IS YOUR ECOMMERCE SITE USER- FRIENDLY?

Internet trading can be a tremendously complex business to manage. There are many points that need to be kept in mind for a successful ecommerce website .

There are at least seven things that can really stop potential customers from viewing your websites. So, if you want qualified and potential customers to stick around your website, then you must keep the following pitfalls in mind as far as your ecommerce site is concerned.

There are at least seven things that can really stop potential customers from viewing your websites. So, if you want qualified and potential customers to stick around your website, then you must keep the following pitfalls in mind as far as your ecommerce site is concerned.

1.    YOUR WEBSITE IS TOO SLOW:

Everytime your site takes 2 seconds to load, it equals 8% of abandonment rate. So, if the load time is dropped to 2 seconds ( form 8 seconds) , the conversion rate actually jumps up 74% . Following could be the reasons for slow loading of your site :

• Overloaded with third party plug-in ( facebook, Twitter and other ad networks).
• Cloud issues i.e. If you are using CDN ( content-delivery network ) your site can slow to a crawl if your service provider is having issues.
• Unoptimized images ( too big or uncropped images) .
• Bad web hosting ( Be careful when choosing shared hosting packages )
• No compression of web pages.
• Too much Flash
• Bluky Code
• External Embedded Media

2.    YOUR SITE IS TOO COMPLICATED:

Do you make your customers go through more than 5 steps to buy something from your website ? If yes, then you are asking for too much. Few recommendations to make your website user- friendly are listed below :

• Welcome/cart contents page
• Bill-to section
• Ship-to section
• Payment module
• Confirmation/thank you page

3.    YOU HAVE A  LABORIOUS CREDIT CARD SYSTEM:

It will be frustrating for the customer to enter their name, address, 16-digit credit card number and 3-digit security code, just because they forgot their zip code ! It will be advisable to put country ( where most of your business is ) first on the scroll so that it appears alphabetically. Customers are recommended to follow industry standards for entering their credit card details .

4.    YOUR OVERPRICED SHIPPING CHARGES:

Customers are likely to discard your cart if you charge them more than 10% of the total cost of the product for shipping.

5.    YOU ARE OVERSELLING YOUR TABLET APP:

If a customer is visiting your site on their iPad, it is not incumbent for them to download the same. It is wise to optimise your site for the tablet experience. Over- investing in customizing your site will not help .

6.   CERTAIN BROWSERS DON’T SUPPORT YOUR SITE:

There are people who still use old versions on Internet Explorer. It is advisable to test your site on other browsers aswel. People tend to abandon sites that do not perform well on other versions.

7.   YOU ARE HITTING YOUR CUSTOMERS WITH UNSUITABLE OFFERS:

After finishing with sales of your product, it should be your utmost priority to hit your customers with offers which suits them the best . Only then will they buy from you in the future. So, it is wise to inform your customers with fresh and relevant offers.

What annoys you about ecommerce site? Let us know in the comments: