They say the customer is always right, so if they’re not happy with your online store, it’s important that you try and improve it as soon as possible. If not, then they can access another online store in seconds, no matter where in the country they are. Here are five things that can irritate online customers and what you can do to fix them.
One of the most irritating parts of any online shopping experience can be the actual ordering of the goods. If you’re in a physical store, you simply need to place the product in your basket and then take it to a check out. If there are any problem at the point of sale, for example a barcode won’t scan, it’s the responsibility of the cashier behind the counter to solve the problem. If an error occurs when you’re buying online, there is nobody there to help you fix it. The customer either has to figure out how to solve the problem themselves or contact someone via phone, email or social media to help solve the problem. If a customer has to resort to social media, for example, they could be waiting hours or days for a response. That’s why a lot of customers would simply try and find the same product for sale on a different website.
To make sure that you don’t lose customers due to a poorly designed checkout process, find a team that specializes in creating an online store for brands. Employ the help of an expert team, like those at blackbeltcommerce.com, who have experience with building easy to use, reliable and attractive websites for a whole range of brands. Only then can you be sure that your website is reliable enough to not let you down at the most important point – when somebody is just about to complete a sale.
Another thing that could prevent your customer from purchasing a product from your store is the simple fact that it’s not in stock. Gone are the days where people would cut out a form from a catalogue, send it in the mail with a cheque for the right amount and wait weeks for it to be processed and receive the product in the mail. Now people want their goods as soon as possible, ideally the next day as a lot of the big brands now offer. This means if you’re sold out of a certain item, it’s highly unlikely that they’ll wait until you’ve got it back in stock to purchase from you. They’ll probably just click off your website and find somewhere else to buy it instead. To avoid this from happening, take regular stock checks of all of your products and use historical sales data to try and predict how quickly each item will sell.
If you stock hundreds or even thousands of products, you might think that’s a good thing. That means you’re offering so much more choice than a normal physical store would be able to fit into their building. The only problem is that if a shopper is looking for a certain type of product, they’ll have to go through all of the other products to try and find it. Unlike a physical store, there’s no shop assistant to ask to help find it for then. Unless they can find the product page, they simply can’t purchase. To make it easier for them to find a product, make sure you organize your products into lots of clear categories and subcategories. Make sure you have a search engine that can not only search for a product, but also narrow down the results by things like color, size and even price range.
Just because you’ve made the sale and posted the product to the purchaser, it doesn’t mean that’s necessarily the end of the transaction between you and the customer. Once they’ve received the product in the mail, they still have the opportunity to return the product if it’s faulty, doesn’t fit properly or simply doesn’t match the description you put on your website. Other than making sure your product is well packaged and including accurate size guides on your website, there is very little you can do about the first two problems. What you can do is make sure that every product description is as accurate as possible on your website. If the design of a product slightly changes, make sure you take new photos to reflect this change.
The potential problem that could have the biggest impact on your business is the fact that it’s not open when you expect it to be. You’d think an online store would be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but if your hosting server fails, your website could fall offline at any point. Before choosing someone to host your website, make sure you read reviews on which are the most reliable for customers. Make sure you choose a package with enough bandwidth to deal with lots of customers, especially when you are holding a sale or during busy periods like Christmas.
