When a customer shops at an online store, they expect to find what they need right away, pay for it without any problems and get the product or service they ordered within the expected delivery date. If you are an e-commerce retailer, you’ll need to make sure that you give customers what they need and deliver a great shopping experience from product search to checkout.
Unfortunately, many online stores fail to serve their customers properly.
E-commerce websites, for instance, have certain problems or features that drive website visitors up the wall. When the customer feels annoyed or frustrated in their shopping experience, they may abandon the site and move to another (and hopefully better) e-commerce retailer. What’s worse, they may leave negative user reviews that can destroy the reputation of your business.
What are the things that can frustrate or anger online shoppers?
Gain insight from your website data to see if the following issues are plaguing your e-commerce website:
1. Slow Loading Times
When you add more features to your e-commerce store, it will take longer to load. Site visitors are more likely to abandon your site when it’s taking forever to load. This is a good reason to perform website optimization (if you haven’t done this recently) and go easy on the music and animations. If you need help with page loading speed or think that this job is beyond your expertise, hire a web designer for a few hours of work.
2. Off-the-Wall Product Layouts
Creative e-commerce shop layouts with highlighted products or oversized feature images can look nice, but they might be hurting your sales. Many shoppers have a general idea of what an e-commerce website should look like. If your site doesn’t meet their standards, you’ll make fewer sales.
The biggest consideration is that creative layouts or large featured products are distracting. They may make finding the right product more difficult.
So review your product pages carefully and check for distractions, ease of scanning, and product visibility. If your store pages don’t look anywhere like an Amazon results page, your design could hurt your bottom line.
3. Search Function Doesn’t Work
The search function is instrumental in helping your customers look for what they want in a sea of products. Online shoppers who know exactly what product to buy are more likely to convert than a visitor who’s just browsing. As an e-commerce retailer, you need to provide a search function that works properly.
Start by typing keywords on your search bar. If you’re selling home garden products, for instance, type pruning shears and see if anything comes up. If you come across issues, invest in a better search solution or review your product tagging to make sure your items show up properly in search.
4. Low-Quality Product Pages
When you’re running an e-commerce site, present information in a comprehensive, clear, and easy to understand way. This is key to having good conversion rates.
Take the time to review your product pages to make sure that:
- Product demos or videos are on the page where possible
- You have unique product images, ideally with use or product lifestyle images
- Reviews are present on the page where possible
- Images are high-quality and include text to help make browsing easy for site visitors
- You have a frequently asked question (FAQ) section with questions asked by real customers
- Descriptions of your products are both informative and unique (they’re written for the customer, not Google)
Investing in top-quality product pages can get costly, but this strategy will pay off. A great product page will leave the average website visitor with all their concerns answered, so that they know what they should expect from the product.
5. The Text is Difficult to Read
White background with light-colored text or black background with white text – these are awful design choices that will surely make your e-commerce website a lot harder to read. Throw in tiny font size and online shoppers will definitely have a negative user experience.
Text color and size are design elements that you don’t usually notice on a website unless they are terrible. They, unfortunately, get attention for the wrong reasons.
If you’re unsure if your text size and color look acceptable, ask a variety of family members and friends for their honest feedback regarding the readability of your website. You’ll have a lot of work to do if you see them squinting.
6. Typos
One or two typographical errors may be fine for some. If your website is full of these typos, however, you’re sure to annoy website visitors. Get a proofreader and a web designer to check your website content for spelling and grammatical issues.
Don’t simply stop at launching a website and waiting for online shoppers to buy your products. Review your website, look for areas of improvement, and correct mistakes that can affect your conversion rate and customer satisfaction.
