With the exponential growth of online shopping, not having an eCommerce store or a mobile app could potentially mean huge losses; not only in terms of revenue but also expanding into the newer markets. An online store is a huge avenue for businesses who want to grow. Yet, to grow; you must acquire users, convert them into customers, and build customer loyalty to make sure they keep coming back. One of the ways that help to achieve this is to provide a flawless shopping experience. Any pain point or inconvenience may result in abandoning carts or losing customers. To remove all obstacles in the customer journey from response times to undelivered promises, we have identified some of the major problems customers face when shopping. Hence, let’s check out some of the most common eCommerce mistakes to avoid.
Insufficient Payment Options
As many eCommerce stores still only offer a credit card payment option, the figures from Statista aren’t necessarily a true reflection of what customers would like. In 2019, digital and mobile wallets accounted for 41.8% of global e-commerce payment transactions. This share is set to increase to 52.2% in 2023; making digital wallets the most popular online payment method worldwide. While credit/debit cards were ranked second with 39.8%, wiring money through banks is losing its popularity by dropping to 9%. Furthermore, research from Prestashop shows that one lost conversion out of two is due to the lack of choice when it comes to payment methods. Thus, by offering popular mobile wallet options such as PayPal, PayU, and Stripe, eCommerces may reduce the percentage of abandoned cards.
A Long Response Time
On the phone, in the live-chat, at the checkouts; waiting time is one of the most important priorities for customers while shopping. Forrester’s Raising the Bar report found that 1 in 5 customers are willing to stop using a product or service for slow response times via live chat; while another report from Kissmetrics shows a 16% reduction in customer satisfaction for every second beyond 3 seconds that customers have to wait. Regardless of the site speed or the response time of customer support, being slow makes eCommerces lose orders to the faster ones. It is no secret that customers do not like waiting, especially if there is competition. They will just go looking for the same products or services somewhere else. Thus, if you are not fast enough, all the money you spent and the efforts you made to acquire new customers may simply turn to dust.
Unavailable Products
Not only will it erase all the flawless shopping experience you might have provided during the journey, but it will also breach the trust you have built hardly. Products going out-of-stock is an inevitable part of running an eCommerce business. Careful stock-handling and sales projections can help you to manage your stock level, but you also need to think about how you deal with presenting out-of-stock product pages to your visitors. This is one of the most common eCommerce mistakes to avoid. There is nothing more disappointing than an order being canceled due to being out of stock. Even if you are not using a tool to automatically track the stock, you should at least estimate the “buffer stock” required for each of your product references, based on the purchase frequency, and the restocking time to avoid any inconvenience. eCommerces need to manage how to display the availability of their products, and, if applicable, add an informative message to warn users that the products will soon go out of stock.
Delivery Charges shows at the last step
Although free shipping encourages the user to convert, it does not always match where the customer is in their buy cycle. Also, overwhelmingly overlooked is a user’s search intent. In other words, free shipping works for some people, sometimes. However, being transparent does always match with customer conversion. A report from Captain Commerce shows that 60% of cart abandonments are linked with hidden delivery costs that are only shown on the payment page. It is a common mistake to avoid eCommerces. It is also vital to provide transparent communication with customers to build trust. Delivery costs are needed to easily be visible on your product pages. If your delivery terms are linked with a minimum purchase amount, you may also need to suggest attractive additional products that could convince your customers to purchase more products to benefit from free delivery.
Conclusion
Running an online business is full of unavoidable hurdles and obstacles. These hurdles and obstacles are likely to test your patience and resolve. Even with the countless number of accessible and customizable tools available today, many things can go wrong while managing an online business. You will always be bound to encounter some problems that may hold your business back. Making a mistake when managing an eCommerce can prove to be quite costly in the long run, in terms of both customer acquisition and retention. So make sure that you steer clear from these at all costs. The above, we have identified some of the most common eCommerce mistakes to avoid. There are certainly others too that one should know. For all, we are always here to help your business to provide a flawless journey for your customers. .
