subject: Mistakes To Avoid When Designing Ecommerce Website [print this page] When building an ecommerce website, many people find themselves concentrating more on conversions which isn't a bad thing after all, since selling is the major reason why you build an online store in the first place.
The problem with this approach is that it often leaves out other essential areas and makes potential customers run away from your site; this may in return render your conversion efforts useless. Below are a number of blunders to avoid when designing an ecommerce website if you ever expect to become successful selling online.
Many of these blunders are responsible for failed conversions and some are very minor, just be cautious because blunders compound when left unresolved. Annoyances, however little, will cause your site visitors to leave. This is because online shoppers unlike their offline counterparts are often people with little time and patience and if their first experience in your site is less that satisfactory then you'll lose them for good.
Fixing annoyances in your online store may not translate to high conversions overnight but it will go a long way in increasing customer loyalty and satisfaction, and as you can guess this a positive factor in the long term success of your online ventures.
Below are blunders to watch out for
Many of these annoyances occur when a user is browsing your website and some can be irritating enough to cause a user to leave without making a purchase.
Pages loading very slowly
Pages of your ecommerce site should load faster just like those of ordinary websites. This is usually caused by having many large images in your pages. Make a point of having smaller optimized images and lots of relevant information about your products. Test your database to see its performance and also the add server if ads are incorporated in your pages, your database should be able to feed content fast.
Speed means a lot in ecommerce and if you have slow loading pages then you're in trouble because visitors will simply leave your site for your competitor.
Insufficient information about the products
What's the point of having an ecommerce site full of products but little or no information about them! You'll always make more sales online if your products are well covered. Information like sizes, technical specs, weight and colors is simply mandatory.
Not providing any additional information about the products.
Don't just create a catalog of products without providing users something to read. Customers want to be informed before they make a purchase.
In ecommerce content is everything
How do you expect to be trusted by users if your site is filled with outdated content! CMS are there to ensure that your ecommerce site content is fresh and regularly updated. Nothing can be so annoying to customers when they visit your site, hit a link to check a product and the next thing staring at them is "Page currently unavailable try again later", keep your stock information up to date. I've personally cancelled a number of orders online after selecting a product then getting "Product not available" when trying to check out.
