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 Common faults in e-commerce sites
Promotion of retail sites on BCL uses the affiliate marketing model. That means that payment is on percentage of sales. For advertisers, it means that they only pay for advertising when sales are made. Great! But that means that we look at their website and assess how well they will convert potential customers into sales. If we're not convinced their websites are up to it, we won't promote them. How well would your site stand up? Here are some of the common errors we see:
- They make their site hard to get into. Main street shops don't make their doors hard to get through, they don't demand to know your name or other personal details before you can find out whether they have anything you want to buy, they don't hide the checkout. Nor should websites. Forget the useless splash page and make sure your navigation is clear.
- They don't use secure (ssl) pages for taking credit cards. Secure pages for payments are a basic requirement for any site.
- They want to be anonymous. If your contact page contains nothing more than an email form, it gives the impression that it is a fly-by-night operator or you are working from home and don't want to give your address away. Either way, why should people trust you enough to buy? Your address and phone number don't have to be splashed across the whole screen (affiliates would prefer it wasn't) but you should have it available for the nervous buyer. If you don't want people ringing you, put "No phone orders" or "For enquiries about existing orders only" beside the phone number. Even better, get a serviced office, so you have a static address and phone number - which is good for deliveries and returns as well.
- They have Google ads or affiliate links on their site. While affiliates will object to this as a traffic leakage issue, I think it is an odd thing for any serious ecommerce site to try. To me, it suggests that the site owner doesn't know how to sell their own goods, so they hope to pick up any extra pennies they can by including these ads on their sites. If your site isn't converting lookers into customers, you'd be better spending your time refining your site and products.
- They lose focus on their shopping cart. So the customer has found their product, added it to the shopping cart, now they just want to complete their purchase and move on. The best sites let them do just that. Registration? If you want them to register, tell them the advantages like order tracking, repeat orders etc. I see no reason for a business to demand to know a customer's date of birth before they let them buy anything. If you must request marketing information at this stage, you must make it optional and non-invasive.
by Gayle Dallaston February 11, 2008 9:47 AM
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