Why shoppers are avoiding your e-commerce store

With brick and mortar businesses suffering a supposed long farewell, we take a look at how you can boost your e-commerce business.

Online shopping has witnessed tremendous growth over the last few years. Shoppers no longer have to visit physical stores to acquire the items that they need as they can simply place an order online and have the items delivered to your doorstep.

This has saved people a lot of time, allowing them to do other pressing matters instead of rushing to the store when they need something small. All this has been made possible thanks to the technological advancements which allow retailers to set up online stores that can be accessed from a PC or mobile device as long as one has an active internet connection.

So on realising that online shopping is the best way to avail your products to the market, you have decided to set one up for your products. You get a kick-ass developer to create the site and post your products. Everything looks set for you to go live and when you do, you expect shoppers to be scrambling for your products but that is not the case.

Hours turn into days, and days into weeks but still, you are not making any sales. This is something that most online retailers struggle with and in an effort to enhance the fortunes of such retailers, this article takes a look at some of the reason why shoppers are avoiding certain e-commerce stores.

1. Your e-commerce store is too complicated

This is one of the reasons why shoppers avoid certain stores when looking for items online. Online shoppers prefer simplicity when buying products online and when they find your store difficult to navigate, most don’t proceed with the shopping. People are busy with life and work commitments and as such, they don’t have the time to learn how to use your store.

The shoppers should be able to add the products they need to a cart and check out in a few steps and if that is not the case, then you could lose them to your competitors.

When developing your online store, you should, therefore, insist on simplicity and ease of use. Don’t bore shoppers with unnecessary information that does not enhance the user’s experience as what most shoppers want is to buy their products, pay for them and have them delivered to their premises.

2. You do not offer product tracking

Being able to monitor the progress of their shipped products is something that shoppers expect of modern e-commerce stores. Such a feature allows the shoppers to tell the exact location of the products that they have purchased online and this gives them the assurance that their products are safe and just about to be delivered.

People get all excited when they buy items online and if possible they would like to be informed of the shipping process after checkout and that is what a good product tracking system like LTL trucking solutions can do it for you. It also allows the shopper to trace their package should it get misplaced and this goes a long way to enhance their shopping experience.

3. Lack of enough information

Customers who are shopping online expect to have as much information as possible about the product and your shipping practices and when this is not available, they would rather get their items elsewhere. Some of the information that clients expect when shopping online is to understand your return policy. Products may arrive when they are not in the best possible condition and when this happens, shoppers need to know what they have to do return the damaged products and acquire new ones.

Online retailers should provide such information to their customers and a failure to do this usually results in the shoppers abandoning the site and buying the products from competent online retailers who provide all the information that shoppers need to make their shopping seamless.

4. Your e-commerce store cannot be accessed on mobile devices

People are increasingly using their mobile devices to access online resources and when your e-commerce store is not mobile friendly, then you could be missing out on a lot of customers. Online retailers should, therefore, strive to have their stores mobile-friendly so as to cater to the increasing number of shoppers who use their mobile devices to acquire the items that they need.

Further reading on boosting e-commerce

Owen Gough, SmallBusiness UK

Owen Gough

Owen was a reporter for Bonhill Group plc writing across the Smallbusiness.co.uk and Growthbusiness.co.uk titles before moving on to be a Digital Technology reporter for the Express.co.uk.

Related Topics

E-commerce