Blog | Fox Web Internet Solutions

Online customers looking but not buying

If you’re getting good inbound numbers, clearly there’s an interest in your products or services, and you’re getting the word out about your site. Great! You’ve already cleared the biggest hurdle. Now, you want your numbers to go up. But how? Your budget isn’t there for a huge marketing campaign.

Let’s start with your site tracking dashboard. How deep into your site are customers going? Drop off from “window shoppers” is normal. We want to unearth the serious buyers, people who are checking out your return policies, customer reviews, and FAQs. They’re the ones who usually like the product and the price, but something else puts them off. Here are some possibilities:

1. Your Store Policies Aren’t Clear or Are Too Restrictive

Buying online is convenient, but people look for brick and mortar style assurance, too. They want to know they can easily return products or contact someone about trouble with your service. While you may look to dissuade returns, customers expect good post-sale service. Unless your policies are clear and to their liking, they may go elsewhere even if the pricing is good. Look for the right balance for both you and your customers.

2. Sticker Shock at the Shopping Cart

If your strategy rests on luring people in with prices that undercut your competitors, only to hit your shoppers with hefty shipping and handling charges that are disproportionate with the items they’re buying, you may have just found the cause of your cart abandonment.

High restocking fees may also be your culprit. Naturally, you want to reduce returns, but not at the cost of overall sales. Again, striking the right balance is key here. Try A/B testing to help find the correct balance for both you and your customers.

3. Online Shoppers Want Flexible Shipping Options

Free shipping is big with shoppers, and is quickly becoming industry standard. Maybe this isn’t within your budget, but you may be able to shift some numbers around to make it fly. Testing will reveal what works best for you. Just make sure customers are aware of your free shipping option if you offer it. Scream it out everywhere on your site and let them know you have it!  

Also, with the Internet, the world is your customer base. View it this way. If you don’t offer shipping to foreign destinations, and many of your site hits are coming in from abroad, you’ve just uncovered why some people aren’t converting.

4. You’re Not Mobile Friendly

If you haven’t overhauled your design in the past two years, here’s your likely problem. Studies show that mobile shoppers account for nearly 50% of top retailers’ customers. Smartphones and tablets are ubiquitous now, and your site’s design needs to reflect this. Unless you have some form of responsive design that can accommodate these customers at the shopping cart, they’ll get frustrated and leave. And frustrated customers aren’t likely to return.

5. Customers Have Trust Issues With Your Site

Your customers know data breaches are occurring all too often now. They hear it in the news enough to make them jittery about shopping online. Or worse, maybe they’ve already been hit—perhaps even more than once. These potential customers want to know their transactions are secure and verifying with a trusted third party can help with this. Start by displaying your certificate authority’s trust mark site seal in highly visible locations around your site—especially on shopping cart and login pages. Tell your customers that their security is important to you and your business.

Further, when you display the benefits throughout the buying process, you’ll not only help reduce shoppers' security concerns, but allay any questions about product authenticity, timely delivery, and getting a good price, too.

 

Source: Magento Blog