To be successful with ecommerce, you have to have great products and great
marketing - that's pretty easy to see and understand. You also need to look good
- design is important and you'd be surprised how often good design wins out
over even mediocre design time after time. But there are lots of other reasons
why while you may be getting people to your online store, they may not be buying
and leaving you hanging:
1) Hidden Charges: Nothing is more aggravating as an online shopper
than going through the entire buying process and then being slapped with a last
minute hidden charge. My personal favorite has to be the charge for having more
than one item in your cart. Savvy ecommerce storefronts bundle hidden fees into
the price of the product - doing so makes consumers feel as though there aren't
any surprises and you'll look more honest.
2) Register Before Buying: Forcing registration on users has been
shown to cause shopping cart abandonment rates to soar. If you are allowing
users to complete the buying process and as the last step requiring
registration, you would be well advised to move the registration process to the
beginning of the sales cycle, remove it entirely, or promote it separately and
provide discounts to registered users.
3) Comparison Shopping: The Web has made it incredibly easy to
research products and prices online. If you're selling the same products as
others online and charge more (because you have to) there may not be much you
can do other than differentiate your site by providing your own official review
of the product and
consumer reviews (positive and negative) to give users the sense that you know your product -
doing so will help buyers build confidence in your storefront.
4) Too Much Time: If an online retailer can't make the process quick
and simple it doesn't give me much confidence in their service. If it's
difficult to place an order when they're taking my money, what will they be like
if something goes wrong? If you're concerned with the load times of your website
or the applications that support it, there are a number of free services which
help identify the lags.
5) Product Out Of Stock: This has only happened a few times to me
personally. You've searched the Web for the best deal, done your product
comparisons and are ready to buy. Add the product to the shopping cart and lo
and behold they are out of the product. If you're working with a limited
inventory - tell users at the start how many are left. If you run out during the
buying process - give them a raincheck and a discount. They'll leave happy and
you'll secure another sale.
6) No Delivery Details: Letting prospective buyers know how long a
specific product will take to be delivered is essential. If you don't know when
it's going to arrive, what's the point of buying it at all? That's how consumers
think, so include average delivery times and provide tracking tools so consumers
know when they will get what they are ordering.
7) Technical Problems: If you were buying a car at a dealership and
the car you wanted to buy kept breaking down during the test drive, you probably
would not want to buy that car, much less buy a car from that dealership, right?
8) No Company Information: There's simply no excuse for not including
information about your company - phone number (800 number preferably), address
(no PO boxes, please), email address or even an online contact form - these
channels are essential.
Of course, looking good and having a great product get you most of the way
towards a successful online store, but the above points do well to increase
conversion rate and secure long term buyers