E-commerce sites offer many advantages to businesses. They give your business the ability to reach out to a nationwide or even worldwide audience, increasing your potential customer base hugely. They also offer extra convenience and ease to customers, eliminating the need for them to actually come to your premises.
However, it’s not enough to simply have an e-commerce site; you also need to make sure that customers actually take that all-important final step of entering their details and buying your product. Many users will add items to their online basket, but then simply abandon them without actually making the purchase. But why does this happen?
There are many reasons why people may abandon their online shopping baskets. If the buying process is too long or complex, or if the site takes a long time to load, many visitors will simply give up and go onto another site that offers a better user experience. If there are hidden charges that aren’t revealed until the final stages of buying, this is also likely to put buyers off.
If you want to optimise the chances of your customers making that purchase on your e-commerce site, these steps will help:
- Make sure that all details are clearly stated, with no hidden charges, so that buyers can feel they are making an informed decision and are not being tricked.
- Offer attractive incentives, such as discount codes on special occasions or next day delivery.
- Make sure the online shopping basket can be seen from different devices; for example, if a customer adds items to their basket on their desktop computer, then goes to your site later on their smartphone, they should be able to see the items still in their basket. This saves them the time and effort of finding the items all over again, making it more likely that they will buy them.
- Make it simple as possible for customers to fill in their details, for example with an address auto-fill feature.
If you need assistance getting your e-commerce site up to scratch, whether you want to set up a new site completely from the beginning or give your existing one a revamp so you can appeal more to your customers, get in touch with us today. We have the web design skills to maximise your chances of converting online browsers into real paying customers.