Running online shop – the most popular mistakes
Online shop management is activity prone to many mistakes. The most common errors committed by online shops owners are:
- unfriendly, little useful and non-functional website
- web design inadequate for mobile devices
- carelessness for consumer trust
- broadly understood mistakes connected with purchasing process
Inadequate purchasing process
Inappropriate buying process, the last on above mentioned list, usually results in big amount of “cart abandonments” in other words unfinished purchases. In this case, on the one hand, the online shop owner can enjoy traffic on his website, but on the other – should consider the lack of profits despite this traffic. There can be at least a few mostly overlapping each other reasons. The most common arguments for a large amount of cart abandonments are presented below.
Unavailable purchase finalization without owning website account
Many online shop owners aim at gathering as many registered users as possible – if only because they can inform them via newsletters about their products, promotions, discounts and sales. This advantage can turn into a drawback for buyers, who frequently treat such messages like spam and are often discouraged to fill in long forms.
The model solution for every online shop owner is giving the users a choice. Thus, the consumer should have the following buying options:
- without registration on the website
- after logging in to individual account
- without creating account
Obviously it is worth encouraging to register e.g. by offering discounts on first shopping after registration, collecting points for each purchase that can later be exchanged for products and so on.
Complicated purchasing process
Another popular mistake among e-shop owners is creating a problematic purchasing process. Complicated can be understood as long. It’s worth following the rule saying that the fewer steps (clicks) each client has to make from choosing the product till finalizing the transaction, the better. This way we decrease the risk that the client will change his mind and decides for cart abandonment. Considering offered products, every online store owner, should think over if a single- or multi-page form would work better. There are single-page forms recommended for shops with cheaper articles, while multi-page forms – for shops with expensive products (we should remember about limiting the pages up to several).
Lack of visible information about possible delivery and costs
Every client likes to see what he is dealing with, first of all know product he is interested in and its shipping costs. Revealing delivery costs only at the end of transaction is absolutely unacceptable. Placing shipping cost at the final step is not the only reason that discourages consumers from completing the purchasing process. All hidden costs lead to such result. The client, who hasn’t been informed about all the costs in advance, usually abandons the shopping cart and resigns from using this online store in the future. The survey shows that users, mostly women, are less likely to abandon the transaction when the shop offers free shipping. It is worth considering, if free delivery can bring more profits (completed purchases) than losses (cart abandonment).
Lack of purchase continuation after adding one product to shopping cart
Unavailable shopping continuation after adding only one product to the basket is another reason for cart abandonment. The cause can be error in store structure or sellers deliberate activity, who aims at quick transaction – this time falsely. Meanwhile, most clients who are interested in buying more than just one product from the website, and who are unable to add another article to the shopping cart, don’t buy even that one product and abandon the shopping cart.
Long delivery waiting time
They last problem ending up with cart abandonment is long shipping waiting time. Products quality, price, quick and easy order, as well as fast delivery – all matter for clients. Saving time (mostly via not leaving the house) is the main reason for choosing online not traditional shopping by the client. The information about quick delivery, definitely encourages him to purchase. The lack of such information or information about two-week delivery time, results in cart abandonment.
Decreasing the number of cart abandonment – summary
If we want to reduce the number of cart abandonments, we should remember about the following rules:
- there should be no pressure for clients to register on the website
- purchasing process should be fast and easy
- information about delivery costs must be clearly visible
- make sure that the client can buy more than just one product while shopping
- delivery term should be as short as possible
Implementation of all above mentioned rules should cause the increase of clients’ trust in the brand, and as a result – no cart abandonment and sales increase.
