Even though you’ve worked hard at building rank with the search engines and your organic searches are mostly found on the first pages of the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages), you find that your bounce rate is through the roof and that you just aren’t making the money from your website that you had anticipated. After all, your prices are competitive, you have a product line that is trending, and you’ve invested heavily in marketing. Something is going terribly wrong, but what is it?
Here are some of the biggest reasons why your small business Ecommerce website may be failing.
Nonresponsive Websites
First, and foremost, the thing you really must understand is that the greatest number of new customers will find your site through mobile searches. If your website is nonresponsive, you will not be recognised by the crawlers.
Google set the precedence a few years back and now only websites which can be viewed well on the small screens of mobile devices will be listed in their mobile searches. In other words, if you want to be found, you must build a responsive website. Few people search from desktop PCs anymore and if you aren’t mobile-friendly, you are losing the majority of new visitors – plain and simple.
Complicated Checkout Process
Amazon is best known for pioneering a simpler checkout process. Online shoppers get frustrated quite easily if they are forced to go through a complicated checkout with page after page of questions. In fact, the ‘one-click’ checkout makes it easy for you to capture return buyers because of the ease at which they can order and reorder from your site.
You will find that shopping cart abandonment is almost always due to a complicated checkout process. If you want your visitors to buy, make it easy for them to order and pay once they’ve decided to buy. Confuse them and you’ll lose them.
Limited Payments Accepted
Many Ecommerce sites offer limited payment options. For example, some will only use PayPal and others will only accept Mastercard or Visa. Others will offer both PayPal and credit/debit cards but don’t offer an option for customers to mail checks or money orders.
It is good to remember that some consumers are still wary of digital payments because of all the hacks they’ve heard about and so it is a good ‘backup’ plan to keep Snail Mail as a payment alternative! Then there’s crypto currency like Bitcoin. All you need is a Bitcoin merchant payment portal and you now have even another way to accept payment for your products or services. The key takeaway here is, the easier you make it for them to pay, the easier it will be to close the deal.\
Conclusion
The whole purpose of setting up a small business Ecommerce site is to make money. Whether you have a brick and mortar establishment as well, if you are going to offer products online you want to sell them online.
Make it easy for your customers to browse your selection and pay for them and you will have mastered the key to success. This is why so many small businesses fail, so don’t be among them. Get it right and watch your profits grow.