The traffic you are receiving is not leading to sales. Your promotion costs are mounting, but conversions dwindling. Are you finding it hard to retain even your existing customers?
Most e-commerce businesses spend a lot of resources on figuring out how to get more traffic. All their marketing efforts, including SEO and advertisements, are generally aimed at getting people to visit a website. However, what happens after they reach the site is beyond their control. This is why many business owners receive ample traffic, but no sales. Fortunately, with a few design tweaks in which consumer psychology is put at the forefront, the problem can be resolved.
Factors That Drive Away Customers
A lot of research have been conducted regarding this issue and various reasons have been identified. It is a tricky field and at times, some factors can act as double-edged swords. For example, lack of security measures during online transaction will surely be a turn off for most consumers because it puts them at risk. However, excessive security measures (such as asking for passwords at every stage or making them type unintelligible Captcha) can also be a reason why customers drop out of the checkout queue without purchasing. This is a thin line for modern e-commerce web designers. Here are a few factors that have the most effect on customer conversion rates:
- Poor Navigation: If the site makes it difficult to find what people want, it obviously affects the end results. A detailed collapsible menu at the top is probably the most obvious solution to this.
- Slow Loading: The average internet user is an impatient If the site takes more than 2-3 seconds to load, he will probably move on to a competing site.
- Tiresome Process: Product selection and checkout should be simple and intuitive. The longer it drags, the more chances of people having second thoughts about the purchase.
- Hidden Costs: The price and tax information should be clear on the product page. Applying hidden costs at the moment of checkout can easily irk people.
- Security or the lack of it: As discussed earlier, both lack of security and excessive security can be a deterrent for potential customers.
- Mobile Incompatibility: Nowadays, a lot of people surf using small mobile devices. Outdated web design technology may lead to poor display and performance on such small screens.
- Delivery, Shipping and Payment Options: While these factors cannot be controlled by web design, they do affect purchase decisions at the end of the day.
Improving Conversion Rates
Based on the observations above, here are a few measures that can be taken in order to improve conversions using positive customer psychology and intelligent store design.
- Include a large and ubiquitous search bar at every page to make navigation easier.
- Always show suggested products similar to the ones viewed by the customer.
- If possible, maintain past browsing history of the customer. This allows you to suggest products based on them and offer a personalized shopping experience.
- Display your security certificates, such as that of Verisign, prominently at the payment page in order to reassure the buyers.
- Make your website unique. Consider adding QR Code functionality or Bitcoin payment options, which will not disrupt normal business, but will attract fans of these technologies.
- Make it easy to edit the checkout lists. For example, if the person has chosen multiple items, they should be able to remove individual items and add new ones in the list with no more than one or two clicks.
- Finally, make your website design “responsive” to be compatible with smartphones and tablets.
Finally
In conclusion, consumer psychology and user experience are the defining, yet dynamic factors in the success of any e-commerce enterprise. Businesses need to learn and adapt quickly in order to stay competitive, reel in customers, and keep them coming back.
