When visitors come to shop at your small business ecommerce website, you want them to have a smooth, frustration-free experience. We all want repeat customers, right? Typically though, it's not the big issues that cause a problem. It's the little things that make or break their shopping experience. Here are five things that affect your customers' experience -- and your conversion rate. If you're not addressing them now, keep them in mind for your next website design:
Smart and Flexible Search
Some visitors will use the navigation system to browse your site, but many others prefer using the search tool instead. That's why a good search tool is essential. A good search tool for ecommerce websites should include the capability to use Boolean search terms such as "blue and pillowcase" to match only blue pillowcases or "comforter or duvet" to match either comforter or duvet.
Another search option that earns high marks with customers is being able to search within product descriptions as well as in the product names themselves. Being able to search within a set of search results will also help a potential purchaser whittle down a large number of search results to something more manageable without having to perform a new search.
Filter Search Results
Once search results are on the screen, your customer must filter them to find products more quickly. Smart filter options include the capability to filter or sort by price from Low to High and vice versa. In some cases bracketing prices and displaying products within ranges such as less than $10, $10-$20 and so on, works better.
Other filtering options include filtering by the number of user reviews, popularity, the star rating, by brand or sorting the products by name in alphabetical order ascending and descending. The more opportunity you give your customers to sort the data in the order that they're most interested in seeing, the better service you provide them.
When displaying search and filtered results, it helps to provide options in the number of matching items that can be displayed per page. Many visitors prefer to scroll a single page of a hundred or more products rather than having to click through 10 or more pages each displaying only a handful of products.
Good Product Organization
Don't limit your customers' options by categorizing products in just one way. Some customers buy by brand and others by price, color, or on the basis of what's popular or new. If you organize only by brand, customers who want to know what's cheapest have to browse all brands to determine their best choice.
If you categorize only by price, then customers who prefer a particular brand will have to search to find this brand among items they are not remotely interested in. However if, in your ecommerce design, you offer both price and brand as categories you keep both types of customers happy.
Even worse than insufficient categories are meaningless, confusing or incomplete categories that force customers to make choices that aren't -- at least to their mind -- mutually exclusive. For example, if you force visitors to choose between Coverlets, Quilts and Comforters, what do they click to find Bedspreads? If this is your only navigation option then some users are going to be confused and frustrated from the outset.
Also avoid having categories that result in only one or two results. Instead, opt to use broader categories that encompass a larger number of products so you give customers more results to choose from.
The more you know about your customers and their preferences and buying habits the more you'll know about what categories are meaningful to them.
Always provide a clickable breadcrumb trail that shows visitors exactly where they are in your site as they search for products. This lets them immediately go back up one or two levels if they find they're headed down an incorrect path.
It's all in the (Product) Details
Customers can't hold the product in their hands when they shop online, so they rely on you to provide them with information to help them make the right buying decision. In short -- show them everything!
Give them detailed production descriptions, provide plenty of photographs and, if you're selling products where size is a factor, then give them information about sizing such as how generous or otherwise a size is.
Also tell them if the product is available now and, if it is on backorder, when it should ship. It's far too late to tell someone this information once they've added it to their shopping cart, and it's even worse to do so as they are checking out or after they have purchased.
Checkout Smarts
Once customers have assembled a shopping cart full of product, there's no guarantee that they'll continue and finalize their purchase. A smart and quick checkout process is essential to avoid shopping cart abandonment. At the top of the do-not-do-this list: do not require registration if it's not totally necessary.
Provide details upfront about shipping options, pricing and the times you ship. When customers are paying for expedited shipping, such as overnight, they'll want to know if their shipment will leave today or not.
If the customer makes a mistake completing a form during the checkout process, retain the entries he's already completed so he doesn't have to retype them. Only stop the checkout process if he omitted details you absolutely must have. Never stop because he didn't answer an opt-in mailing list request, for example.
Customers have limited patience with sites that don't put the customer first and don't appear to understand their needs and behaviors. Simple changes to your website search, navigation, product descriptions and checkout process can increase conversion rates and result in customers who love your site rather than tolerate its inadequacies or worse, shop elsewhere.
Helen Bradley is an international columnist who specializes in end-user applications, photography, photo editing, Web design and ecommerce. She writes how-to articles, tips and projects, and she produces how-to videos for a number of magazines, newspapers and online services in the USA, Australia, Canada and the UK. Her work has appeared in PC Magazine, CNet, Family PC, Digital-Photography-School.com, Sydney Morning Herald, Winplanet.com and MediaBistro.com. She blogs at ProjectWoman.
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