Your eCommerce website is open 24-hours to showcase your brand and products to your audience. The primary goal of your eCommerce website is to attract the maximum number of customers and increase conversion rates. You can’t just create a website and leave it, thinking that it can handle itself. It requires a lot of planning, maintenance and modification.
From using the wrong image to complicated checkout and slow load times – every single mistake on an eCommerce site will cost you loyal customers, as well as, a huge amount of money.
To minimize the number of mistakes you make, here is a helpful checklist of what online sellers wish they had known before getting started.
1. LACK OF TRUST
When you’re selling products online, most of the time your website is the only impression you’ll get to make on your customers. You have to gain your customers trust and make yourself credible virtually.
- Things to avoid:
- Confusing and outdated web design
- Misspelled words or bad grammar
- Low-quality images and visuals
- Confusing brand message and style
- Having incomplete contact information
Trust and credibility are two huge factors of the online shopping world. You should have sections like reviews, customer service and trust badges on your site. A strong social media presence also gives your company more credibility.
2. BAD IMAGE QUALITY
When shopping online you can’t hold and inspect the product before buying. This is why you need high-quality photos of your products. Humans love visuals and we process images 60,000x faster than text. With that said, images sell.
Provide different angles of your products. Videos are a great bonus to showcase your products.
3. CONFUSING PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS
You might have the best products, but if your product descriptions and photos fail to describe your products to visitors they have no other way to know what the products is all about.
Detailed descriptions combined with high-quality images let your website visitors experience the product without having to hold it. Tell them how your product will solve their problems and why it’s so awesome. Add a little personality to the descriptions. Be engaging and informative.
4. COMPLICATED CHECK-OUT PROCESS
A complex checkout process increases the rate of shopping cart abandonment. The longer the check-out process, the lower the conversions. To avoid huge losses, you need to keep the checkout process as simple as possible for customers.
Offer a “Check Out as Guest” option if possible so that user’s that don’t want to create an account, aren’t forced to.
Use as few fields as possible and display all vital information on the same page if you can. Don’t forget to display a confirmation page with tracking update as the summary, once your customer has checked out.
5. NO CLEAR WAY TO CONTACT CUSTOMER SERVICE
Make it easy for consumers to get their questions answered, speak to a person or file a complaint.
List a phone number, email address
Respond to emails within 24 hours. The sooner you respond the more customers trust that it’s a legit business that takes care of the
6. YOUR WEBSITE IS NOT MOBILE FRIENDLY
All websites needs to be mobile responsive. The number of users buying products via mobile devices is increasing rapidly. 80% of users worldwide use their mobile devices to perform activities on the internet, which also includes shopping on eCommerce websites.
Go for an interface with easy navigation, which will a great shopping experience on small screens of smartphones and tablets for your end-users.
Having a mobile-friendly website is so crucial to your user’s browsing experience that search engines like Google penalize websites for not being mobile optimized and will not rank you as high.
Not sure if your website is mobile responsive? Test your URL with this free Google tool.
7. LONG LOADING TIME
People leave websites if they take too long to load. Website users are impatient, especially when shopping online.
- Make sure your website is hosted on a quality server.
- Make sure all of your high-quality images are optimized.
- Make sure your web design and theme isn’t slowing down the loading time.
- Make sure you have a caching plugin setup correctly.
8. YOUR WEBSITE IS NOT HTTPS
A safe and secure website is an absolute MUST for an eCommerce website. When you have a SSL certificate the web address will start with https instead of
Secure connections are a necessary measure to decrease the risk of users being vulnerable to malicious software and trackers that can steal their information.
If you need help setting up an SSL certificate, contact me to help.
CONCLUSION
Whether you’re new to the eCommerce world, or you’re looking to update and tweak your current setup, make sure to avoid these mistakes.
Make the right choice when choosing a website design company for your eCommerce business. Designing effective websites takes a lot of work and knowledge. A few mistakes can result in a website that doesn’t achieve your business goals.