visitors with a better experience. Most of the graphics applications enable the Save for Web option, so stick to it when creating content for your website.
- Compressing
Compress your files and JavaScript side of the website to speed up the website.
- Access to Data
Use things called Content Delivery Networks to access the server faster. Amazon Cloud Front may be useful to fulfil this task.
Additionally, set up your CSS and JavaScript externally so the browser needs to load them only once.
And pay the attention: frontend is not everything. If you would like to proceed with speeding up the website, you need to dive into the backend depths.
Not Complete Product Information
People that prefer buying things online need to have an informative and detailed product description. They cannot come to the digital store and try products by themselves. But at the same time, you can provide them with all significant details and take them to the right decision.
There are always tons of doubts about whether to buy or not to buy. The better these descriptions are presented the more likely hesitations will disappear. Here are some tips for you:
- Unique Descriptions
It is crucial not to copy the product descriptions from another website. Write your own custom text to draw the attention.
- Details
Product page must include the considerable details to make a potential customer buy a thing. If you want to get higher conversion rates, be attentive to the tiny details.
- Feedbacks
Website helps customers to make a choice. But there is a higher possibility of the positive answer if the customers suggest something to each other. Let customers leave feedback and enjoy the sales increase.
- Pictures
First of all, it is high-quality pictures that have the capabilities to attract customer’s attention. And multiple images are one of the best sources of information about the product.
- Infographics
Long texts are boring and dull. Choosing between plain text and colourful charts the customer will stick to the second option. Size and colour make a difference here, so devote your time to build the charts customers would love.
- Related Products
Along with the defined product suggest the customers to take a look at the similar ones.
To summarize, informative description, catchy pictures and customer reviews are the top things you need to provide your potential customers with.
Not Clear Site Navigation
One of the keys to your website success is the effective site navigation. There are obvious reasons for that. First of all, navigation is a vital part of the overall UX, its simplicity appeals to customers and positively impacts the traffic.
To make your customers feel excited to complete a purchase, put search bars to the left side or on the top of the web page. Those standards simplify checkout process and engage the visitors.
If your business deals with multiple product categories implement the practices that allow the customers seamlessly browse your online shop.
- Dropdowns
This menu remains unseen to the visitor until the cursor hovers over the defined label.
- Mega Menus
Mega menu navigation is another helpful feature. It extends the dropdowns with graphics and text.
- Flyout Menus
This is just a horizontal reflection of a dropdown.
Section frequently visited should be separated from the main navigation bars. Put them in the top right corner to allow customers immediately access the shopping cart, profile or checkout etc.
Repellent Site Layout
Here, the rules are simple. If the online store seems unappealing to customers they close it. If the design is dull, or too colourful, too simple or too complicated, people leave without making a purchase. The layout of your online store must be clear, convenient, intuitive and attractive. At the same time, it has to be appropriate to the type of products you sell.
For example, if you sell wedding and cocktail dresses online, the layout should not be designed using dark depressive colours. Or if you owe an online auto parts store, it would be wrong the main elements on the page to be yellow or rosy.
Try to understand the needs of the people that come to your website. Cater to your target audience and satisfy not your own but their wishes first.
Unreasoned Filers
As we have mentioned above, it is not only the interface that may attract or push customers away, it is also UX. And filters are the next significant components of UX essentials we would like to discuss.
Even if the number of products you sell is limited, you should help the customers find exactly what they are looking for. The only possible way to do it is to implement search by categories and the variety of filters on your web pages.
Even if there is no clear understanding of what visitors actually want, they at least have some preferences. To define those preferences filters may include such characteristics as:
- size of the product,
- gender,
- colour,
- brand,
- season or occasion etc.
Personalize search results to make a successful deal. Pick filter options that suit your products best. Customers finding the item they want will appreciate that.
Weak Customer Support and Undesigned Business Processes
Besides high-quality UX, the customers pay their attention to customer support. If the communication between customers and an eCommerce website is obviously complicated and unpleasant, a person will leave without contributing to your business development.
To avoid the unpleasant situations use the following tips in your business:
- set up shipping and delivery procedures,
- install the online business processes,
- add frequently asked questions section to the pages of the web store,
- create a whole customer care page.
Let your customers trust you. Let them know your online store is credible. And what is even more important, let your customer service pages work and help the people buy things at the online store.
Abandoned Shopping Cart
When the customers have reached the checkout it is still not over. And if you think that on this stage you already have their money in your pocket you are a bit wrong.
The trouble we highlight here is shopping cart abandonment. There are numerous reasons for that, and we have prepared some more information concerning this topic for you to reduce the possibility of the abandonment.
Too Many Registration Steps
Checkout process needs to be nice, seamless and hassle-free. And if the obligatory registration shows itself almost at the finish, it may distract the visitors and make them close the web page.
What steps to take to create a seamless registration?
- Keep Registration Short
The process may take a long time. Treat your visitors well and require only the significant details as email, password and username for registration. Entering personal information like date of birth or place of residence is not necessary, and those details can be added later to the profile information directly.
- Allow Social Logins
Sign-in using social logins is quite fast and convenient, so you may use it for registration purposes as well.
Optimize the registration process to make the customers checkout successfully. Also, if verifying is crucial for you, make it as quick as possible. Try to let people create an account oт your website because they want to, not because they ought to.
Not Designed to Display the Selected Products
Most of the buyers may keep in mind what they have put in the shopping cart. But there is a part of the users that feel more comfortable when the order summary is always on the screen.
For you as a web store owner it is no problem to put a list of the chosen products, thumbnails and brief information about the items on the right side of the interface. Display all in-cart items, add some short description and images, and put prices. Additionally, presenting shipping fees or informing about shipping rates will be useful as well. Total sum calculated automatically will help the customers make their choices.
If You Did not Take Care of the Convenience of Payment
Successful sale always ends up with one last payment step. On this stage, it is important to get it over with as quickly as possible and not to lose the customer because of some inconvenience.
What options can you offer to your customers to complete the purchases? Let’s take a look at them:
- credit card payment,
- payment with online payment platform (including PayPal, Stripe, Braintree and similar),
- ApplePay,
- GoogleWallet etc.
You should conduct a research on which payment methods are the most popular and common in your region. Additionally, some of the services are unavailable in a number of countries, so pick the options that meet the customers’ needs best.
There Are Security Concerns
Shopping cart abandonment may occur because of another reason. The obvious absence of security can make the customers change their opinions and forget about shopping at your website. And it is quite natural: trusting you with their personal information customers hope you will protect it. Such vital data as credit card details needs to be protected in advance due to the rise of online fraud. Researches tell us that 17% of customers will not complete a purchase if a website looks unreliable. This means that each 1 of 5 potential clients may leave your web page because of concerns about security.
Show the customers the trustworthiness of your business. Add the SSL certificates and make sure you did your best to protect the sensitive data. Add the proofs of security to transaction forms and build the cooperation with the security sites.
And last but not least, there are real proves that you have the opportunity to build business relations with your customers using recognizable logos.
Conclusion
Your website may be the reason for your sales reduce. By implementing simple practices and keeping the defined rules you can strengthen the online business, attract more visitors, multiply their trust and improve the sales. Draw more attention to your web store and make your profit grow! Get in touch!
