There are mistakes that you can do when running your eCommerce sites that does not drastically affect the outcome of your sales, but there are also those that does the EXACT OPPOSITE!
What ever you do, don’t do the latter otherwise you’ll end up in very dire financial straits.
So what kind of mistakes are we really talking about here? While there are A LOT of things that can lead your ecommerce site to ruin, we’ll talk about these specific ones (which I’d like to call the “immortal sins”) that most webmasters are making.
Hopefully you aren’t making these because if you are, well… it’s HIGH TIME you wake up and make the change!
So without further adieu, here are the 6 common mistakes that you should never do on your ecommerce sites.
- Adding hidden fees
You and I both know that sneaking in those hidden fees can make the crowd GO WILD (in a very bad way) and you really don’t want to be in the receiving end once they start telling their friends about it.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not against up-selling because I think upsells are an awesome way of getting more sales. It actually DOES WORK!
But if you intentionally hide your upsells or make it SO SMALL that your customers would barely see it, then that’s just short of cheating (let alone stealing).
Besides, if what you’re up selling solves your customer’s problems, then there’s no reason for you to make it small or less obvious right? That is IF your upsells does solve problems.
- Not having a live support
There’s just no substitute for immediate and help when your customers need you.
The quicker you are in responding to their inquiries, the better relationship, trust, and credibility you’ll build. Those are key elements that needs to be fulfilled if you are to succeed in the Ecommerce world. Without those, you’ll be crawling like a snail.
While having an immediate phone support is good, most people would actually prefer the live chat support since it’s a lot easier to manage. You don’t have to get your phone or second guess if there are any fees (and yes, even though it’s a toll free number, others still worry if there’s a fee.). You just have to click the chat box and start typing away!
As a bonus… Having a live chat can in fact increase your sales. And that’s proven and tested!
- Not testing
This is ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT for eCommerce sites.
Tracking and testing how your visitors will react on a page, layout, or color change (among many others) should be one of the main priorities of the webmasters.
The more you test, the more you understand what your customers, do, feel or want. And the more you understand your customers, the better you’ll be at relating and selling to them.
- Not having HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure)
There maybe a lot of people purchasing online nowadays but that doesn’t mean that they don’t worry about security anymore.
We all know how security is a huge part of closing a sale and in this case, getting your products sold online. ESPECIALLY online!
That said, you ought to have the HTTPS since this can negate if not lessen the security issue that your prospect clients might be worrying about.
The more secured they feel when looking at your site, the easier it is for them to get their credit cards and type in their info.
- Not having any “Feedback” section/tab.
While measuring your site’s statistics is a good thing, there’s just no substitute for the good ‘ol “Feedback” tab. It’s like a suggestion box but on steroids since it caters to people world wide.
Determining what your “abandoned cart” percentage is and which pages your customers usually click away (among many others), can do you a lot of good but, the feedback tab has its merits that you simply can’t ignore.
For one… your feedback tab can actually prevent your customers from screaming out loud their complaints in their social media profiles since typing in their feedback gives them enough time to cool off and think.
And think about how you’ll get their unadulterated opinion of what they want. In this case, there’s no second guessing if its the color of your buttons, the layout of your products or any of that. They will tell you black and white what it is that’s bothering them thus giving you a clearer idea of what you’re dealing with making your solutions laser focused to the actual problem and not what you think the problem is based on an analytic tool which can be translated in many ways.
- Not having any product description
Would you buy something that you’ve only seen but aren’t quite sure with what it does, or perhaps what it’s origin is? I don’t know about you but most would answer a resounding “no” to this ones.
I mean, why would anyone give out their money for something that they aren’t quite sure about, right?
That said, you need to give your products some very well written descriptions (one way or the other) if you want to give your customers that feeling of added security when they’re buying from you.
If you’re guilty of anyone of these 6 mistakes, I suggest that you start thinking about doing some drastic (yet calculated) changes on your ecommerce site so as not to take further damage from these.
You can start with what’s emphasized above. Once you get the ones above fixed, you need to do further research to learn more about trends, updates, and experiences by other webmasters that are running an eCommerce site so you can optimize your site for sales even better.
You don’t have the right to remain silent. 🙂
We’d love to hear your ideas. So if you have any, please don’t even think twice about sharing them in the comments section below. We hope to hear from you.
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