Barriers To Online Purchases You Should Be Busting
If you’re running an ecommerce business, then your number one concern should be ensuring that your website is built to make it as easy as possible for your customers to get access to the products that they want. Yet, still, we see countless examples of poorly designed, poorly marketed, and poorly supported websites failing to get the conversions they need. Here are four barriers you should recognize and do what you can to demolish.
No One Can Find Your Online Store
Marketing an ecommerce website is different from marketing any other website. You’re not just trying to give your business the online presence it deserves, you’re trying to extend that presence to your products, as well. When focusing on SEO efforts, make sure you’re focusing on product pages. Make sure your items make it to the Google Shopping search function. Consider PPC ad campaigns based not on your website alone but on specific products or categories that are well-suited to appeal to more niche audiences. Give your product lineup some real visibility, since it’s what’s going to be drawing most visitors in the first place.
If your analytics show that people start the buying process but neglect to finish it, take a closer look why. Streamlining the process and removing some steps from clicking the “Add to Cart” button and finalizing the sale can help. If you can’t shorten it, consider using navigation breadcrumbs so your visitors can at least see where they are in the process and how many more steps they have to complete. You should also consider using automated email marketing that reaches out to customers who have abandoned their shopping cart, encouraging them to pick it up again.
Payment Snafus
If you get common complaints or people asking why you don’t accept certain payments, then you could be missing one of the methods that your particular market prefers to rely on the most. Ensure that your website can accept credit card payments and consider any other methods that you might want to support. PayPal is another of the biggies, and any website that lacks either of these payment methods could risk alienating people who are ready to finalize that sale.
Not Enough Support
Even if your site is well designed and well equipped to handle all kinds of customers, you should expect that some are still going to have some problems and some questions they need help with. Having an FAQ to answer some of the biggest questions might work well enough, but the most effective implementation of support is to have a live chat app installed on the website. As such, you can have members of the team ready to offer support, or even AI-driven bots that can direct visitors to the right pages or content based on a series of questions.
Does your ecommerce website suffer from any of the issues above? If so, it’s time to reel it back, get back to the drawing board, and implement the elements of good design that can turn your business into a success.
