Offering products or services online opens up completely new markets and target groups for many companies.
Nevertheless, the longed-for success is often a long time coming.
The cause of this is often errors that have crept into the shop and the ordering process.
This article will show you what mistakes they are and how you can easily fix them to increase your sales.
Table of Contents
Asking customer to open an account
If you oblige your customers to open an account in your shop, this represents an obstacle on the way to the goal – to place an order in the shop .
What is more important to you?
Collect as much data as possible from your customers or the order, says businesspally.
Remember that the first option unfortunately often means to forego many potential customers.
A way out:
The solution in this case is actually very simple.
Instead of opening the customer account at the beginning of the ordering process, move it to the end and give it the opportunity to save its data in order to facilitate future orders and to track the status of your order.
A large part of your customers will take advantage of this option and will not leave the ordering process when they have to create an account.
Another option, which can already be found in some shops, is to offer the order as a guest at the beginning of the ordering process without opening a customer account.
Customer service is bad
This point addresses a similar area as the section on contact information.
Let your customers know the easiest way to contact you when they have a request for technical details, sales or product specifications, TechPally boss advised.
Offering a help form instead of just an email address can build more trust with your customers.
A way out:
Provide your customers with FAQs, in which you explain the most common questions and which your customers can find out about before they contact you by phone or email.
The FAQ should not be a repetition of your general terms and conditions, but should offer practical help in answering the customer’s questions.
Poor product pictures
As already described above, when buying online there is always the problem that the customer cannot pick up the products to test them.
This lack of opportunity has to be compensated for as best possible in an online shop.
With small product pictures, however, this is unlikely to succeed.
It almost seems to be even worse when there is an enlarged image button next to a small product image, which when activated the same image pops up again in the same size.
The feeling of disappointment that you experience as a customer at this moment will probably not have a positive effect on your willingness to buy.
A way out:
Try to make the product images as large and detailed as possible and – if possible – add a zoom-in function.
It should be possible to display product images in a good resolution in the detailed view as full screen on an average monitor.
A size of 1024 × 768 seems like a good target size here.
You don’t use cross-selling in your shop to increase sales
You have probably also noticed that in a department store products are often grouped in the way that they will later be used in practice.
In this way, customers can find suitable additional products or supplements without having to walk through the entire department store.
For example, it makes sense to put a product class with batteries near the category with the flashlights, says businesspally.
In many cases, however, the desire to acquire additional products arises only through a presentation of the corresponding products in context, i.e. classic cross-selling .
A way out
Use a shop system that enables you to group certain products and display suitable additional products.
In this context, it is interesting to use functions that allow you to establish connections manually since you can recognize connections or combinations of products yourself, which are not possible through software or categorization.
An example could be the combination of different items of clothing for different outfits, which are only displayed in your shop.
Your shop doesn’t focus on the products
The goal of an e-commerce website is to sell goods or services.
And there are different ways to drive sales, such as content commerce.
If, however, your website or online shop gets too lost in design gimmicks or if media are used more for their own sake and thereby distract from the product, they will fail.
Therefore, with all components of web design, make sure that the focus is on the products.
Think about how products are presented in a department store.
For example, much more is shown in a shop window than just the product – but all additional elements only serve the purpose of presenting the product as well as possible.
When designing your website, always make sure that all elements ultimately serve the purpose of presenting the product and showing it in its best light.