Ecommerce is the most competitive business model in today’s world. According to recent data, total eCommerce sales were almost $504.6 billion, and by the year 2023, it will be $230 billion more.
The success of an eCommerce business depends a lot on the website. This website helps to drive the targeted traffic, and through this website, customers get to buy products 24/7. Unlike brick and mortar stores, eCommerce stores are the only convenient way to buy and sell any time of the day. However, designing an eCommerce website is not an easy task to do. There are so many common mistakes that even pro designers make while designing an eCommerce website.
In this blog, you will know about ten such mistakes that most of the eCommerce websites have. Knowing all these, you can consciously avoid these mistakes while designing your next eCommerce website design project.
So, do stay with us. Let us imagine for a while; you have already launched your eCommerce website.
Within a few days, traffic started coming. Analytics is also doing great! Still, your website is not doing good as there is not enough conversion from it.
It is the main reason to build the website in the first place, right?
What could go wrong? There could be several answers, but a significant reason could be your website’s design.
Your eCommerce website should be designed to attract and retain the targeted customers, and ultimately lead to the conversion.
Now, let’s get to know the ten design mistakes that most of the eCommerce websites have:
Responsiveness issue of the website
If you are up to date about SEO, you must know that Google has switched to mobile-first indexing. It means the search engine crawlers will index the mobile version of a website before the desktop version. Mobile responsiveness has been a significant ranking factor for Google long before.
All these make the responsiveness of a website more important than ever before. Still, there are so many eCommerce sites having this common issue. This issue is not something to be ignored and needs to be solved right away. If you are thinking about why this is a significant mistake, then the following information will help you understand it.
63% of all visits to eCommerce websites comes from mobile devices. Almost half of the revenue generated from an eCommerce store is from mobile. And,8 in 10 customers will not be interested in engaging with the content; if it doesn’t display well on their device.
A report from Adobe shows the device-related issues users face and the impact of it very precisely.
Not including contact information
Trust is indeed crucial when it comes to online business. Customers want to know that they are dealing with a legit business. Customers need to provide sensitive information like credit and debit cards to complete payment.
It is logical for them to seek the people behind the business if they face any problem. You will find a few eCommerce sites that do not provide any contact information or tend to hide it. Customers have a tough time due to this. They fail to trust such sites.
According to Komarketing, 54% of consumers think the lack of contact information shrinks a brand’s credibility. Also, 64% of people want to see contact information on a website’s home page.
Many people will leave the website without purchasing any product just for the lack of contact information.
You place a Call to Action to your website when you want the website visitors to do something. All the CTA buttons of an eCommerce site tell the people to do the following tasks:
- Add a product to the cart.
- Follow on different social media.
- Download any content like free eBooks.
- Subscription for the newsletter, and many more!
Conversion from your eCommerce website will depend a lot on the proper placement of these CTAs. So, it is incredibly crucial. However, that data shows an entirely different scenario. A good number of SMB websites do not use CTAs on their homepage or other parts of their website. Well, it is a huge mistake that will not let an eCommerce to reach its full potential.
Improper visual representation
Visual representation of your website always grabs the attention of the people. Product photos of your eCommerce website play an important role in increasing conversion. 93% of customers make purchase decisions based on the product photograph.
Still, few eCommerce websites make mistakes here. They sometimes prefer to provide false, misleading, and inconsistent product photos. It eventually hampers the credibility of their brand. Low-resolution photographs are another reason behind people not clicking the add to cart button.
So, take time for the proper visual representation of the products and optimize the images appropriately for the search engines.
Crowded website design
According to GoodFirms, Almost 85% of small business websites are guilty of crowded web design. They provide so many onsite elements on their websites.
No one can deny that designing a website is difficult. You need to choose the images, colors, different layout for the page that you are creating. But if you try to add too many things to your website, the unnecessary on-page elements may harm the website more.
Use of Website Carousels
Are you thinking about using Carousels on your website?
After seeing different social media like Facebook using carousels, do you think it is still in trend for the websites?
Well, the answer is a big “NO.” It is doubtful that Carousels will engage the website visitors. Just 1% of the websites still use it.
Carousels are not appreciated now. It distracts visitors often. So, continuing to have carousels on the website is another mistake that a few websites still have.
A confusing and lengthy checkout process
It is one of the most harmful mistakes that an eCommerce website has. A lengthy and confusing checkout process can make the visitors leave the cart midway. The average cart abandonment rate in all industries is about 70%. Another surprising fact is that each year eCommerce brands lose sales revenue of $18 billion just for cart abandonment.
A very lengthy and complicated checkout process is a significant reason for cart abandonment. The best conversion-friendly approach is to design a straightforward and convenient checkout process. It would undoubtedly help to surge the number of conversions.
Confusing navigation
An eCommerce website needs to provide hassle-free navigation for the website visitors. It would make their buying journey easy.
When they are browsing the store, they should be able to move different pages very swiftly. All the categories, subcategories, and long list of products should not bother them.
But, so many eCommerce websites have non-user-friendly navigation. For this, buyers often get confused and leave the website without conversion.
Not including store policies on the website
A conscious customer will not buy randomly without knowing the policies of your store. Before making the final purchase decision, he would check out the policies of your store.
So, it is imperative to have a store policy. A few eCommerce websites make this mistake of not including separate policies for their stores. It hurts their business later. Especially when the customers are not satisfied with a purchase, they have no clue what to do about it.
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It makes the customers dissatisfied, and they are more likely to avoid purchasing from such stores in the future.
Slow-loading website
47% of users expect a maximum of two seconds of loading time for a website. According to Google, 53% of mobile site visitors will leave a webpage if it takes more than three seconds to load. It is so important that Google has launched a free tool to get ideas about a site’s speed. Site speed has a significant influence on the overall conversion. So many eCommerce websites are not bothered about the speed of their website. They don’t have an idea of what is the opportunity cost of it.
For example, according to research, the increase of site speed from 8 seconds to 2 seconds will boost the conversion rates as much as 74%?
74% is a significant amount of sales revenue that an eCommerce business has to let go of just for having a slow website.
Wrapping up
Getting customers online is not so easy. Having some design mistake on an eCommerce website would harm the site’s user experience, ultimately leading to lesser conversion.
Avoiding the above-mentioned design-related mistakes would increase the traffic and conversion for an eCommerce business. So, try to avoid these mistakes if you are building an eCommerce website or already have one to generate more sales and revenue.
