Having and running an ecommerce site is a great way to make money. The success of the site depends entirely only sales, and those sales depend on web traffic. If you are seeing high bounce rates, low conversion rates, and a decrease in sales, it might not be because your competition is doing something so much better than you are. You might be killing your own web traffic.
Of course, you would never do that on purpose. You might, however, be killing your web traffic due to a few quite common mistakes. Here are some of them, and what you can do about them.
Your Domain Name
The Problem: Your Domain name is not relevant to what you are doing, or worse it turns web visitors off. Why? Because your business name run together or the initials you have used to abbreviate your business name spell something entirely inappropriate.
The Solution: You may have invested a lot in your domain name if you did not screen it before you purchased it, but you need to change it. You can do this and keep the web traffic you have already built up by doing a 301 redirect. Then change the website name on all of your marketing materials including business cards and letterheads.
Your Design
The Problem: You have a cool design, but it is not customer focused. The most important thing about your ecommerce site is getting the user to the checkout as easily as possible with exactly what they want. It does not matter how good the site looks to you, or how “cool” it is.
The Solution: Revamp your site. Get professional design help from someone who is experienced in the ecommerce realm. Make sure that the number one goal is to make things easier for the customer. A conversion for an ecommerce site is when someone buys something. Make this process as streamlined as possible while still having a modern, good looking site.
Creativity Misapplied
The problem: The goal of your site should be to sell a product, and nothing more. Don’t try to win creative awards. Finding a product or service or even information on your site is not supposed to be a treasure hunt.
The Solution: Use the KISS principle and keep things easy for your customer. Simplify your process and save your creativity for marketing efforts using Shopify’s free POS credit card reader. Clean and easy wins the day in ecommerce (just ask Amazon or Alibaba) so don’t reinvent the selling wheel.
Forcing Unnecessary Actions
The Problem: Does the user have to create an account to check out and make a purchase? Bad move. Does your site have pop up ads, opt in forms, and more on the checkout page? These are all barriers to the customer making a purchase or taking the desired action.
The Solution: Remove the barriers to purchase. Allow guest checkouts, opt-in forms on purchase pages, and pop-up ads. Not only do these things hurt your customer experience, but too many of them can get you flagged and even penalized by Google.
Innovation for No Reason
The Problem: We have been studying customer behaviour on websites for years, and we know what works and what doesn’t. Customers expect to find a shopping cart button in the upper right corner, and a buy now button somewhere in the center, and filters on the left. If you deviate from this, you better have a good reason. Otherwise users won’t stay to figure out your innovative puzzle.
The Solution: Save your innovations for your products and other marketing efforts. When it comes to the layout of your ecommerce site, follow the formula unless you have a really good reason not to. Then let us know what that reason is, because we have not found one.
Ignoring Mobile
The Problem: Nearly 80% of searches are done on mobile devices such as phones and tablets, and most of those customers complete those purchases without ever visiting a desktop. If your site is not optimized for mobile, and users have to move it around to find buttons and take action, they will run to your competitor.
The Solution: Make mobile a priority if you have not already. This does not mean that you totally ignore a desktop site, but your mobile site should look good and work well no matter where a user views it and completing purchases should be just as easy on both platforms.
Not Prioritizing Performance
The Problem: Studies show that if a site takes more than 4 seconds to load, the user will move on to another one. With the varying speeds of internet service available across the country, sometimes this is out of your control, but you need to prioritize speed, especially in ecommerce. Not doing so is a foolish move.
The Solution: Just like being mobile friendly, your site needs to be fast. Lightning fast. This means you need to optimize photos and the way they load, keep coding as simple as possible, and focus on loading times. This is the key metric to look at in your web design.
Ignoring SSL
A Complex Checkout Process
The Problem: Is it hard to buy something on your site? Do you take all of the common payment methods? How hard is it to add something to your cart and to find it once you have? These things should all be simple. Long forms to fill out and complex steps can really cost you.
The Solution: Allow users to log in with their social media profiles, saving them time filling out forms. Make the process involve as few steps as possible. Make selecting shipping options clear and simple. The shorter the process, the less likely your site will be to suffer from abandoned cart syndrome.
You might easily be killing your own web traffic if you are making these common ecommerce mistakes. If you are experiencing a dip in sales, high bounce rates, or a large number of abandoned carts, look twice at your site, and see if you spot any of these errors. Correct them, and your traffic numbers will recover.