Top 10 Ecommerce Design Mistakes
So you’ve built a decent looking eCommerce website, increased your marketing spend, and are getting a fair amount of site visitors. However, it faces a problem that most newer online retailers initially face: its conversion rate is extremely low. You’re puzzled why most visitors don’t buy anything on your site, and you ask your marketing manager to find the answers. Although having a good marketing and execution plan is necessary to attract visitors to your site, many times, the answer lies in how your website is designed. Here are the top 10 ecommerce design mistakes that can send your conversion rate south:
Bluder #10: No “About Us” Page or Privacy Policy
Educated consumers look for certain things on a site they might do business with. Are there privacy policies? Do you have a return or exchange policy? What about shipping costs and deadlines, are they published? Are there real-sounding testimonials and pictures of the store or sellers that give me an idea that this company is real, especially when it comes to newer online retailers? Although it’s reasonable to assume that most people don’t read things like policies and the like. But the fact that they are there generates confidence in the client, that yours is a serious business.
Bluder #9: Where’s the price?
Nothing irritates a visitor more than reading through all the great product description and sales copy, only to read it all and still have to ask the most important question… how much does it cost? Having to literally search to find out how much a product costs is more than reasonable. A few days ago, I spent more than five minutes on a website looking for a good pair of running shoes, but I couldn’t find the price anywhere. It took me a while to realize that I had to select a specific color and size combination first, before the price would appear on the page. Although from a web designer perspective this can be considered a nice “feature”, it only takes a genius to figure out that you have to click 3 different buttons before the price magically appears on the site. Most visitors don’t have the patience for this and their reaction to this type of design would be the same as mine… Forget it!
Mistake #8: Here are some product recommendations… Oops! They are sold out.
Many websites invest in creating offline statistical modeling algorithms to provide on-site product recommendations. You’ve probably seen these kinds of recommendations on websites like Amazon – “Customers who bought this item were also interested in….”. Some of the online retailers have mastered this technique and created extremely dynamic recommendation engines, however, many times I have clicked on product recommendations, only to find out that these products are out of stock. These sites should certainly get credit. for building such sophisticated recommendation engines, but having visitors go the extra mile to click on recommendations, only to find out they’re out of stock is a worse user experience than having no product recommendations to begin with.
Mistake #7: Zero search results
It’s hard enough to attract website visitors, so why should we turn them away by showing them a zero search results page when they’re trying to find something? If a visitor searches for something, the website should work very hard to find products or categories, even if there isn’t an exact match. Even if you don’t sell that specific item, and if you can’t find any products that are remotely related to the keyword the customer is searching for, you should at least display the top selling items on your website. Imagine walking into a physical store and the sales agent sends you out of the store saying that we don’t carry the product you are looking for. Instead, a much better experience will be if the salesperson engages you in talking about all the promotions, as well as the attractive products the store sells.
Bluder #6: Design for 20%
The more complex an online business becomes, the greater the tendency for business managers to make the user experience reflect this complexity. A great user experience is one that makes all this complexity transparent to visitors and offers something that is simple and engaging. Walmart.com recently redesigned their website and while they have one of the most complex businesses, the user experience on the site is extremely simple. The mistake that most online retailers make is that they don’t consider the 80-20 rule and design the website to take into account all the exceptional cases. Now I am not suggesting that the website should not take all conditions into account, however the main search, navigation and checkout flow should serve 80% of visitors who need to make a simple purchase of 1 or 2 items. The general rule of thumb I use is that if 80% of visitors need more than 4 clicks to get from the category/search page to checkout, then there is an opportunity to improve the user experience.
Mistake #5: Weak security
A few weeks ago, I completed registration with a car rental website because I was eligible for their main program. The site had all kinds of messages and disclaimers about how they valued the safety of their customers. Feeling good, I completed the registration form, however, all my trust in that website disappeared when I saw the last thank you page. It said “Thank you for registering, please note your user ID and password for your records.” There it was: my password in plain text staring back at me, on an unsecured thank you page! I didn’t know which was worse, displaying my password in plain text so others next to me could also write it down, or displaying my password on an unsecured page! Either way, I decided to change my car rental company. In today’s world, customers are more informed than ever and pay attention to details related to website security. If they don’t see that little “lock” at the bottom of their browser, or if they get a warning that they’re providing information on an unsecured page, that’s enough of a warning sign for them to abandon their transaction.
Bluder #4: Excessive Required Fields
I hate when websites force you to enter information about yourself that has nothing to do with placing an order at all. I am now a strong advocate of understanding customers and collecting as much relevant information about them as possible; however, there is always a right way and the right place to request this type of information. Throwing a full page registration form in the middle of the checkout process with irrelevant required fields is like adding speed bumps to a 60mph highway: it will slow visitors down to complete the checkout process, if not completely frustrate them and make leave the checkout process entirely. . A common example of a required field that I’ve seen is a fax number, I don’t know about you, but the average person doesn’t have a fax machine at their desk, so having a required field for that doesn’t make sense. Another one I’ve seen, date of birth…come on, how much personal information do I have to give here to place an order with you? I just want to order a toaster, not give you more personal details than I would on a first date!
Mistake #3: Clear all fields on error
I’m sure most of us have experienced it at least once: you spend 5 minutes filling out an online form, but you don’t fill out a form field correctly. You hit submit and voila – you lose all the data you just entered and there’s a blank form along with an error message about that field staring back at you. I find it hard to understand why these apps can’t “remember” what we just typed and spare visitors the hassle of typing everything again. Servers have memory for a reason – let’s use that memory to minimize the amount of rework we ask our clients to do on the website. The more we make visitors work on the website, the faster they will leave and not come back.
Mistake #2: Forcing customers to create an account before they can add items to cart
Hoping to register as many users as possible, some sites ask you to log in or register as soon as you add something to the cart. In order for you to see what’s in your cart, along with the total price, you need to log in or register. At my previous job, we did a lot of shopping cart abandonment analysis, and one thing we found consistently was that customers like to see transparency into order amount and shipping charges as soon as they add something to their cart. The more speed bumps you throw at them, the more likely they are to abandon their cart. Forcing visitors to log in before they have decided to start the checkout process is a definite way to increase shopping cart abandonment and reduce conversion. If these customers walk into a physical store, they can give cash and leave. Let’s give these customers as close to this website experience as possible as well.
Mistake #1: Only supports Internet Explorer
Today, web browsers other than IE (read Firefox) are gaining significant popularity and account for more than 10% (in some cases more than 20%) of site visitors. However, there are a large number of websites that have only been built and tested for IE. Even basic features like Search or Add to Cart don’t work in Firefox on some of these sites. These sites literally reject 10-20% of visitors every day. This is probably some of the cheapest fruit around and online retailers need to ensure there is a dedicated browser testing effort as part of every new release.
We are living in times where consumers have more and more options to buy online and are looking for a fast, reliable and simple shopping experience. A good experience is not just a nice to have Plus, it has become the cost of entry for online retailers – successful retailers will be those who recognize this and focus on building their entire experience around what matters most: our customers.
