With the global market still battling the coronavirus pandemic’s economic effects, the competition among retailers shifted almost entirely to online platforms. As recent sales statistics show, more than half of the consumer population now prefers to make their purchases online. Supposedly, this is an encouraging figure for business owners, but a potential market alone doesn’t equate to sales or profit. The real challenge lies in having customers that make a purchase or two before exiting your business’ eCommerce site.
Shop owners often wonder why their online site is not getting the level of engagement or the number of initially anticipated sales. Several factors affect businesses this way and are worth learning to drive traffic and improve your site’s conversion rate.
Customer Experience
“User-hostile” eCommerce site
It is a must for an eCommerce site to ensure a pleasant shopping experience for their customers. To do this, each step of the buying process needs to be intuitive and straightforward. Further, every resource that contains essential information for customers should be accessible all the time. It isn’t helpful if a vital detail shows up at the tail-end of the process, or worse, at the payment page.
Regardless of the amount of traffic that an online site generates, it doesn’t amount to much unless the business meets the conversion rate that it desires.
Complicated Checkout Process
A whopping 56% of shoppers abandon their online carts because of a confusing checkout process. The business doesn’t only lose a potential sale at that point; a poor experience also affects a client’s decision to buy from the same store in the future.
Some of the complexities that customers may face include:
- forced registration
- excessive personal information requirements
- a lengthy order form
- absence of a mechanism that automates entry of the billing or shipping address and other repetitive credentials
- not having the option to checkout as a guest, among others.
The best way to address this is to have a simplified checkout process with as few steps as possible.
Pricing Irregularities
Hidden Charges and No Payment Transparency
Another study shows that 56% of online shoppers leave an eCommerce site when presented with unexpected costs. There are retail websites that don’t mention delivery expenses, product purchase tax, shipping costs, etc.
This lack of transparency in the payment process causes customers to leave the website without purchasing and leaves such a bad impression that could affect future sales negatively.
Additional Charges
Apart from hidden charges, customers also run in the opposite direction at the sight of extra fees and additional charges.
On the contrary, they’d flock to a site that provides transparent pricing and offers discounts. Nothing earns a business a positive and favorable impression from its customer base than the word “sale” and potential savings they get to have from limited-time deals.
It’s also an excellent practice for an eCommerce site to factor the shipping cost into the product price, or even better, offer free shipping. A waived shipping cost is a great way to make customers feel they’re getting a good deal without costing the company any profit.
Lack of Market Research and Competitive Pricing
The same study conveys that 18% of online shoppers leave an eCommerce site without purchasing because they only make pricing comparisons. Competitive pricing doesn’t always involve a drop in prices. Better product quality and customer service become such vital factors. People wouldn’t mind paying more once they see that the product is worth the extra bucks.
Nowadays, competitive pricing is one of the most critical determining factors if a customer will stay to buy from a particular eCommerce site. Owing to information being accessible now more than ever, thanks to the internet, buyers can easily compare prices and select from numerous retailers for a particular product, thanks to the internet.
That makes it even more critical for a business to perform adequate market research and know its competitors well so that it can:
- Determine the current demand for the product(s).
- Figure out the lowest price the business can charge for the product.
In reality, only 17% of customers are shopping online with the intent to make a purchase. That’s why there’s no doubt that competitive pricing matters.
System Security
Payment Security Concerns
As much as 15% of customers who abandon their online carts expressed concerns with the retail site’s payment security measures. To begin with, a third of online shoppers already hesitate to purchase online due to cases of data theft and credit card fraud.
Therefore, it’s essential to put into place a clear-cut customer privacy policy. It should help ease consumer concerns about the security of their identity.
Finally, it’s beneficial for a business to keep its SSL certificate up to date and active on the eCommerce site’s web pages. Having proper encryption technology helps gain the consumers’ trust and likely increases sales for the online business.
Excessive Security Measures
While ensuring security is essential to provide users a proper sense of safety and satisfaction, anything in excess is likely to cause customers to leave the eCommerce site right away.
Some of the security measures prove to be unnecessary and even redundant. They include:
- Excessive payment security measures
- Repetitive sign-in
- Repetitive credential input
Key Takeaway
Although numerous factors contribute to why shoppers abandon their online carts, retail owners can count on as many solutions to improve their online stores’ conversion rate.
These solutions can be summarized as follows:
- eCommerce sites need to be optimized to provide a pleasant shopping experience to their customers.
- Business owners should keep a close eye on their customer data and insights.
At the onset, it’s best to apply one fix at a time and keep a close eye on every result for future reference. Before long, the cart abandonment stats of your eCommerce site will see a dramatic improvement.
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