Today people prefer shopping for products
online. No one wants to get out from the cosy and comfortable homes and be a
part of the crowd. Discount coupons, new deals, innovative marketing techniques
keep them interested. Let's check out a few methods of successfully starting an online business.
A Slow-Loading Webpage
If your webpage does not load completely
within four seconds, you are going to lose at least 25 percent of your
prospective consumers. By 10 seconds, that number will be exponentially
escalating past 40 percent, according to KISS Metrics. Therefore, one of
the biggest technical errors that you cannot afford is to have is a website
consisting of pages that do not load as quickly as possible.
Hidden Shipping Costs
Another fatal error that you can commit is
hiding your shipping costs. Yes, it is true that you are able to effectively
lure your customers in by advertising a competitive sales price without
including the shipping cost. However, studies have also proven that you are at
risk of losing over 20 percent of your interested shoppers that come very close
to reaching the checkout page until they realize that you did not mention
shipping expenses, according to Savvy Panda. The same study brought up another
interesting point by confirming that excessively high shipping costs will cause
you to lose close to 45 percent of consumers. Therefore, make sure that your
shipping costs are competitive and visible.
You Do Not Have a Guest Checkout Option
Eight out of 10 major retailers offer guest
checkout options on their websites, according to eConsultancy.com. While it
is true that it would be wonderful for all of your paying customers to take the
time to register for an online account on your eCommerce website, the last
thing that you want to do is to force them to sign up.
Remember, your consumers are shopping on
your website in the first place to save time and money. If they feel as if they
are being forced to spend several additional minutes signing up for something
that they simply do not feel is very important or even meaningful at the time,
they will definitely consider calling the whole thing off.
Compatibility with Popular Browsers
When it comes to your overall eCommerce
website design, the pages and links might be flawless. You might have
everything working within it beautifully with no visible signs of flaws or
errors. However, you need to keep in mind that an internal view is not the only
case that matters. You need to also make sure that you test it on a wide
variety of browsers to make sure that there isn’t one browser that is not
compatible with your website. You do not have any control over which browsers
your customers will use to find you. However, you want to make sure that
regardless of the browser that they choose, your visitors are able to access
your website without running into any errors or complications.
Online Inventory is Not Updated
There are not very many things that can
frustrate an interested buyer more than finding out that the product that they
have fallen in love with is actually not available. This can actually become so
overwhelmingly frustrating that they decide to abandon their shopping carts and
your website right then and there. Make sure that you update your online
inventory on a regular basis. If it is featured on your website, you should
have it available.
