In the previous blogs, we have understood how to create a stunning eCommerce website via the best practices around the world. However, it has always been clear that creating a web store and maintaining it are two very separate things.
“What to do when your eCommerce store is live and yet has no customers?”
The major objective any eCommerce store serves is to sell products to its customers and earn revenue. But what if you are observing that the prospected customers are not buying from your site! What do you do for a fruitful return on your investments?
Here are some reasons why people are not buying from your online eCommerce store:
1. The Website should be Easy and Visible
When conducting your business via an eCommerce web store, always make sure that your website is in good shape – it should be convenient, easy to handle and must showcase all necessary information clearly. A professionally designed website is bound to attract more customers than a simple themed website. Your desired website should contain content pieces, images and videos, which better describe that website or the products they are selling. Within the web-store too, proper SEO for all pages must be followed cautiously. If these basics are not in place, there is no telling how long your customer is even gonna stay on your site!
Again, it is important to note that the navigation on your eCommerce store should be crisp and sleek – you won’t want your customers to be wandering off. Products should be clearly listed in the navigation bar to attract more prospected customers.
2. Proper Product Navigation
Website navigation is a crucial parameter which decides how many conversions you are going to witness on your website. The product navigation section must be clear to the customer and simple enough to assimilate all the necessary details and products for an overview. It needs to be user-friendly and it is better to categorize all the products with preferred categories for the ease and convenience of the users. Getting lost in which product to buy and where to find it leads to a lesser buying ratio for your store.
3. Forceful Account Creation
Asking a customer to create an account on your eCommerce website before completing their order is often irritating and seems cheap and unnecessary. If you are following this, it might be one reason why your customers are going away from you. It is better to check for what your competitors are doing – a lot of them would be using the Guest checkout process and hence that would be the one thing that you need to incorporate.
Many times, it can be the case where a customer is buying a product for a gift purpose and has no intention of return to that store ever again. In this case, if he is compelled to create an account, it is more likely that the transaction won’t be completed. In other cases, a customer might feel frustrated with the account creation process simply because he would have to remember a new set of username and password, or his personal details and security would be at stake. However, if the need is, you can keep the account creation section within your eCommerce store, but be sure to mention the benefits you are providing such as live order tracking, future discounts and offers, etc.
4. Bad User Experience
Once you are set with your SEO-rich, properly navigated website, the product pages would be a flocking ground for your customers. But a bad user interface and experience can spoil everything. These UI/UX faults can trigger emotions in your customers’ minds and might be the reason for low conversions. Some of the most common page issues might be:
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- No Checkout Buttons – A customer will have no trust and would feel out of place for eCommerce shopping if your product pages do not have the checkout buttons clearly visible.
- Unclear Product Options – When a product has multiple attributes i.e. size, color, etc. they need to be shown clearly for the user to select and buy.
- No Quantity Field – If your product pages do not have a quantity field, it would mean that a user can purchase only one product at a time. Suppose a customer wants to buy 10 units of an item; he will have to visit your website 10 times and place 10 consequent orders to fulfill his requirements. While this might be your strategy of gaining returning customers to your website, it can be more of a forceful action – a user will be easily frustrated by the experience he gets and thus, won’t be returning to you in the future.
- No Images – When it is about a physical, it is always better to provide product images which show the size, color, and other details of the product. Not having images for tangible products will diminish the chances of customers buying from your store.
- Missing Breadcrumbs – Not having proper breadcrumb navigation leads to repeated work on the customers’ end. A user can easily navigate to the parent categories of any product via clear breadcrumb navigation; if there are no breadcrumb navigations, a user might feel tired of clicking through all the previous subcategories to reach to a similar product.
5. Secured Platform with Security
One very important thing that most of the eCommerce owners tend to forget is to check how secure their platform is – if your website does not start with HTTPS, it is likely that potential customers won’t be willing to enter their card details and continue the purchase.
On the other hand, to make your site more trustworthy and secured, try incorporating customer testimonials and case studies. This will increase the trust of potential customers on your brand and result in higher conversions.
6. Shipping Rates are too High
Keeping a high shipping rate might also be another reason why your customers are not buying from you. A potential customer may visit your store with all the intent to buy the products but can simply leave the cart because of the high shipping rates. It is best to put up promotional offers i.e. shop for more than $50 and attain free shipping, etc. to attract more buying customers. Another thing that needs to be done is to keep an eye on the competitors and the market for the variations of pricing and shipping value of the item.
7. Too many Pop-ups
Pop-ups can be a great way of marketing your products and bringing them in front of the audience. Yet, pop-ups can sometimes be very annoying and may hamper the user experience for the customer. If you are using pop-ups, be sure to put obvious ways of closing it – if your customers can’t close it, they will definitely leave your website. Also, do not overwhelm your customers with too many pop-ups or per-page pop-ups. The lesser they get disturbed, the better it is.
8. Long Shipping Cycle
Similar to having high shipping rates, having longer a shipping longer shipping time might also cause a reduction in your sales cycle. If your order processing time is long, it is clear that the customer won’t be getting the item in a week’s time – the customer will have less trust to buy. It is okay if you do not simply have the resources to quickly dispatch all the items at hand but do have a look on your competitors and how they are managing it – Amazon offers 2 day-delivery to its Prime Members, free of cost.
By following the abovementioned points, a business owner not even getting a good number of customers on his website can skyrocket his business and gain promising, quality customers in the future. To purchase or not to purchase still completely depends on the mindset of the customers; what we can do is to make sure everything is in the place for them!
Get started with your B2B eCommerce store and gain a competitive edge in the market.
