Your site has great products, but you get too many looky-loos. You want to convert more visits into sales, but how? Often a poor conversion rate on a website is due to a visitor’s poor experience with the site itself and not the products or services offered. Why is this? Shoppers get frustrated with technology that is not responsive to their wants and needs. Most website owners focus solely on improving their inventory and prices in order to compete in the marketplace, but attention must be given to a customer’s UX or user experience.
When customers enjoy a site, they are more likely to fulfill their shopping needs there. When a customer is frustrated, no number of discounts or product quality will convince them to buy. Understanding this is key to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of your online store. Here are five common reasons for shopping cart abandonment. If your website meets any of the criteria, it’s time to improve!
Table of Contents
Quick Load Times
Watching a frustration wheel while a site loads is a sure way to create a negative user experience from the start. People now expect sites to load quickly and completely within an instant and not interrupt their browsing with popup ads or misdirected page loads. A few things to keep in mind: optimize your content so that it doesn’t cause unacceptable load times. Also, create an app if you are able as opposed to having your site online. People are now accustomed to using apps instead of browsers on their phones and tablets and it is a prefered way to shop and can give you a competitive advantage.
Navigation and Site Search
Often times visitors to a site come for something specific. By providing easy to use navigation and search options, shoppers can determine if the site has what they want. When the site has their desired product or service and it was easy to find, they will likely buy. The user experience is positive, creating the emotional satisfaction needed to trust the site for their purchase. With navigation, make sure you create easy to understand categories. With each page, make sure there is an easy to find search option (yes, they can control F, but not everyone understands all of the technologies’ functions).
Pictures Are Worth a Thousand Emotions
High resolution, aesthetic, vibrant, colorful photos are always an attraction. Pictures evoke emotion and convey quality to site visitors. Make sure your photos show your products in a positive light as well as display beauty on the site. Some visitors will choose your site simply because it feels good and that is due to the beauty provided by quality photos.
Include Customer Reviews
A major factor in purchasing for many people is trust. They aren’t as concerned with price as they are with satisfaction. Customer reviews allow shoppers to get a sense of what other purchasers experienced. People are often convinced by the experience of others and providing customer reviews on your site is a great way to cultivate confidence. Reviews also tell potential customers that you are confident in what you provide because you are willing to be transparent about people’s experiences.
Make checking out simple – and allow shoppers to save their carts
A confused mind says no. Keeping the shopping experience as simple and easy as possible is a critical way to insure shoppers buy what they are looking at. If the experience becomes too complicated or difficult, shoppers will abort their shopping and abandon their shopping carts. This is the worst-case scenario because you did enough to convince the shopper to buy but failed to get them to finish the transaction. Also, allow customers to save their items in their carts. This will allow shoppers to compare and return and purchase from you without the hassle of gathering their items again. If they must redo their purchases, they will often pull the trigger on the cart that is already full.
It is important to remember that your potential customers are people. They get frustrated, they want to trust their purchase and they enjoy the sense of quality. When you understand the emotions beneath customer shopping and cater to that, you can convert more sales and create more loyal customers. The key is to keep UX (user experience) in mind. Don’t try to trick or confuse your customers. This might work once, but you will lose business in the long run.
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