To succeed online with e-commerce websites, it takes lots of resources and effort in marketing, advertising, and growing a business. This is after initial investments have been made to get proper website design and e-commerce solutions. To have the right conversion rates and produce sales, shopping cart mistakes that cause declines in sales should be avoided.
Shopping carts that display these common mistakes often suffer sales from them. These should be avoided for better results. It is often challenging as it is to generate momentum and website traffic. Then, efforts to convert the site traffic into shoppers and further keep the customers from leaving to competitors. It can be tough.
To maximize profits, shopping carts should be properly setup, customized, designed, and so on. Common mistakes should be avoided and that’s already a much better start. To help, here are 10 shopping cart mistakes that cause declines in sales that should be avoided.
10 Shopping Cart Mistakes That Cause Declines In Sales
1. Hard to find, confusing, and lengthy checkout process.
This is one of the biggest reasons; websites experience a decline in online sales. E-commerce websites with shopping carts that have hard to find, confusing, and/or lengthy checkout processes certainly will cause loss of sales and customers.
2. Checkout that is offsite and not part of the website.
Websites that have somehow imbedded a checkout process that takes the shopper to another website to finalize the sale, will loose sales and experience a decline. These types of shopping cart setups are less trusted. A mistake to avoid. Checkouts should stay within the same page and URL for best results.
3. Slow loading websites and store pages.
Consumers get quickly annoyed online and have very little patience. This is especially true with loading times. Slow loading e-commerce websites, with slow loading store pages cause declines in sales and loss of customers. A website must load promptly with each “click” of the website visitor and customer.
4. Poor product images and descriptions.
When a potential customer walks into a brick and mortar store, a sales person can talk to them. This is not possible online. Therefore, shopping carts online must display quality product images and multiple shots if possible, including well written product descriptions and details.
5. Lack of customer and product reviews.
Consumers especially when shopping online want to read reviews from other customers. This is one of the most important tools for businesses and e-commerce entrepreneurs to use on their website to promote sales. Lack of customer and product reviews often causes the opposite, further decline of sales.
6. Forcing website visitors to register to shop.
It is crazy that many websites still are setup like this. Shopping carts experience decline in sales always when consumers are forced to register in order to be able to shop on the website. Forcing website visitors to register to shop, negatively impacts sales.
7. Not displaying properly guarantees and payment methods.
Website designers often are not business operators and design shopping pages without the key conversion tools to drive online sales. Not displaying properly such conversion tools as guarantees and payment methods hurts sales. They should be properly and clearly displayed and incorporated into the design of the shopping pages.
8. Offer incentives to avoid declining sales.
Online shoppers go online to find good deals and take advantage of the many specials available online. Businesses that want to take advantage of this must offer the proper incentives to avoid declining sales, but experience an increase in sales.
9. High shipping costs and other hidden costs.
Shopping carts that show high shipping costs and other costs that come up during the checkout, often experience a decline in sales. To avoid the loss of sales, websites should offer free shipping or keep costs minimal for shipping, while making sure no other additional fees are charged to consumers.
10. Lack of customer service and contact options.
It is an online business, but consumers still want to know that they are able to talk to someone life, if they needed too. Shopping carts that lack customer service and contact options, experience declining sales. To avoid this, each shopping cart page should clearly have a phone number, email, chat, and other features available to the shopper.
To increase online sales with e-commerce websites and avoid experiencing declining sales, work with experts and professionals. Professional services called Conversion Optimization help websites convert higher. This includes making necessary suggestions and edits to improve website performances and online sales.
