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There’s lots to do when it comes to running an online shop, not only dealing with stock, marketing, accounts, admin, everything that goes with running a business, but ensuring the website performs well needs to be at the top of your list.
A few small things can make all the difference and there are common mistakes owners of online shops make, which can even send visitors away! Here are 4 things to make sure you’re not doing on your website:
1. Complicated Navigation
Having pages too many clicks away from the home page can put visitors off from finding what they want. Making people click too many times is not only bad for usability, but can put the search engines off too! Try to make sure your products are no more than 3 clicks away from the home page to maximise visitor satisfaction and ensure efficient indexing by the search engines. Additionally ensure your products are categorised sensibly – the number of times I’ve clicked through to what I thought was a sensible category for a product on a website only to find it’s been put elsewhere! Also, if you have a site search facility make sure it works and brings back results from products relevant to the search (you’d be surprised how many site searches don’t work properly).
If you’re unsure about these things, get a few friends or contacts to complete a short usability test and give you feedback.
2. Delivery/Returns Info Buried Away
Some of the first things I look for when making a buying decision are delivery costs, returns policy, and how to contact the company if anything goes wrong. This makes me trust the business more so I’m more likely to place an order with them. But if this information is buried and hard to find, then it won’t inspire me to buy, and I imagine it’s the same for other people. The worst thing you can have on your site is only a contact form and/or mobile phone number. I like to see a physical address, email address and telephone number (landline) that’s easy to find on the site with all the information I need about buying a product from the company. Review your delivery and customer service pages to make sure you look like an honest, trustworthy business – not a fly by night site trying to make a quick buck! This leads us nicely onto customer service.
3. Shoddy Customer Service
Tip top customer service will ensure your customers stay happy and keep coming back, and this is an absolute must for any business, not just online shops. As mentioned above, your customer care information must be prominent on your site, but there are other ways you can keep your customers happy too. Twitter works well for businesses and they can respond to questions quickly and be seen to be doing so, which is really important. A blog can also act as a way of interacting with your customers and minimising anything that goes wrong – put up your hand and admit any mistakes you make rather than trying to hide them. We’re all human and as long as you keep customers informed, there’s no reason why they should go elsewhere. Above all though, don’t promise what you can’t deliver!
4. Shopping Cart Problems
Is your shopping cart making visitors jump through hoops to buy? This is another major sticking point for online shops, so if you’ve not reviewed your shopping cart process in a while, then it’s worth doing so. You should be able to find out your shopping trolley abandonment rate and make sure it’s not too high. You could also send a polite email to shoppers who didn’t complete transactions and ask them why. Whatever you do, ensure you don’t lose valuable sales during the final part of the process!
These are all mistakes that can be fixed but are still common across the web. In these uncertain times, fixing these issues can make all the difference between you retaining customers and keeping them happy, or losing them to your competitors!
