Even rich advertising campaigns, awesome products, affordable prices, great discounts, or super design features are sometime unable to achieve the desired results for online stores. Why? Their owners do not even imagine how much they may lose due to site problems! These often are of a technical nature and easy to avoid or fix. However, they can greatly impact customer satisfaction and, of course, sales. Let’s have an overview of some e-commerce site problems, so that every online store has a chance to improve.
Some common e-commerce site problems
Bugs and errors
Bugs and errors can be hidden in any corner of an e-commerce website. Your customers may even forgive you for a 404 error or a broken link on some product page. However, it is especially bad to have bugs in the product ordering, checkout, or payment processes.
Examples include failure to use the promised discounts or free shipping, unexplainable errors in an attempt to order a product, illogical errors in submitting a form (often with the necessity to fill it in all over again), and many more. They may turn the user experience into a nightmare, scare users away, or make the purchase totally impossible even for the most persistent customers
All the steps your users take on your online store need comprehensive testing, so you never lose your profits because of bugs.
Poor images and no zoom
For many people, e-commerce feels risky, because they cannot see the products with their own eyes. Online stores can minimize this risk by offering good images. Unfortunately, many of them neglect this opportunity.
The images should show the product from various angles and have a high quality. Especially if you offer your own products, investing into professional photos, videos, or even 3D images might quickly pay off.
In addition, the zoom feature should also be in place and work properly. One of the e-commerce site problems is the zoom that does not really enlarge the images, or even makes them smaller.
Insufficient product descriptions
In addition to seeing the images, users want to get as many details about the product as possible. Generic descriptions for all products do not work. Each product has particular characteristics, and they need to be described in full.
Compulsory or difficult registration
Online commerce is appreciated for its convenience. Users are reluctant to make extra moves. A common e-commerce site problem is an annoying registration process.
A guest checkout feature is a strong recommendation for online stores. People also like the option to sign in with their social media accounts. When it comes to registration, the number of steps should be minimal.
Non-working support
Customers may have questions about the products or want to complain about some buying process problems.
Unfortunately, users often stumble upon a buggy support chat that fails to deliver messages. Unclear or absent contact information is another common e-commerce site problem.
Lack of mobile optimization
According to Statista, one in four e-commerce dollars is spent on a mobile device, and that’s just the beginning. This impressive audience turns their back on online stores that are not properly optimized and require excessive scrolling, zooming or otherwise make it difficult to see some content.
Consider mobile responsive design, in which all of a website’s elements adapt themselves to the device screen, or a mobile version of your e-commerce website. Every step — from product browsing to check out — should be convenient to perform on the run.
Hidden fees
Users feel deceived when they are suddenly faced with shipping or other fees they did not expect. This is especially true for international deliveries.
So online stores should present all fees transparently and as early as possible — not on the last steps of the checkout process.
Made-up reviews
Product reviews are very helpful for sales. However, too enthusiastic, 100% positive reviews will always look suspicious.
Big shops usually let users leave all kinds of reviews — positive or negative. Users are able to “filter” both positive and negative information they see about the product. They just want to know they are not fooled.
Poor filtering
The best websites usually offer detailed filtering by multiple parameters — for example, clothing is filtered by size, color, season, occasion and more. But many stores do not even provide elementary filtering. Users browse through many pages with irrelevant items and get tired or disappointed.
Filters are the blessing of online commerce, and they really are not difficult to set up. If you offer them to your customers, they will quickly find what they want and will be coming back to your site again in the future.
Low speed
Bad speed is not a purely an e-commerce site problem — it is common across industries. However, it can be especially damaging to an online store. Its users usually browse multiple products and compare them, so they hate to wait for each page to load.
Speed optimization is a must. The classic “three seconds” are known to be the limit of patience of an average user.
To recap
Do not test the patience of your users — test your website! It is easy to get rid of absolutely any e-commerce site problems and make your online store shine. You are welcome to apply to testing and optimization magicians — the WishDesk web development team!
