E-commerce has truly made its mark in the world, becoming a staple and an important part of our lives. As such, there are almost innumerable players in the e-commerce industry, and more continue to be added. But of course, not all of them are flourishing, and one of the factors that are leading to that is the site itself.
The following are some of the bad practices that are committed to e-commerce sites, and how you can avoid them:
Not Defining Your Target Audience
One of the biggest crimes you can commit against your e-commerce website is not defining who your target audience is. This is one of the things that you should be doing from even before you build your site as it contains vital information on how you should even go about your plans.
For any business, it is always important to define the target market so that you can focus your efforts into actions that are suitable for them. If you know who your target audience is, it is very easy to identify what strategies you should imply. For e-commerce businesses, this also means that your products would center on what interests your target audience.
As e-commerce businesses may have multiple target markets because of wide product ranges, it’s your campaigns that can be targeted for various segments of your audience. Put your analytics to work and identify your existing audiences and craft campaigns that are perfect for each segment. Doing this will help boost your efforts’ effectiveness.
Bad Quality of Product Photos
Another common shortcoming of e-commerce websites is settling with bad quality product photos, which is a major turn off. Your site may be a pure visual delight, but if you use low-quality photos, the overall visual experience is affected negatively.
With that in mind, it’s always a good idea to aim for the best quality photos for your e-commerce websites. You can follow this product photography guide to boost your the quality of product photos for your e-commerce website. You may also consider investing in professional photographers who can bring the best out of your products, and making them earn the attention they deserve, eventually leading to increased sales.
No Balance on Text and Visuals
Balance is always a good attribute to keep. This is very true for texts and visuals in e-commerce sites. Unfortunately, a lot of e-commerce sites are unable to perfect the harmony between their site’s textual and visual content.
Visual content includes but is not limited to photos, videos, and graphics. These have the potential to grab the attention of your audience better than text, which explains why a lot of sites tend to focus on this part. However, what should be done is to complement this with ample textual content.
The cliché goes “a picture is worth a thousand words” is true. But without you setting what the right words are, your visuals may mean differently to different people. So it is best to provide the explanatory text to complement your visuals strategically.
Slow Website Loading Speed
Many e-commerce sites fail to provide acceptable website loading speed, and this is causing a strain on their overall performance. When a site takes more than 3 seconds to load, bounce rates tend to increase, which leads to a loss of a lot of potential sales.
A great way to put the importance of website loading speed is the 60-second rule. Any site has about a minute to impress their visitors. If from the beginning, they’re not impressed because of your site loads slowly, then you are off to a bad start. You should put an effort to improve your site’s loading speed.
You should make use of tools such as PageSpeed Insights to evaluate your site’s performance, and how you can improve it so that your website loading speed would no longer be a problem, and you can focus on providing an even better service to your potential customers.
Not Integrating Socia Media Share Buttons
In this social media generation, it’s a mystery why there are e-commerce websites that fail to see the missed opportunities for not having social media share buttons as part of their social media strategy.
Modern-day customers are almost always online on social media, and it is a good idea to tap them and their networks by making it easy for your products and your content to be shared. Adding social media sharing capabilities make your life easier, and helps your site earn a lot more traffic than it could without. So spend a little effort and implement social media sharing on your e-commerce site.
Tedious Checkout Process
Finally, numerous e-commerce sites also commit the grave mistake of having a tedious checkout process which wards off customers when they’re about to complete their purchase or cart abandonment. Some of these mistakes include required account creation, too many unnecessary fields to fill up, and limited payment options.
Reduce cart abandonment by ensuring that you have a simple and efficient checkout process. Checking out as a guest should be allowed, getting only important information from the customers. Furthermore, when the capability is present, do try to offer free shipping as this is a great deal for a lot of customers who are taken by surprise that at the end of the checkout process, there’s a shipping fee that suddenly forms part of their costs. Otherwise, communicate that shipping fees will be charged right off the product page.
Transform your site into a Winning e-Commerce site with these tips
Creating and maintaining an e-commerce site is a challenge. But this is a challenge you have to brave to stand out and beat the competition that grows each day. These six bad habits are very commonplace, and beating them already puts you in a better position than those who do not. Match it with great products and outstanding service, and you can see your business rising to heights you could never have imagined. So do your best and transform your site into a winning e-commerce site through this guide.
The post 6 Website Bad Practices That Hurt Your E-Commerce Website Conversion appeared first on Digital Media News & Training.
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