4 Most Common E-Commerce Design Mistakes
In the world of e-commerce design, there are many ways to maximize your e-commerce business. But there are also ways to miss a lot of important opportunities. Selling goods online can be a great way to expand your business. Here are a few ways to make sure you don’t over-look some of the basics of e-commerce design when moving your business into the next step of technology.
1. Inconvenient or long checkout.
In e-commerce design the obvious goal is conversion. Such a simple concept, yet so many retailers fail to provide consumers with an easy checkout process. Ideally, you will want a short and clear method of purchase. The shortest and easiest path to entry of payment information will yield higher conversions. Having too many steps to finish at checkout only gives the consumer more chances to navigate away. The best solution is single page checkout.
2. Registration or account requirement.
Making a sale is more important then data collection when it comes to e-commerce design. Offer a user to save or create an account after the purchase. Since all the information has already been entered, you can entice them to register by offering order tracking and other options. The consumer will be less resistant since the order is complete, the information is already entered, and there is now a perceived value.
3. Site product search-ability.
Searching is important to users. The use of filters and categories can help the consumer refine their search to their needs. A search that returns either too much data or data that is irrelevant can be frustrating for the consumer. Your e-commerce design platform should have a solid search engine. Plugins are also available for many platforms to extend the search capability. Results should be sort-able as well. This gives the consumer as many tools to make a decision as they need.
4. Shopping cart layout.
The presentation and features of your cart are vital to the shopping experience. The ability to have multiple items in the cart and manipulate quantities are essential. The path of progress when adding an item is important too. Ideally you want to have the consumer add the item to the cart and either return them to the last page they were on, or never leave that page to begin with. Another great idea is to have the items in the cart be links. That way if the customer wants to recheck something they can easily go to the product info.
By avoiding these mistakes, you’ll be able to optimize your e-commerce store in no time.
