Why Your E-Commerce Design Prevents Your Leads From Engaging (And How to Improve It)

Updated on: Jul 09 2018 by Anli

ecommerce design mistakes

Today we have an article from one of our readers. It’s interesting because he also took the time to use some parts of this site as examples 😉 . It’s a long article that I hope will inspire you and make you take action to improve your e-commerce website. So, get comfortable and let’s begin!

More than 90% of consumers consider a site’s visual appearance as their top reason for purchasing. Another study showed that 38% of visitors would disengage from a website with an unattractive layout.

Despite these numbers, a lot of entrepreneurs still underestimate the value of design to an e-commerce website. As a result, the visual presentation is often done haphazardly, which then drives customers away and towards another site with better user experience.

You would not want to be part of that group and run the risk of losing your user base. With that said, here’s a list of possible reasons why your website’s design may be hindering your customers from purchasing:

First image above by: hiremagentodeveloper.com

Your Design Is Focused On One Product

A common error that business owners make is to have their customer pick out a product and then move them immediately to checkout.

Throughout this brief journey, the customer has not encountered a single instance that he or she was offered another product they might like. Upselling does not just help you sell more; it also adds value to your customers.

How To Fix It:

Add recommendations on every product page for similar items that your customers might find interesting.

Some catch phrases can include: “Featured Templates” or “Items Related To The Product” or “You may also like…”.

azmind featured templates

Your Website Seems Shady

You need to remember that having a website does not always equate to trustworthiness. As such, you need to set up your website in such a way that you show willingness and ability to deliver on your promises.

How To Fix It:

You need to assure your customers that they are shopping on a legitimate website.

To do so, think about common customer concerns when shopping online. Some elements you can use include customer testimonials and features on notable publications.

You should also prove the security of your site by investing in SSL certificate(s) and notifying your customers upon checkout that they are on a secure server. In that case, Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificate is the best option for an E-commerce website. You can obtain a trusted Comodo EV SSL certificate from www.cheapsslshop.com/comodo-ev-ssl at a low price.

Extended Validation certificate is used to increase visitors’ trust level and improve on-site user engagement by enabling visible secure signs in the browser’s address bar.

Being upfront with shipping costs and return policy would also gain their trust. And of course, having a professional design that is visually appealing and regularly updated.

SSL certificate

Image source: brilliantinfo.net

Poor In-Site Search Design

Up to 30% of e-commerce customers will use the site’s internal search. However, only 15% of companies put in the effort to optimize this function, while 45% ignore it completely.

Case studies abound proving the effectiveness of an optimized in-site search design in terms of conversions.

Despite this, most e-commerce sites still overcomplicate their search filters and do not support user search by product name.

This means that someone searching for an exact match of an item they are intent on buying would not find it on your site. When this happens, they are likely to move on to another site.

How To Fix It:

Make sure that your search function is optimized to search by brand, category, product name, and even keywords.

You also need to be able to catch misspellings by putting a “Did you mean…?” function. You can also make the filtering options appear after the initial search.

Azmind Search

Hard-to-find Contact Information

If you make it difficult for your customers to get in touch with you, it is less likely that they will trust you. They want to be assured that when an issue arises, they can easily find someone they can talk to and resolve their problem.

How To Fix It:

You need to put your contact information where it can be easily found. It is generally advisable to place it in an area where customers intuitively know where contact pages are (e.g. top page, navigation bar, footer).

It would also be helpful to provide several channels of communication: live chat, phone number, email, as you are sending a message that you are easily accessible.

Azmind Contact

Non-responsive Website

The majority of online shoppers are already on mobile. If you are not yet optimizing your website for mobile responsiveness, you are potentially losing a large portion of your market.

How To Fix It:

Creating a mobile-friendly website would take effort and resources, but it would be worth it. Plenty of brands, big and small, have proven an increase in conversions and revenue when they started to optimize their website.

Additionally, this is also in line with Google’s mobile-friendly update, thereby helping you rank in the SERPs as well.

Maximize the use of available tools such as Google’s mobile friendly test to ensure that your site is working well.

Responsive Site

Image source: https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/

Long Website Loading Time

Aside from the obvious that nobody really likes to wait long for a website to load, this could also lead to distrust. Studies show that if a site takes more than 5 seconds to load, then customers are likely to leave.

How To Fix It:

To shorten your site’s loading time, you need to improve a number of things.

This includes reducing the number of HTTP requests, making sure that your images and other files on your site provide clear caching information, ensuring that your CMS is updated, compressing and optimizing images, and making sure that you are using the right web hosting service.

Website Speed

Image source: https://www.besthostinganddesign.com/speed-affects-website/

Registration Required To Order

Speed is key with online transactions. If you require users to register before they purchase, that is another hurdle for them. By doing this, it slows down the process of their purchase, which will likely turn them off.

How To Fix It:

It is understandable that you would want your customer information for future promotional use. What you can do is to explore alternate ways to get their information. For instance, you can ask them to register so they can track their orders and credit points, or check saved items.

Registration Page

Image source: https://blog.bizzabo.com/how-to-build-an-event-registration-page-that-attendees-enjoy

Unattractive Social Sharing Buttons

One of the most important aspects of establishing your credibility is social shares. So if you have poorly-designed share buttons, how are your customers going to get the word out that the products on your website are awesome?

How To Fix It:

Make sure that you are generous in distributing social sharing buttons throughout your site.

Conduct A/B testing of your buttons to pinpoint the best locations on product pages, the effectiveness of counters, and the buttons’ optimal size. When done correctly, you would have an organic following created by your loyal customers.

Conclusion

As you can see, design is no longer a trivial or purely aesthetic aspect of e-commerce site optimization, but a very vital factor in every buyer’s journey. You need to be smart about creating a design that works for your intended audience.

Through these tips, you will be able to avoid common mistakes that e-commerce sites make.

Do you have any other points to discuss? We would be happy to hear from you, please feel free to comment!

Filed under: Inspiration

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