In this day and age, it is crucial to have an ecommerce website that is easy to navigate and looks fantastic. Right now, online purchasing is booming, and the epidemic has just made this trend stronger. As a result, you must ensure that your eCommerce design will allow you to capitalize on this.
You must avoid the traps that will cause half of your contemporaries to fail along the way if you want to succeed in the cutthroat ecommerce sector. Mistakes are opportunities for learning. There is no question in my mind. But I think we can all agree that it would be preferable to avoid the error altogether.
Here are 16 mistakes you should avoid when starting an Ecommerce Website.
Choosing the Wrong Platform
The website creation platform serves as the skeleton for your ecommerce website. The performance, audience, appeal, appeal, design, and success of your store are all determined by the platform.
You can’t risk messing it up. Nowadays, the majority of website builders that are accessible online are built using the WYSIWYG foundation, which enables you to construct working ecommerce websites without writing a single line of code. Others, though, do call for a rudimentary understanding of code. Additionally, several website builders serve various functions. Others help develop startups, while some work great for blogs.
The last thing you want is to set up your ecommerce website on a particular CMS only to discover that the platform lacks functionality that is essential to your business. In that case, switching to a new platform will require you to expend a significant amount of time, money, and effort. While there are many factors to consider while making this choice, doing it wrong could prove to be devastating for your business.
Bad Responsive Design
Though it’s not as popular as it once was, there are a few ecommerce websites that don’t use a responsive design. No matter the viewer’s choice of device, your website must operate well.
More than 50% of internet users visit websites using mobile cell phones rather than traditional desktop or laptop computers. As more and more people move to mobile phones, these records have only increased with time. You should make every effort as an online business owner to seize and profit from this opportunity.
An ecommerce website that is only optimized for desktop use is not very mobile-friendly. For ecommerce website stores, responsive design is not only necessary but also a requirement. Many ecommerce website creation tools enable users to build mobile-optimized websites that are accessible and viewable on all screen sizes and devices.
Bad Product Description
It is imperative that product descriptions provide all the necessary details, are simple to read and comprehend, and adhere to the brand tone.
Selling your products will be difficult if your product descriptions are inadequate. That is all there is to it. Your product descriptions must be detailed but also simple to read and comprehend.
It’s your responsibility to explain to customers exactly what they’re buying because they can’t try out your products before they buy them. Now, depending on who you ask, either the objective features and specs of your products or the subjective benefits to the customer.
Bad Mix of Media
Throwing everything into the ecommerce website or product pages is a common mistake. Videos and images combined with other media can be incredibly compelling. However, going overboard may turn them off.
Balancing the text, image, and multimedia content on your homepage is important. In accordance with what your target market expects, you should offer the appropriate dosage of each.
Your ecommerce website is working against you if it loads slowly, is difficult to use, or makes the user feel disoriented and overwhelmed. Providing the finest user experience should guide every choice you make when developing an e-commerce website.
Overusing Pop-ups
If you use advertisements wisely, they can be a good side income source. According to a survey, more than 55% of website visitors quit within the first minute. You just have a brief window of opportunity to persuade the visitor and pique his curiosity. Pop-up advertisements are eye-catching and excellent at grabbing the user’s attention. However, they can be exceedingly annoying.
During the checkout process is one instance where pop-ups of any kind should never appear. The worst thing you can do when someone is trying to purchase a product from your ecommerce website is to divert their attention and possibly annoy them in the process. Sadly, this frequently leads to missed sales.
Not Investing in Security
Security should be viewed as an investment rather than a cost, even though every new business owner needs to be mindful of their expenses. There are countless ways for fraudsters to attack, such as through financial fraud, phishing schemes, and malicious links.
You want to ensure that everything related to your business is always safe and secure. You don’t want to constantly worry about data security, even though you should never allow this component of security to fall by the wayside.
Your ecommerce website can be made more secure in a number of ways. You should, at the least, employ SSL certificates to secure payments, antivirus software to safeguard payment information, and HTTPS in order to safeguard your users and their data.
Not Enough and Ineffective CTAs
Another efficient strategy for increasing subscribers of your ecommerce website is the CTA, or call to action. The call-to-action buttons that appear nearly instantly when you access a website’s home page attract the attention of the visitor. Even if your ecommerce website has the best design and content, it will be useless if the audience doesn’t know how to use it.
Calls to action should be very straightforward and effective. You will be stating the obvious by informing the audience of the next steps they should take, such as making a purchase or recommending your company to a friend.
The CTA button outlines what exactly your consumer needs to do to exhibit interest and take advantage of the finest deals and discounts on your website. All things considered, CTA should be subtly incorporated into your store. For users to feel prompted to take action, your CTAs must be aesthetically appealing and noticeable.
Lack of Social Proof
Product reviews, customer endorsements, and recommendations all serve as essential forms of social evidence that influence prospects to buy.
Make it simple for your customers to provide reviews to collect more. You can send them an email requesting a review, include a message with the product, or even direct them to a thank-you website after they’ve finished the checkout process.
It’s usually a good idea to add customer evaluations on your ecommerce website, especially if they are screened to only feature actual purchasers of the product. Just make sure that to your visitors, these reviews seem legitimate and genuine. To accomplish this, adding a “Verified Reviewer” badge is the simplest option.
Lack of Bad Customer Care Offerings
Customers want their problems to be solved swiftly, ideally over the course of a single phone contact, without being delayed or given the runaround. This is why it’s so important to account for the expense of providing good customer service in the product’s price. Also, note that contemporary customer service should be multi-channel and not just a phone call.
This is one of the factors contributing to live chat’s recent surge in popularity, allowing people to connect and receive the support they require. AI chatbots will be more successfully incorporated into an ecommerce website design as they become more effective and efficient. However, it’s crucial to offer a variety of support options for the convenience of the customer.
Not Allowing Guest Checkout
One reason is that creating an account takes too long and isn’t the best option for customers who are pressed for time. They have to do an additional step before they can properly purchase your goods. Early on in the checkout process, it makes a lot of demands on the customer. Second, it compels customers to make commitments they might not otherwise wish to make (such as signing up for your mailing list or being entered into certain sweepstakes).
Offer guest checkout and get rid of the “sign up” requirement if you want to increase sales and gain more devoted consumers on your ecommerce website. Have the option for customers to sign up at the very end of their transaction if you do want them to. During the checkout process, their personal information would have already been added. You can provide each customer who signs up with exclusive discounts and a customized shopping experience.
Use Twitter or Gmail one-click account creation if you must force an account to buy. At the very least, make it simple for your customers.
Bad SEO Strategy
It doesn’t matter how polished and attractive your ecommerce website is; what matters is how high you rank on the main search engines. Your chances of succeeding are immediately increased if your website is listed on the top page of the search results. Your website needs to be well-optimized for search engines (SEO).
And contrary to popular belief, SEO involves more than simply placing a few keywords and key phrases on the website. Numerous additional factors are included in SEO; it provides you with a precise idea of what to post and when to publish it to ensure that the content is seen by the greatest number of users.
You should act quickly to fix any pages that visitors cannot access through your ecommerce website’s links. To make sure that all pages are accessible from the navigation, you must modify your theme. By contrasting your page database with your crawl, you can determine whether this is a problem. If any pages are missed during the crawl, links won’t be created for them.
Lack of Payment Options
Lack of payment choices puts your clients at an unwanted disadvantage. Everything that slows customers down in this age of instantaneous action can derail them from buying from your shop entirely.
Nobody will create a new account solely to place an order with you, so not accepting their chosen payment method can turn them away. Your best chance is to research your target consumers’ preferred ways and concentrate on meeting as many of these expectations as you can, even though you don’t have to provide all of these possibilities.
Confusing User Journey
One of the key factors contributing to a high bounce rate for ecommerce websites is a difficult and unclear customer path. After all, you’ll probably search elsewhere if you can’t locate what you’re looking for. Therefore, no one will take the time to try to figure it out on their own.
The user journey you offer must be simple and easy to follow because of this. Without having to stop and ponder, visitors should be able to move about your website. In order to confirm that this is the case, you should test your website both internally and externally. This can assist you in identifying any problems that need to be fixed.
Poor Brand Identity and Branding Strategy
Your ecommerce website offers you the chance to develop and spread a killer brand identity that will connect with your target market. Your brand is more than just your logo or other distinguishing features. It all comes down to persuading them to choose your company over the rivals. Even the name you select is regarded as a component of your brand because it is used to market and identify your company.
Making sure you go above and beyond by working with experts who can assist you in developing a fantastic brand identity to reflect in the design of your e-commerce website is essential for sales as well as for establishing and maintaining a devoted customer base.
Experts in branding know what it takes to build a strong, consistent brand for your company that will help it stand out from the competition.
As with product development, branding strategy and execution require equal amounts of work. Building a brand takes consistency and perseverance, and it never ends. Without a well-planned branding strategy, your company runs the danger of losing touch with its target audience, which will limit brand recognition, profitability, and future growth.
No Content Marketing Strategy
Making content purely for the sake of making content is one of the biggest mistakes we see organizations make. Make sure your material is consistent with your brand, gives value to your audience, and is strategically used to attract visitors to your website and generate sales.
When you do this, your company gains nothing from it. It is more likely to harm your brand than help it. There will always be something instructive, informative, or otherwise valuable to write about and offer to your consumers, regardless of the field you work in. The more knowledgeable and interested your audience is, as we’ve mentioned a few times in this essay, the more probable it is that they will convert.
Hiding Important Service Information
Purchase choices are influenced by factors other than the product alone. Additionally, customers want to know about shipping costs, delivery times, return policies and contact information in case they have any queries or problems.
Give your customers all the information they require upfront rather than withholding it. As a result, the customer is now even better informed and can proceed with their transaction.
Your return policy is an additional piece of service-related information you might wish to put on your product pages. This will encourage even your most hesitant clients to go with their purchase because they will know they have the option to exchange or return their item at any time.
These are some of the most frequent errors in ecommerce website design that we observe individuals making. However, if you can stay away from these mistakes, you may greatly increase your chances of creating a successful ecommerce website.
