6 Ways to Turn Customers Off Your E-Commerce Site

For a long time now, there has been a transition in consumer purchasing preferences. Technological advances have now enabled consumers to purchase their product with much more ease. The process of going to the high street and viewing a product you wish to purchase before actually doing so is an experience which consumers are slowly starting to tire of. The ease-of-purchase is much more appealing to the consumer in this era.

This shift in buying behaviour however should present the opportunity for growth within in a business. This has not always been the case. A recent survey found that 68.63% of shopping carts were abandoned prior to payment.

As more shopping shifts to online, it’s down to the retailers to observe current and emerging trends in order to stay up-to-date with competitors and ensure they aren’t offering consumers something that you are not in order to gain a competitive advantage. A business must do more than just selling online in order to achieve e-Commerce success; they must also offer a fantastic user experience. Here are some hints and tips from Click SEO agency UK to maximise your revenue as an e-Commerce brand and to help lower those shopping cart abandonment rates.

Checkout frustrations

The customer has just spent their time navigating your site in order to find a product that best suits them. If you prolong the process for them by having a checkout that is not secure, quick and simple to use you run the risk of them taking a break with the intention to return later on to finish the process, many consumers will return but a fair amount may not.

Part of what makes the checkout process tick is the overall design of the website in question. Website design is key to an ecommerce website, the above things all help with usability which in turn help with your SEO. Your web design agency will all the little tips, tricks and hacks to help you get more conversions from your ecommerce website, so, if you prefer good looks and poor performance over an average looking website with high conversions then it’s always best to stick to what works and to test, test, test!

Hidden calls to action (CTAs)

Consumers need encouragement to take the actions that you want them to take. For a consumer, visiting a site with poor Call-To-Action points it’s like being sent on a treasure hunt without any clues. Your customer will simply lose interest and find something else to do or even worse, visit a competitor’s website.

Ease of finding products

Customers expect to be able to find exactly what they’re looking for in good time, they don’t want to be scrolling endlessly through pages of products in hope they will find what they want. Categorising your products will provide an easy way for consumers to get to their product much easier. If that fails a site should have a search box that stands out to customers, ensuring it can handle long tail semantic searches and have autocomplete enabled. The search bar will allow consumers to be directly sent to the requested item.

Obscure Navigation

Relating back to categories, not only should a site have a search bar to find a certain type of product, a website should pin-point the main options into search categories. This will ensure the customer has the option to narrow down their search through factors such as pricing, colours and sizes.

Customer Queries

A business should have their contact details on display clearly for the customer to see. Details should include a phone number, email address and social media buttons.  The business should do its utmost to respond to customers in good time. A customer may want to find information out regarding a certain product but the businesses response time may be poor, resulting in the customers choosing to shop elsewhere with competitors. Adding live chat to your online store can help improve response rates.

Ignoring abandoned carts

Even if a customer abandons their shopping cart, this does not have to mean the sale is lost. It’s possible for a business to re-engage with their consumer. Companies can re-market target users with ads on items in which they’ve shown an interest. Emails can also be sent out to customers reminding them that they still have an active shopping cart on their account. A business can entice the customer to re-visit a shopping cart by offering discounts such as no shipping fees or discount on one of their selected items.