Having an online store is an excellent way to operate and grow your business which can save your money in having a physical store, recruiting local staff, and maintenance of the store. An eCommerce website is your business outlet for the digital audience. If you have useful products to sell, you can start the eCommerce business right away and start earning. However, even the prettiest online store can drain your money away if not taken care of. There can be several reasons people don’t buy from your website and your business starts losing money. If the underlying issues aren’t resolved, it can severely affect your business and may eventually result in the shutting down of your business.
If you look at the numbers, as per the Forrester Research, over 50% of the potential sales are lost as the visitors are unable to find what they are looking for on the eCommerce site. 45% of US customers abandon the purchase if they couldn’t find answers to their doubts. Thus as per these observations, we can infer that customers want to quickly find out what they’re looking for and get a smooth shopping experience to let them purchase your products and increase conversions. If you can’t reach their expectations or have some hidden issues with your website, your business might soon start losing money. Shown below are a few reasons that might drain your business money away:
Bad User Experience
88% of online shoppers admitted that they do not revisit a website with a bad user experience. 70% of online businesses collapse due to their bad usability. Is your website not optimized for mobile devices? Do your site visitors find it difficult to navigate or obtain information? Does your website lacks clarity and confuses visitors with poorly placed popups? Well, these are the signs of a bad user experience. The poor UX not only freaks your visitors out and prevents them from visiting again. Be prepared to avoid technical issues, timeout errors, website crashes and interrupting ads, etc. remove anything that slows down your website. Provide effortless navigation to grow your business and start making money.
Poor marketing can drain your money away
Effective marketing of your eCommerce website covers search engine marketing, social media marketing, and creating content that satisfies the search engine optimization requirements. To let your business reach the right audience, you should act depending on the results from analytics. Data-driven results are realistic and almost accurately reflect the customer's requirements, your site’s performance, how they feel about your website, etc. The products to display, the audience to target, the best platforms to advertise on, how much marketing is too much, etc are decided using the data. Optimize your sales channels and maximize your revenue by thoroughly understanding your on-site data analytics and the data captured from marketing channels, social media, etc.
Lack of personalization
Personalization means knowing about the customers’ interests, and dislikes, and offering your products/services in a way they want to be experienced. Most businesses personalize their services based on the data from past user behavior and offer them similar products and services. The on-site search solution and search engine results are the alternate ways to learn the real-time behavior of your customers. Personalization makes shopping easier for the customers improving customer loyalty to your brand. It helps to increase your revenue and also retain attention for longer periods.
Missing product information
If details about your products are not completely specified, customers might miss something they are searching for and abandon the purchase. The product features section on your website specifies all the dry information about how the product works, how it looks, how well it performs etc. you can also make use of search engines or customer queries to include any additional details about the product in the description. This way, you can know what the customers are expecting and mention it exactly in the product description. Make sure that all the features you specify are unambiguous, understandable, accurate, and correctly spelled to grow your business.
Bad Accounting
Are you confused about taxes? Do you overlook expenses? Do you struggle to keep track of your books? Are you slow at recording transactions and miss fine details? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, you might be draining lumps of your business money. If at all, you are losing money due to poor accounting, it means that you tackling your finances by yourself instead of seeking help from a professional accountant. The best and cost-saving solution is to hire an accountant to take care of all your books. With little money spent on the accountant, your company might save huge money going waste.
Fake product reviews
Product reviews are supposed to be written by the customers, based on their experiences with your product. But lately, most businesses are not honest in product reviewing. Instead of letting the customers do the review, the company staff or an outsourced worker is writing product reviews in favor of the company. As these reviews are biased and lack originality, your brand loses trust and you can witness the consequences in the form of losing money. Let the customers express their opinion. Appreciate the positive reviews and respond to the negative ones. Make sure to act on the negative reviews and try not to repeat the mistakes.
Complex checkout process
It is found that the too complex checkout process is the third reason for cart abandonments after high prices and forced sign-ups. Users are willing to go through the complex checkout process only when the product is highly valuable. For complex products, a customer needs to spend a good amount of time for research, comparing the prices, and finding the best-fit solution, complex checkout is acceptable. But for purchasing simple and everyday products, customers expect a simple and easy checkout process. Provide tailored services with an easy checkout process to stop losing money.
Outdated design
A website design is what a customer notices as soon as they land on your website. As per the survey, the first visual impressions are formed within 0.05 - 0.1 seconds. Thus you don’t have much time to create a good first impression on the customers. An unprofessional or an outdated website is very unwelcoming to the customers. It sends a message to the users that something is not right with your website and your business is struggling. Your brand loses the trust of the customers and makes them resistant to engaging with your website. The only solution to retain the customers and grow your business is to keep your website updated. Make it easy to use and user-friendly for the customers.
Poor return policy
Rigid or inflexible return policies imply that you don’t trust your products. If your return policies are good, the policy makes it easier for the customers who want to return anything. Thus there are higher chances of retaining them as customers. If your policy is flexible and the services are satisfactory, you rarely have to deal with returns.
Poor product recommendations
Your site’s search engine should recommend products according to the past data of the customers. If you cannot track the customer’s behavior, they get irrelevant products on their feeds irrespective of the popularity and current discount rates. Make sure to teach your search engine the difference between singular and plurals. Otherwise, the customer might search for the product elsewhere when it is right in front of him. Use the site’s search engine as the best opportunity to engage with users and recommend relevant products to them.
Conclusion
Fix the issues that are draining your money away. With little effort, you will be able to know what the customer wants, interests and dislikes. Use data wisely to amplify your results. If you can stand in the shoes of a customer, you will get the direction to provide a smooth customer experience and make them happy.