6 Need-to-Know Mistakes Your eCommerce Store Must Avoid
For an eCommerce business to thrive, visitors must be able to use the site easily. Ideally, they should also be inclined to purchase something before they leave. This has been the cornerstone of eCommerce marketing for years. This is known as Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) – the practice of “converting” visitors into customers. It involves:
- Attracting visitors
- Ensuring those visitors become customers
- Increasing revenue per each customer interaction
- Providing incentives and quality products that bring customers back in the future
But many businesses continue to make simple mistakes that slow their progress and hinder their CRO strategies.
Let’s break them down.
Failure to link to product pages from the homepage
An eCommerce store should showcase best-selling and on-trend products. But what about all the other items for sale? Many stores displace an image of their most popular product as a link to other items in the same category.
However, this is not considered best practice – at least from a CRO standpoint. If a visitor selects an image of a product, they expect to be taken to that product page. According to one study, many “best in class” sites make this very mistake.
Forgetting to show the number of items in the basket
Nowadays, consumers enjoy online shopping from several different devices, such as their desktops and smartphone. However, when they return to your eCommerce store on a different device, your site classes them as a new visitor. Data shows that many visitors expect to complete their checkout purchase, even if they added items to their basket on another device.
As far as CRO is concerned, it is important to convey how many items are in the basket in the header menu. This simple indicator is enough to encourage visitors to continue shopping on your site.
Failure to provide search filters
If your eCommerce business sells thousands of products, you need to provide an efficient way for visitors to find their desired product. Many eCommerce stores let customers sort through listings according to price.
However, if you want to turn visitors into customers, you need to provide additional filters that let users search by multiple categories such as colour, size, and material. Failure to do so could potentially cost sales.
Using the wrong page type
An eCommerce site has two options when it comes to displaying listings. Do you choose an infinite scrolling page (like many social media apps)? Or do you opt for traditional pagination? If you choose the wrong page type, you can confuse customers and make your site less user-friendly.
Do some research and find out how your competitors organize their listing pages. This should tell you what works for your specific industry.
Failure to list stock availability for products
When you draw attention to stock availability for your items, you are doing two things. Firstly, you are letting your customers know whether or not they will be available to purchase a specific product. Secondly, you use general stock information to create urgency. Let customers know when your product is close to running out. This can help sway their mind and increase your conversion rate.
Failure to include relevant trust seals
When it comes to CRO, you want to ensure customers trust your brand. The easiest way to do this is by showcasing a customer service-oriented trust seal. This could be granted from the likes of Google Trusted Stores, BizRate, or BBB. If you have a seal of approval from a reputable source, customers are more likely to spend time on your site and potentially mark purchases.
Conclusion
The best way to ensure your store is as user-friendly as possible is by using Builder.ai to create your site from scratch. We turn your business idea into tailor-made software – you don’t even need to know anything about code.
Your eCommerce store could be right around the corner!
