EworksWSI Cyprus Digital Marketing Blog

Why is Your eCommerce Store Losing Sales?

Is your eCommerce website plagued with the empty cart syndrome? Does your site suffer from low conversion rates? Does it generate less leads and even lesser sales? If you’ve been nodding a “yes” for all the questions, you may be making some critical mistakes. We’ve created a list of mistakes to avoid in order to boost your e-commerce site’s performance.

1. Write good Product Descriptions

Your customers can't touch your product before they buy it in your eShop. They want to obtain all the information they need to be sure that they make the right purchase. If you were selling your products at a brick-and-mortar store, you would do so by explaining clearly what the product is about, how it works, why they should buy it. You would give proper answers to your customers’ queries, of course! In an online store, it’s not possible to attend to your customers personally but you can write your product descriptions geared at your typical customers (your buying personas) and make sure they get to know everything that will help them make well-informed purchase decisions. If you don't  provide that, it encourages your visitors to leave your site. Use the different sections that your ecommerce platform provides for your product descriptions:

Summary, detailed description, specifications, additional items for each of your products or services that you offer online.

2. Use Videos & Images the Right Way

For e-commerce site or online stores, it’s absolutely important to be extra careful about the videos and images you upload and use for your online products. Your customers are not able to touch and feel the products they’re interested in so it’s obvious they would rely heavily on visual media to determine whether they like something or not. Please read our article on the importance excellent product images. Another issue can be the lack of optimization of your media (images and videos): if videos and images take forever to load, you will put-off your customers. At the same time, you can’t compromise on the quality for the sake of speeding things up. Web design companies that have the expertise and experience in building successful e-commerce websites can solve these issues, helping you find the optimal middle ground.

3. Are Your Prices Competitive?

Today, when only a handful of people buy without comparing prices online, you need to be careful not to overprice your products. Especially so if you’re selling products or services that are offered by many other websites. It doesn’t mean you have to sell at a loss or set the lowest prices but, make sure to keep your prices competitive. Regular special offers and discounts are additional perks of online shopping which entice people to buy more. Use these tactics to attract buyers.

4. Item Availability Issues (In Stock: Yes)

You might spend a lot of time and effort boosting your SEO or Inbound Marketing efforts only to lose your customer at checkout simply because there is nothing for them to purchase. There’s nothing more frustrating to customers than a situation when the product they want is out of stock. This is why it’s important for ecommerce businesses to monitor and refill their stocks regularly to avoid disappointing their customers. Some e-commerce platforms offer sophisticated automated stock management, it is not necessary to display the exact number of items in stock, but give a 'low in stock' warning.

5. Confusing or Vague Shipping and Delivery Terms

Many eCommerce websites lack precise information about shipping and this could be a major factor why your customers may be leaving your site without completing a transaction. Make sure you offer different shipping options, from snail mail that is cheap but cannot be tracked to 24h DHL doorstep delivery. Shipping cost is a barrier to online sales, wherever possible offer free shipping, it is a major conversion factor.
Remember, no one appreciates post-sale hassles and if you’re not giving detailed information—like estimated time of delivery, the transport method, fees etc. ideally on the same screen—readily available to customers before they make a purchase, you’re giving them enough reasons to leave.

6. Not Having a User-Friendly Website

Studies show that customers expect their e-commerce experience to be just like their in-store experience—walking through the aisles, filling their cart with whatever they need, and making the payment at the checkout. User-friendly and easy-to-navigate e-commerce sites are almost like properly laid-out brick-and-mortar stores where products are systematically arranged and aisles are accurately labelled.

Ideally, users should be able to receive every necessary information with only a few clicks and finish the purchase in not more than a couple of minutes. Plus, your site should have a powerful search feature to allow filtering of relevant results faster. Remember this—designing a well-planned, user-friendly e-commerce website is something that requires professional experience, more so, if you rely on e-commerce in your business.

7. Have a secure, easy checkout procedure

Once the visitor has made his buying decision, put all items in the shopping, selected a suitable shipping option, nothing should hold him back to complete his purchase. The checkout process needs to be smooth, fast and secure. Display the exact steps ahead. Don't force first time buyers to create an account before they can complete their order. Offer guest checkout. Pull all information such as shipping addresses etc from your database for returning customers. Offer well known payment gateways that are trusted.

88. Fight Shopping cart abandonment

Shopping Abandonment is an ecommerce term used to describe visitors of an eshop  who added items to their online shopping cart, but exit without completing the purchase. Cart abandonment is a major e-commerce issue. An average e-Commerce store loses over 75% of its sales to shopping cart abandonment. Some industries experience average cart abandonment of more than  83%. All reasons explained in this post are contributing to potential buyers abandoning their purchases in their shopping cart. One way to remind them can be emailing if the buyer had logged into his account and can be identified. They would get 24h later a friendly reminder in their inbox, perhaps with some alternatives and a coupon code.

Another way to reduce shopping cart abandonment is using 'remarketing' techniques. Facebook and Google are offering these techniques.

Cheat Sheet - The Magic of Remarketing

We published several articles on how to reduce the shopping cart abandon rate