BizAims

The e-commerce currently develops quite fast, if not with the speed of light then certainly with a speed exceeding $500 billions per day. There are a lot of on-line businesses that continue making schoolboy mistakes on their sites. Such mistakes might be quite detrimental for the sales and the levels of customer satisfaction.

No doubt customers visiting the website require smooth experience and in case they spot some errors or may feel somewhat frustrated regarding the usability of the site, they will most likely close the site and look for other on-line shops on the web.

Below there is a list of ten most often met mistakes in the filed of electronic commerce:

1. Bad Search / Filtering Features

Definitely a site needs a good search option for the customers that might look for a specific product or who are just browsing through the site.

In perfect case customers visiting a site should not have a lot of products to search through, instead it would be wise to make an option allowing filtering the searches, thus removing unrelated products.

One example: in case one needs to purchase a men's shirt from a website, he chooses "menswear" then goes to "shirts" and this is as far as the person can refine his search. Then the customer surfs through several pages of men's shirts.

2. Hard to Spot Checkouts

This is the case when you add a product to you basket and then you feel frustrated due to the fact that the checkout is really hard to find on the site. There are sites that have the checkout sign somewhere in the corner in the drop down menu.

3. Asking Too Much Information.

When a customer wants to make a purchase there is a need to complete a specific registration form. Every e-commerce site has its own registration form, which sometimes may require more information than actually needed.

Certainly some businesses want to know more about their customers, but, in fact, if the process of registration features irrelevant questions the customer might as well abandon the registration process.

It is important to stick to the details that are really necessary for making the purchase, such as delivery address, contact number, details on customer's card and that's all. Consider capturing the data in "drips" and instead of making the potential customer fill complex forms, keep the person engaged.

4. Bad Customer Service / Contact Options

Surely every on-line business should make it comfortable for the customer to reach any product / delivery queries. However, sometimes it takes more time to figure out the way to get in touch with an e-commerce company.

A good section on Frequently Asked Questions might be of much help. It is also important to include a phone number. Thus it would be much easier to get a link with clientele when customers are able to make calls and be able to ask any questions.

The trust of any customer increases if the seller provides the phone number as well as the contact address of the company. Surveys show that half of the clients surfing the e-commerce websites would not buy from a site that does not provide additional ways of contacting the company.

Please consider visiting the site for more information on e-commerce errors.

(Article continuation read in the part II).