Are you experiencing a fall in your e-commerce sales? Luckily, there is a multitude of optimizations you can implement to minimize cart abandonment concerns.
According to researchers at Denmark based Baymard Institute, e-commerce sites can improve conversion rates by 35 percent merely by tweaking their checkout designs. Yet, there are many other reasons for your e-commerce business to be experiencing a hit in sales. Through this article, you’ll see what those reasons are and how you can fix them to revive and grow your sales figures.
Given below are a few of the major reasons why you may be losing e-commerce sales — and solutions to reinstate your customers.
Reasons For Decline In Sales:
- Your Site Is On The Slower Side
Speedy and smooth checkouts are the new standard. Online consumers are impatient and seek instant gratification. According to research, a great majority of customers abandon a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
Moreover, the infamous “failure-to-load” message makes your business less legit and around 25% of potential buyers abandon their carts at this point. Site crashes are another major blow to your conversion rate. For this reason, it is imperative to invest in a speedy and reliable e-commerce platform that will not have outages.
- Poor User Experience
Besides being fast and reliable, your e-commerce site should be simple for customers to navigate. If it’s perplexing or cluttered, people leave. It’s important that the number of steps to the checkout stage is minimized. You can resolve this issue further by looking at ‘Google Analytics’ to see at which step customers are bouncing off the most. Making appropriate changes based on your findings will help increase your conversions drastically.
- Your Site Isn’t Optimized
If your e-commerce business is experiencing a decline in sales, another factor you shouldn’t overlook is search engine optimization (SEO). This means your content and web pages should be constantly optimized so they appear when people search online. Potential buyers will be using keywords related to your products, you need to ensure those keywords are tactfully embedded within your content.
Google shows searchers’ the most relevant content. If your pages aren’t appearing in searches, then people won’t click and traffic will obviously be low. Also, it’s important to do keyword research for your niche to ensure your web pages meet searchers’ requirements.
- You’ve Ignored Mobile Users
By the end of 2019 alone, there will be around 11 billion mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices) in circulation globally.
According to eMarketer projections, in 2021, mobile e-commerce could make up almost three quarters (72.9 percent) of e-commerce sales.
Currently, the stats show that people are using mobile devices to research products, whilst they make their eventual purchase on the desktop. As an e-commerce store, you need a cross-device marketing strategy. You need to develop a mobile-optimized e-commerce store to attract and retain customers, not worrying about where they’re browsing or eventually buying from.
Another solution is by asking your friends and family for feedback. Ask them to use their smartphones and explore your website. Once you get their honest inputs, accordingly you can make tweaks to make your e-commerce more user-friendly.
- You Don’t Have Ironclad Processes in place
To deter your e-commerce sales from falling further, you need to have stringent policies and processes in place. Trust, convenience, and a smooth and speedy online shopping experience are factors that shouldn’t be overlooked.
The following reasons and solutions should ensure you’re moving towards a more ironclad strategy:
- The Payment Step Doesn’t Seem Reliable – Offer a variety of payment methods and display trusted credit card logos at the checkout stage.
- Your Products Are Out of Stock – Try to never run out of stock. Consumers don’t come back to sites they’ve previously had to waste time on. To better manage, implement software for your website that takes care of both finished goods and raw material inventory.
- Poor Product Images – The sharper your product images look, the more likely your product pages are to convert to sales. Use a high-quality camera and a white background for optimal imagery.
- Your Copy Isn’t Persuasive – copy must be informative, accurate, well structured, descriptive, and persuasive. Persuasion is the most important factor and if you can craft a persuade copy, you’ll surely experience higher conversions.
- The Call to Action Is Unclear – Have a single and clear call to action (CTA) so visitors know straight away what to do next. CTA is not just about the copy, it should be clearly visible too. Getting the design and color right is necessary so that people can spot it and take action.
Conclusion
There’s no reason why your e-commerce sales should drop. Going upwards is the only way any business should be moving. The trick lies in keeping focussed on your business and ensuring all the above checks are in place. It’s a fast-paced virtual marketplace, so you can’t afford to lose sight of things. Besides the above, there are many other important aspects you need to keep a check on. These include streamlining your checkout process; incorporating a live-chat feature; making shipping policies clearer, ensuring shipping costs ate less burdensome on consumers; and finally, making your website more appealing.
