It’s not an uncommon thing for shoppers to turn to eCommerce businesses when looking for the perfect item.
In fact, according to a UPS study, 51 percent of shoppers have made a purchase online in the last three months. That’s a lot of potential sales if you’re doing things right! Unfortunately, many eCommerce businesses are still making mistakes that are costing them customers every day.
Common eCommerce Mistakes Cost You Plenty
The funny thing about eCommerce mistakes is that they’re often accidental or simply caused by overlooking some small part of your business.
Unfortunately, these little problems can snowball when customers are added into the mix, where they end up irritating visitors (or worse!) and result in lots of negative reviews online. There’s no reason your eCommerce platform has to be a source of problems any longer.
Check your site for these common problems today:
- Your site is slow. According to the KISSMetrics blog, about 25 percent of your visitors won’t even tolerate a four second load time, no matter how complicated your page. If your site is slow, especially for mobile users, you’re far more likely to have visitors bounce before making a purchase.Optimizing your pages to load more smoothly is the goal, but you may have to switch servers in order to appease your bandwidth-hogging shop. Look for a host that is performance-optimized for eCommerce and your pages will load in a flash.
- You’re not designed for mobile. UPS found that 63 percent of Millennials use their smartphone to make purchases. There’s a reason that Google has chosen to change its indexing system to look at mobile versions of sites first: they matter most.If your eCommerce store is still not mobile-friendly, you’re not only missing out on Google indexing, you’re missing out on shoppers who use their phones everywhere.
- Security isn’t your first priority. You might think you’re too small to be the focus of a hacker, but you’re wrong. Hackers know that small eCommerce businesses often have very lax security and are much easier to penetrate than bigger companies. Think like the big guys and put security first if you’re hosting your site on your own equipment. This might also be a good time to migrate your site to a software as a service platform where someone else is in charge of security!
- Your site is hard to navigate. Have you ever navigated to your site with a device besides your own PC? You may discover that it doesn’t translate well for visitors, especially those using mobile devices.Simplify your navigation system, reduce the number of submenus it takes to reach a product and include a search option. Problematic navigation is also a serious issue when it comes to checking out. Streamline your process so that there’s an easy way to get from shopping to purchasing and you’ll see your shopping cart abandonment rates shrink.
- Poor product descriptions lead to lots of returns. In the UPS study, only 68 percent of shoppers reported that product details were sufficient to determine if items would meet their needs. This is a massive problem that will, without question, lead to a lot of returns.If you want to improve your order fulfillment and reduce reverse logistics, review your product pages. Ensure that customers can get the same feel as they would in person with lots of photos and detailed descriptions that are more than the stock descriptions available from your supplier. This can cost a little extra time and money, but try to think of it as an investment in your eCommerce shop’s future.
It’s ok if your eCommerce site isn’t perfect, it can be difficult to get everything right when you’re just starting out or expanding your operation and business is crazy. But now that you know about some common issues many businesses experience, you can work to correct them before they become major problems..
