Tuesday, 23 October 2012

Top 10 factors that put customers off your store

A survey recently carried out has discovered the top 10 turn offs for customers when visiting an ecommerce store. They were as follows:

  • Site doesn't look secure - Having a website that not only looks secure but actually is as secure as is possibly can be, is vitally important in the long term success of your business. This means having secure servers to protect your customers information and having a secure payment gateway for them to purchase products for you. If any of these aspects aren't secure, it's going to make customers very reluctant to purchase for your store.

  • Bugs and technical issues with the site - Whatever it is, whether it's an ecommerce store or some other website, if a customer comes across a number of bugs when attempting to purchase from your online store, it is going to harm your perception of being a professional business. Again, this will result in you getting less long term and short term sales. 

  • Insufficient images and product information - When a customer looks to purchase a product, before they decide whether to buy it or not, they want to have as much information as they can about the product, allowing them to make a more informed decision. No matter what the product is, it should have a number of images showing the product from different angles as well as displaying all the information they may require such as specification, warranty, delivery options and anything else they may require. Like having an website that doesn't look secure, insufficient details for each product makes your site much less trustworthy.

  • Difficult to use shopping cart - Whether a customer visits your mobile store or ecommerce store, the simpler and easier it is for a customer to buy from your store, the happier they are going to be. If you find that customers are finding your shopping cart difficult to use, why not sign up to our ecommerce software and get a free ecommerce store today. We have developed our shopping cart to ensure it provides not only the best shopping experience possible, but is also easy to use for buyer and seller alike. 

  • Checkout form too long and time consuming - Again, as stated in the last section you need to try and make it as quick as possible for customers to purchase products. As you need their personal details to send out the products or to get in touch with them in the future, you have to have some form of contact information. However, to make it as simple as possible you could choose to have the most basic information such as name, email address, delivery address and credit card details. 

  • Poorly-designed website - Like an unsecured site or one with bugs or a poor shopping cart, the look of your site is an essential part to your business's overall brand image. If your website doesn't look good, it's going to harm your brand image. Again using eSellution as an example, when working with a number of clients every day, we also ensure that their website is of the highest possible standard in all aspects, to maximise the success they can achieve.

  • Slow website - On average, if a customer has to wait more than 3 seconds for a website to load, they are going to grow frustrated and leave the site altogether. You can imagine how many sales this will result in you missing out on if you have a slow loading website. While you want your online store to be appealing to the naked eye, the more images and content you have, the longer it is going to take to load. However, this problem is a lot more prominent in mobile stores as a mobile phone's 3G capabilities aren't as fast as a standard Internet connect. To improve the speed of your site, there are a number of things you can do such as having a cache system the first time a user visits your store, reducing the amount of images you have on your site or changing the format of your images to ones that are smaller in size. 

  • Lack of customer reviews and feedback - The opinions of customers have a huge weighting on whether or not someone decides to purchase from your store, as those using eBay will know all too well. If you have a product on your store which has a number of negative reviews, the likelihood is that your sales for this product will be pretty much non-existent. If you do find that certain products in your store are receiving many negative views, you may want to think about removing that product from your store altogether as it clearly isn't of the standard you want for your business. 

  • Retailer based outside of the UK - As they say, you always feel most comfortable when at home and online shopping is no different. If you are based outside of the UK, customers are going to be more hesitant to purchase from you because of a number of different factors such as time it will take to get to them, added cost in shipping and an added price they would have to pay in terms of the conversion rate. If you find that you are a successful ecommerce store looking to achieve success within the UK, you may need to think about creating a branch within the UK, allowing you to overcome all of these concerns that customers have.

  • Insufficient delivery options - Like all aspects of ecommerce shopping, the more options you provide your customers with, the happier they are going to be. As time is as much a crucial factor as price and quality, customers want the option to receive their goods as soon as possible but at an affordable price. When a customer purchases from your store they should be able to have standard delivery within 5 working day, express delivery within 2-3 working days and next day delivery. If you have all of these delivery options covered then you will find that the majority of your customers will be happy.
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