Mistakes in ecommerce that can ruin your business

We often talk about how to do things right, discuss successful cases, look for ways to improve our service and become faster, higher, stronger and, ultimately, richer. The topic of errors and fatal irregularities in e-commerce is completely undeservedly overlooked. In the end, one mistake is remembered by customers well and can very seriously affect the reputation of the store or service.
So, a brief guide to errors and problems that can pretty spoil your business performance.

Unreliable Website Design
Before you buy something, any person visually assesses the seller and the store (in this case, your site). A professional, trustworthy electronic store should not look as if you are working from the garage (even if you are actually working from there).
How to fix? Invest in website design and development. This is your face, your tool and your platform for communication with the user, because to create a pleasant and clear design is an invaluable display of courtesy and attention to the buyer.

Let your contact data, organization name and other data that will help the user understand who is behind this site will be available on the site. Put in a prominent place certificates of security, research shows that it works fine.

Bad navigation
When a user first visits the site, he is only interested in the ability to quickly and easily find the necessary information. Before you make a purchase, a person needs the ability to get to the right product, and this is not easy. Lack of search capabilities, broken search or incomprehensible navigation instantly drives your customers away from the site. A study by the Nielsen Norman Group shows that even when everything was done correctly on the site, only 64% of visitors find out why they came.
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The steps to correct this situation are clear: fix the search, set up many filters and offer similar and related products. Also, do not forget to do the same for mobile devices, so that you can make purchases equally conveniently from the phone and from the computer.

Lack of transparent information on methods of payment, delivery and return of goods
The main irritant on e-commerce sites is the inability to determine how much delivery will cost. And hidden payments, about which the user may not find out before ordering, spoil the karma and lead the customers to your competitors. No one wants to pay in the end more than what was indicated in the price list for a product or service.

So as not to scare off buyers of excessive mystery, lay out the most detailed information about the cost and delivery methods, all possible payments and the conditions of return of the goods. Consider the possibility of free delivery: research shows that it is preferable and can be an incentive to purchase for 73-93% of the audience. In order not to lose money on delivery, you need to calculate the index of how much you need to sell in order to recoup the free delivery. It may be worth putting it in the price of the goods or offering a minimum order amount for free delivery. It is not necessary to offer it all year round; it is quite effective to use it as an instrument of a marketing campaign. In addition, the ability to not pay for shipping can be a great bonus for regular customers. In general, there is a huge scope for creativity.

The shopping process is complicated and boring
Surely, each of you had such a story: you are looking for something, you click on the first link that you get, you are trying to order, and then you are given the first task of a multi-level quest - fill out a whole sheet from the forms and checkboxes to register. The drama begins when you click “done” and it turns out that some required field is empty. Often, you find yourself on a village with pure, like spring water, an uncomplicated form of 36 questions, including riddles and a trigonometric formula that you need to fill out again. In such situations, I usually close the tab and try not to return to the site of this store. We are not immortal, alas, we do not always have time to re-register on the website to sell toasters.

Or here's another situation, I visit the site for the first time and find there some interesting items, which I add to the basket. Naturally, when making a purchase I am asked to register, I successfully win the form and find myself in front of an empty basket. It is necessary to walk around the site again and remember what exactly was in the basket and how to find it.
And the third stimulus - when placing an order there is no sign that it was successful and something happens with the order.

Each of these situations can be avoided. To solve the problem of the disappearance of information and the mysterious emptying of the shopping cart, you need a persistent shopping cart. It will not only keep the nerves of new customers, but also help to increase the volume of purchases of regular visitors. People often add goods to the basket, which they return to later and buy them. If they remain in the basket after they leave the site (authorization on the site), the person will not forget what he wanted to buy and probably will still buy it. Well, the registration form, if you really need it, is simply to optimize to the minimum and, of course, keep the already filled fields in the cache.

Not enough product information
When we are shopping in offline stores, we can twist each product in our hands, turn it on, turn it off, press all the buttons, smell, shake, read the box, look at labels, stitches, material and color. On the Internet, this is often not enough, and it happens that the site has only one tiny photo of the product and a description like “a stylish and powerful smartphone that will become your assistant and fashion accessory.” Science fiction writer Max Fry begins one of the books with the words “you never know where you are lucky.” Online shopping puts us in a similar, but reverse situation - the buyer never knows which defect he overlooked this time. Returning goods is laziness and confusion, because online stores produce dissatisfied customers, who, after the next mixer, will go to a regular store, where they can be examined and tested.

Product information is never too much. Everything will come in handy here: videos, reviews, photos with different lighting and from different angles, macro photos, eyewitness stories, articles, presentations, pdf with instructions and a box image. And some clothing stores and accessories give upload your photos and online “try on” products. Moreover, the idea is not new, back in 1999 I had a CD with the Cosmopolitan program, in which I could experiment with hairstyles and makeup on my photo.

Silent or useless call center and online assistant
The fact that the site visitor has the opportunity to communicate with a real person (whether it be a call center operator, an online assistant or a secretary at info @ ...) means that this person is needed to solve problems that a computer cannot solve. . That is, a call center operator who has a list of prepared phrases can be replaced with a script with the same list. Let your operators on the phone be small, but it should be staff authorized to make some decisions and help customers on the first call / message.

Unobvious rules of the store.
It would be good to concentrate all the rules by which the store works in one place, for example, in the form of a FAQ Terms and regions of delivery, a link to an offer contract, restrictions and conditions for promotions, discounts, loyalty programs, conditions for joining a loyalty program - a person is full of questions, and By answering them online, you unload your sales managers and delight customers with the order and clarity of your relationship with him.

Few service options
And again two stories from personal experience. The first is about buying a gift for a person who is in another city. It turns out that even quite a large and pretentious home appliances store does not know how to make a purchase as a gift. That is, if I ordered a double boiler from under my account, they will call me when it is delivered. And they will ask me about a convenient time too. Also, I was surprised to find that very few stores know how to wrap their goods in gift wrapping. Seriously, sometimes I really want to send my mother not just a box with products, but a gift from the other end of the country. Beautiful, with a postcard.

The second story, again about household appliances. Until recently, I have never faced the purchase of an electric stove in the kitchen. And I have to admit that I was morally not ready for the fact that two big smiling guys brought the sparkling plate on time, without a single defect for a reasonable price, and during the inspection I did not find the power cord in her. I ask the couriers, they say, guys, where is the cord? The guys laugh, send me to the radio market, they say, take the cord and plug, solder and ready. Indeed, so what.
Both in the first and in the second case the store would have earned money and points of my personal sympathy if I had thought about such problems in advance. Why not specify the need for installation when selling the slab? After all, it can be offered as an additional option, most people will be at least grateful.

On this, of course, the possibilities to fail a business are not limited, but these errors and problems are the most common and painful.
Have something to add to the list? Share in the comments.