Things To Consider When Building An eCommerce Website
When building an eCommerce website, there are some things that you need to ensure that you do correctly. If you want to make online sales, it’s imperative that you build a site that attracts your audience, loads quickly, and presents your products in a way that makes your audience feel as if they really need them.
Your website is essentially your storefront, business card and most significant marketing piece all rolled into one. How it affects your visitors and customers is essential to your success. Provide a memorable experience and customers are sure to return time and time again. Make mistakes like the ones listed below and your prospective customer may never come back.
10 Mistakes To Avoid With Your eCommerce Site
1. Difficult To NavigateÂ
It takes a visitor about 20 seconds to make a decision about whether they’re going to stay on your website or click away. If your site is laid out nicely, with products and services, information, prices, FAQs, and content easy to find then people are more likely to hang out – the longer they stay on your site the more likely they are to make a purchase or to return again.
If you have a lot of content, great! Use drop-down menus and organize your content by topic for easier access. Another great way to help your customers find things on your site is to include a search box for it. But, for the search box to work properly you’ll need to understand the types of products and the words your audience uses to find the products.
2. No ‘Contact Us’ Page
If your customers can’t get hold of you, they’ll not want to buy from you. Always include your contact numbers, emails, and information in as many spots as possible on the website so that there’s no confusion about how to contact you when they need to. Make it easy.
3. Poor Product DescriptionsÂ
Another important aspect of when building an eCommerce website is the product descriptions that you put on it. Use words that your audience will look up if they were searching for the product. This is a good way to improve the SEO for your website too. Instead of hitting website visitors with a hard sell, provide information, solve their problems and show them the benefits of your products or services. They’ll be much more receptive and appreciative.
4. Non-Secure Payment Gateways
Security is important to online customers. They need to know that their credit card details are safe. Use secure socket layer (SSL) certificates to show your audience that your site is secure. Plus, it’s important for Google Search now to offer that option so that your ecommerce store shows up as secure and that it lists your site in the search results.
5. Mixed Up Branding
When creating an online store your branding should be creative, clear and consistent. Consistency establishes a strong brand and gives your customers reassurance and confidence in your business. If your colors, tone of voice, formatting, fonts and overall brand style is different on your website, social media sites, emails and other communications your prospects and customers can become confused.
6. Confusing Pricing and Shipping Information
There is no need to trick your buyers into buying your products or services. Instead, be very open about your prices, the shipping costs if any, and anything to do with money and how your customers will be billed. Include icons for the types of payment that you accept so that your audience knows how to pay you.
7. No Refund Policy
Be upfront about your refund and return policy too. If it’s 30 days or has other criteria, spell it all out very clearly so that there is no confusion or mistake.
8. Website Doesn’t Work On Mobile
With more than half of all online business searches beginning on mobile devices like smartphones or tablets, if your website isn’t responsive, your potential customers won’t hang around for long on your website. What responsive design does is code each webpage so that it automatically adjusts to the device that is being used to view it. Whether a tablet, smartphone, laptop or a stationary desktop computer, each person will see the page in an optimized fashion for their device.
9. Social Media Links Are Missing
When people are happy with a purchase, they want to tell other people about it. May it easy for your customers to share their thoughts and opinions with social media sharing tools on your website. These buttons make easy for your visitors to share your content to their friends, family, and others with built-in social media buttons for your site. The more people share your website content and product info, the more traffic you’ll get.
10. No Sales FunnelÂ
A sales funnel is the process that your customer will go through from the moment they land on your website to when they actually buy from you. It usually starts when a prospective customer gives you their email address, usually in exchange for something of value that you provide for free, like an ebook, report or video tutorial. Your email marketing then follows up by building the relationship with the prospect so that they can see that you have genuine products or services that can solve their problems or make their life easier.
Free Checklist: Building An eCommerce Website Sales Funnel
It might seem like an obvious statement but sometimes businesses forget the point of building an eCommerce website is to get customers to buy. To do this you need a proven sales funnel system that guides your audience into becoming leads and then into becoming customers. Download my free Sales Funnel Checklist which outlines the best practices for making your sales funnel process deliver the intended result with lots of sales and repeat customers.