Why are there so many e-commerce businesses that are setting themselves for failure with poorly designed webpages? Also, what are the most common mistakes that a lot of e-commerce businesses commit?
Sure, you might have impeccable customer service, excellent products, and prices. Yet, you might still fail to capture the attention of prospective buyers. Worse, a poorly designed website drives customers away.
In this post, we will be discussing the nine biggest mistakes a lot of e-commerce businesses make when it comes to website design:
Unresponsive design
When you make an ecommerce website, it should be highly responsive, no matter what device a user has to access it.
In fact, approximately 51 percent are now making online purchases through smartphones, and that number will continuously grow.
Use a theme that is widely tested with little customizations unless the design is central to your brand. Fortunately, you could test out your theme with Google’s mobile-friendly test.
No clear value proposition
The main reason why customers will keep coming back to visit your site is your value proposition.
In a nutshell, a value proposition is an engaging quality that your product has towards prospective buyers. It will showcase a product’s unique features and the brand that will make you unique and stand out from the rest of your competitors.
Your value proposition should encourage buyers on why they should spend their money and purchase your products.
Complex website navigation
There is nothing worse than trying to find a product on a site with complicated navigation.
So, you have to think about your navigation elements and categories carefully before you start placing products in your catalogs. Ensure that every category has at least a couple of products on it, or you could group the smaller categories.
It should be easy for prospects to look through these different categories, add it to their shopping cart, or move around your site.
Poor quality product images
The most basic yet important factor that you need to consider when designing an e-commerce site is the quality of your images.
One of the main reasons why some customers still prefer to shop in physical stores is that they could see, feel, and touch the product in person. Thus, your product images should enable them to see precisely how your product looks like.
Now, think about how physical stores focus their lighting on their products and other items for display to catch the attention of prospective shoppers.
Well, the same principle applies to online shopping. People are more likely to scroll through your products if your images are attractive enough.
Confusing product descriptions
As an e-commerce site, you need to do whatever you can to improve your customer’s overall online shopping experience.
What if they went to your e-commerce store and found out there are missing or confusing product descriptions? If customers are left wondering about the specifics of the products, they will likely leave and look for information elsewhere.
That’s why you need to give as much product information as you can. Pertinent information like weight, dimensions, materials, sizes, and so on, should be included.
Using descriptive terms over more technical ones will have a greater impact on the buyer as well.
No onsite search option
There are two main goals your prospects have when visiting your e-commerce store. One, they want to look for solutions to their problems. Two, they want to find it as fast as possible.
Now, if your e-commerce store fails at this aspect, then website visitors might leave immediately, searching for other sites that have an onsite search option.
Extensive checkout process
When shopping online, customers want the checkout process to be short and seamless. However, most e-commerce sites would make you fill out pages and pages of information.
The thing is, customers simply do not have the time and patience to do that, and will simply leave your site and move on to your competitors.
To avoid that, simplify the whole checkout process and watch your revenues skyrocket.
Difficult to contact support
Whenever they have a problem or question, you have to make it easy for people to contact you. Also, offering a help request form for clients to fill out instills more confidence in them than just an ordinary email address.
For inquiries, you could utilize a ticketing system, especially if you do not have a phone number that they could get in touch with.
Ensure that you also post an FAQ page that covers the most important questions that users might have. This includes what they need to do if they have to replace items or what your return policy is like.
Neglecting the security aspect
You should always be vigilant when it comes to viruses and hackers. You should also be extremely careful when designing forms because hackers may use these forms to violate the integrity of your website.
Moreover, you should also provide a license for a security domain and create a better firewall technology.
Do not forget to add trust badges to your e-commerce site as well. This includes fully secured SSL checkouts, logos of credit card processor, money-back guarantees, and so on.
Apart from that, adding trust badges on your site can help boost conversions.
Over to You
Your e-commerce site will always be your greatest asset. It can turn out to be a source of profitability and sales.
To avoid making it a liability, do not commit the design mistakes mentioned above that could hurt your e-commerce site.
