If you’re trying to get people to buy from your website, there are some common annoyances that you should avoid so that you can retain more customers. Ecommerce annoyances are those little things in online stores that make them hard to use. Think about your customers and what they really want from your store, and don’t just focus on getting them to buy. If you focus on the customers, they will buy from you. If you don’t they’ll find somewhere else to spend their money.

When you’re building an online store it can be very tempting to focus all your efforts on conversions. In other words, converting browsing readers into buying customers. But if you are annoying your readers before they become customers you may be losing conversions that you didn’t even know about. These ecommerce annoyances can be fixed, but only if you take the time to address them on your site.

Some of these annoyances will cause people to leave without looking back the first time they see it, and others are very minor. But don’t be fooled, according to Jakob Nielson:

“Annoyances matter, because they compound.”

In other words, the more little annoyances there are on your website, the more likely people will give up and leave. They will feel less than satisfied with their experience on your site, and even if they do make a purchase, may be less eager to make another at a future date. While fixing annoyances might not triple your conversion rate, as Jakob Nielson says:

“eliminating annoyances increases customer satisfaction and user loyalty, and thus improves the long-term business value of the site”

Annoyances Before They’ve Chosen What to Buy

These annoyances happen while the customer is still browsing your site. If they get annoyed enough they might even leave without ever buying:

Pages load too slowly.
All Web pages should load quickly. And ecommerce pages are no exception. Your pages should have few large images and just the information required about the product or products listed. Make sure to test your database that it can feed content quickly and that your ad server (if you have ads on your pages) is not bogging down your pages. Speed is critical, and the more pages that are slow to load the more likely your potential customer will leave without buying.

• The Size of Your Pages
• Speeding Up Your Web Page
• “Thank You for Your Patience”

Not providing any additional information about the products.
You’ll make more sales if you provide information about the products. You want to include information like technical specs, sizes and weights, colors, and materials. And the more information you can provide the better your site will appear. It can be tempting to create a catalog of products all simply linking to the store. But you won’t get as many customers if you don’t give them something to read, so they can learn more about what they’re buying.

• Writing Web Pages that Meet Your Customers’ Goals
• Content is King

Content is out of date.
If the content on your website is out of date, they won’t trust you. Make sure that your content reflects as up to the minute information as you can. This situation is especially annoying when it comes to information about stock availability. One thing that is sure to annoy your customers is if the site says “in stock” and it’s not until they get to the purchase area (or worse yet, after the products were supposed to ship) they are told that it’s not available. I’ve cancelled complete orders from online stores when one item was listed as in stock but wasn’t. When I’m coming to the store for one thing, I might buy more if it’s available, but I won’t buy anything if it’s not.

Not welcoming customer feedback, such as posting customer reviews.
One thing that most people really like is the ability to read reviews from other customers. And even if you don’t post them on your site, your customers will find reviews elsewhere. If you provide those reviews directly on your site, you appear more friendly and open to your customers. And this can help build a community of loyal customers who will help you make your site and your products even better.

• Why Create an Online Community
• Building Online Communities

Not displaying the price until checkout.
Many online stores do this in the misguided belief that people will feel obligated to buy if they are in the checkout process when they discover the price. However, the reality is that most people simply won’t enter the checkout at all. Don’t force people into the checkout just to discover the price. This is an annoyance that will drive off many potential customers.

Annoyances During the Checkout and Afterwards

Requiring a login to checkout.
This is really annoying. Customers who buy from brick and mortar stores aren’t required to be members from most stores before they buy. But forcing people to register just to make a purchase is another place that you’ll lose conversions. If you must set up a registration, do it at the end, after they’ve made their purchase. And make it optional. Or if it’s not optional, set up the registration based on the information that they gave you to make their purchase.

Not providing any value for the required login (beyond being able to buy).
Once you’ve forced your customer to register, give them something for it. One store I bought from last week forced a registration and the only thing I “got” for that registration was the opportunity to be put on their mailing list. Since I was already on the list without being registered, this was annoying.

Some things that are useful to provide include:

• Order tracking, cancelling, and updating
• Previous orders

Picking states and countries from a drop-down.
You probably do this because you think that it stops people from entering data incorrectly, but it’s much easier to write the two-letter code for a state than it is to find it in a drop-down menu. The same is true for countries. And it’s easy to think you’ve chosen the correct state or country only to have the mouse move and select a different one while you’re not looking.

If you’re worried about invalid information, then sign up for a zip code validation service. You should probably be doing this when you check their credit card anyway.

No contact information or only a Web form or other online method (like chat) or telephone.
Finally, when the order is done, your customers like to be able to contact you. But providing only phone support during limited hours or an online form can be very annoying to people. Most people who use online forms want to use online methods to contact you that they can track – ie. email.

Tags: ecommerce, shopping