But even if you’ve made some of these mistakes in your online store, they are often not all that difficult to fix.
You should avoid the following mistakes when designing your online shop to improve the shopping experience of your customers and thus also increase sales.
If you’ve already designed your business website, you can review it now to see if some of these issues are found with your store and fix them quickly.
No detailed product data
When we visit mortar shops, we’re triggered to touch things we want to buy – bags, shoes, utensils, drugs, etc. You can even test some items like shoes in the store before purchasing them, and read all the information on the packaging.
Most of these options are not available when shopping online, but there are ways you can make people have the same feelings when they shop in a physical stores when they visit your e-commerce site.
You should do your best to provide detailed information and answer the possible questions that your potential customers would ask.
If customers are left in the dark about the exact specifications of a product, they will likely leave the shop.
Customers will now check in to other shops where they can find products they’re convinced it’s a good fit for them.
Tip
Make sure you provide detailed information about your listed products.
Talk about the sizes, materials used, the weight of the item, dimensions, shipping details, time of delivery, and other important information related to the product.
If you sell clothes, for example, it is very important to be very specific about the size, color, and type of fabric.
No contact information
You may think this is not necessary since you’ve provided all the necessary details people need to shop for any of your listed products or make an informed decisions.
However, for most customers, they must know the person behind the business. They want to know the person they are entrusting their payment information with.
They must know the person they should contact if there is a problem and they need personal support.
If your contact information is difficult to find and can only be reached with several clicks, potential customers will place less trust in you and may therefore refrain from shopping from your online store.
Tip
Make sure you put your contact details on every page, where they will be readily seen, you can put them in either the header, on the sidebar, or the footer.
You can also offer your customers various options to get in touch with you, social media, live chat, chat both, and others.
The ordering process is complex
You need to understand the fact that people don’t have the same patience when they shop from a physical store when they’re online.
Most customers want online shopping to be as quick as possible, therefore, if you can not meet this demand, you’re going to lose a lot of customers and sales.
You should make it as easy as possible for your customers to enter their payment details and complete the ordering process.
You should also be able to process their orders pretty quickly as most customers now want their bought items to be shipped and delivered in a couple of day, if not the same day.
The more steps they go through before completing the order, or waiting for order to be shipped, the more the chance that your customers will lose their patience and stop the ordering process.
Tip
Make it simple! that’s just the word. Don’t push too many tasks on your customers, avoid asking them to sign up or pop a long list of information to provide.
The ideal ordering process consists of only one page on which the following should be done.
- The address
- The shipping and payment method are preferred.
- The corresponding legal instructions are given
- An order confirmation page that informs about the successful order and summarizes all important order information.
The search function is not effective
I’m very sure there’s no way a designer will design your online store without adding a search function.
Even for a non-business website, the search bar is included.
If a customer knows exactly what he’s looking for, he can use the store’s search function instead of scrolling through different categories and product pages.
It makes the user experience to be awesome, and decisions can be made quickly before the customers think about other things to do online.
Make sure that your search function works optimally and offers filter functions with which the customer can narrow down their search.
Tip
If you’re going to design your website yourself, make sure you have a well-integrated search function or look around for existing plug-ins for your store.
Let customers filter their results according to other criteria such as popularity or highest / lowest price or newest items or sort out products that do not match the search query to enable convenient use.
Low-quality pictures or very few product pictures
The image speaks more about the product than just texts, it makes your potential customers feel what they want to purchase.
High-quality pictures covering different angles of the product are very important unless the product is downloadable.
High-quality pictures also improve retention and help conversion.
Four or five different pictures should be enough for customers to feel that they know what they are buying.
Your customers should also be able to zoom in and zoom out the picture for better visibility.
Shopping cart design
The design of your shopping cart is very important, customers should be able to add or remove a wide variety of products.
Customers should also be able to see the products in their cart from every page, and check the product information from the shopping cart.
The shopping cart should be designed so that your customers can add a product and then return to the page they just came from.
Conclusion
Whether you already want to open an online store where you sell items, or you’re selling from your e-commerce already, or you just need to redesign your store to optimize it for a better conversion rate, you should avoid the errors described above as much as possible.
It often makes sense to revise an existing website from this point of view.
In this context, it can also be helpful to consider the purchasing behavior of customers in a physical store so you can compare it with your online store.
