Hello there! Have you just built your ecommerce website out of nuts and bolts like Iron Man? Feel that it could withstand the rising demand of your current users and visitors to the site at any moment?
Well, we might have some bad news for you: your website may not be as stable as you may think it is. What do unstable websites mean to a new user? It means frustration, insecurity and loss of interest to your business! However, we at EasyParcel are here to guide you!
Below here, we’ll be showing you multiple mistakes that cripple an ecommerce site along with guidelines on how to avoid them:
1. A slow loading site
Placing multiple web applications like Facebook comments, Twitter posts, multiple dynamic images, pop-ups and web applications unto your website may seem tempting to most people who think the more, the merrier. Unfortunately, this would add load times that might not be suitable for every single visitor of the site.
According to Gomez (now split into Synthethic Monitoring for Web & Mobile and Web Load Testing), the application monitor from Compuware, every 2 seconds of extra load time on a site increases the rate of visitors leaving by 8%. To make it simple, if you could decrease your load time, visitors will most likely continue browsing your site.
2. A complicated buying process
It’s great if you have a website with many pages of information to explain to your customer. However, if you make the buying process for any item take more than 5 steps, expect your customers to just get frustrated, bored, confused or all of the above and leave your website.
Compuware recommends that the order of purchase should be:-
- Welcome/ shopping cart contents page
- Bill-to page
- Ship-to page
- Payment page
- Confirmation/ Thank you page
3. An uncommon credit card entry procedure
Have you ever had to enter information about your credit card that does not follow the industry standard? Keyed in your name instead of your credit card number, or entered your security number instead of your name? Issues like these are what kills a customer’s mood in purchasing your items.
Taking reference from one Sucharita Mulpuru (who is an analyst with Forrester Research), she says that there is a standard sequence for entry for credit card information. By changing the sequence, this would interfere with how a customer keys in their information as they had before. In essence, just follow what is established as the industry standard.
4. High Shipping Costs
According to Mulpuru, charging for more than 10% of the total cost for an item towards shipping is too much for any person. “You’re probably depressing your sales significantly,” says Mulpuru. “People are more likely to abandon your cart.”
How do we solve this issue? Well, we are EasyParcel, the alternative courier service that has multiple couriers working with us at a lower rate, so that we can offer you a lower price point for shipping…
Well, we’ll point something out at the bottom of the article.
5. Horrible performance on certain browsers
Though you may be a person who likes using Mozilla Firefox to browse on the Internet, but there are many people around the world who are using old versions of Internet Explorer. Have you tried accessing your website from other browsers? “Many sites don’t perform well across various browsers, so people abandon them” says Mulpuru.
6. Deciding to get a mobile app out the window
We understand that having a mobile app these days is the most current thing for ecommerce businesses. However, without having a proper website, one could not get off the ground properly. According to Christina Warren from Mashable, getting out a mobile-friendly website that can be frequently updated to work fast, efficient and stably across many devices and browsers is more important. Only after that, does sales reports and research about customer usage can be considered for future mobile app development.
Well, that was a lot of mistakes that we have went through. Do you have any issues with your website that you may have identified from above? Want to save it? Why don’t you give our sister-site, Exabytes a look? For a better shipping alternative, take a look at our promotions page for what YOU can save on shipping. You can also contact us, or drop us comments below to tell us about your website experiences.
Oh yeah. Before we go, have a fun look at this comic about BAD ecommerce sites over at The Oatmeal (we hope your website is not like the comic.)
