3 simple reasons your website is losing sales

There is no doubt that the pandemic has played a key role in moving many Irish businesses online. In fact, the period between January to June 2021 was recorded as the best first-half year period ever for new .ie domain registrations, with a total of 33,815 new.ie domains registered across Ireland. So even with the easing of restrictions and the reopening of bricks and mortar stores across the country, this trend reveals that not only has omni-channel retail accelerated the past two years, but it is also here to stay.
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However, in a fight to survive and get back up and running digitally, many of these retailers have overlooked some of the key fundamentals of running a successful ecommerce store. Therefore, we have compiled a short list of the top three simple reasons an ecommerce website may be losing out on crucial sales.
  1. Complex Checkout Process

Many retailers spend a lot of money and resources to attract customers to their website and optimise their online experience to boost sales.Yet after all this investment, customers still drop off at the last step. Why is this? A tedious and time-consuming checkout process.

In order to secure sales and help push customers over the line, you must ensure your checkout process is quick, efficient and convenient. Remember, the longer it takes for a customer to purchase goods, the less likely they will stay to see it through.

So how can you improve your online checkout system? Streamline the checkout process by removing any unnecessary additional steps that delay the purchase. Simple things like automating address fields and integrating automatic payment processors such as PayPal, Apple Pay and Stripe can significantly increase the rate of conversions for your website. In fact, it was found that 3 in 5 online shoppers claim they would stop shopping with a retailer if they experienced difficulties in completing their address at checkout. Therefore, it is recommended to integrate an automated address and payment facility onto your website to help streamline your checkout process and reduce abandoned carts. To find out about our easy to use automated address API GeoAddress Checked, please click here.
 
  1. Slow Website Speed

Now that instant gratification is the norm, it is vital that your website speed can keep pace with your customer’s expectations. It was revealed that 93% of consumers have left a website that didn’t load quickly enough. So if your website speed is poor, you’re already losing customers before they even step foot through the digital door. While internet and website type do play a part in loading speed, it is recommended that a good page load speed is 2 seconds.

If you’re unsure of your website speed, check out some of the following online tools to measure:
  • Pingdom
  • Hubspot Website Grader
  • PageSpeed Insights
So how can you optimise your website to increase its loading speed? Ensuring you have a performance optimised hosting solution in place that provides a fast and reliable ecommerce platform is key. In the rush to get online, many Irish businesses opted for the quickest and cheapest solution without doing any background work on their hosting platform. However, little did they know that choosing the cheaper route that causes a slower website speed, would in fact cost a lot more in the long term.

Another way to increase your website speed is to reduce the size of the imagery. Large images have been found to delay loading time and it is therefore recommended to compress and optimise the imagery throughout the site. This can be achieved by converting images to a JPEG or PNG file and reducing the size to anything between 20-80%. EZGIF.com is a free online tool that can help you do exactly that.
  1. Poor User Experience

In addition to having a fast and reliable website, consumers also want a smooth and seamless online shopping experience. If your website is confusing and difficult to navigate, you’ll instantly lose customers to competitors. And with 68% of Irish consumers now doing more online shopping than before the pandemic, you really don’t want to lose out on sales over something so simple.

So how can you improve your websites navigation to create a frictionless digital experience? Tune in to where your customers are dropping off on your website. Free online tools such as Google Analytics and Hotjar are great ways to gain insight into how your users behave while on your website. The average website bounce rate (where customers jump off the site) for the retail sector is between 20-40%. So if your bounce rate is much higher than this, it’s a good indication that your user experience may not be up to par and the reason your losing conversions.

Another way to test your navigation and user experience on the website is by applying the 3-click rule. If it takes over 5 clicks for a user to reach their intended destination on a website, they’re more likely to become frustrated and leave. So if you can aim to ensure your navigation structure allows for a customer to land on a page to find exactly what they need within 3-5 clicks, this will greatly increase the overall user experience.

If you found this blog useful, you may be interested in our Ways To Win Online webinar.
Posted: 20/10/2021 10:37:36


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