Retaining Users – Strategies to Prevent Your Customers from Leaving Your ECommerce Site
For the last decade, suitecommerce has revolutionized businesses. It cannot be denied that it has made shopping easier for customers. Not only you can order things at your doorstep, but you have access to products all around the world. With the rampant adoption of the digital channel online business owners, as such, are struggling to stand out among their competitors.
When it comes to online business, especially e-commerce, ‘user experience’ plays a pivotal role in the success or failure of your business. Your website serves as the first impression; providing a simple, easy, and enjoyable shopping experience can help you retain your customers. A bad experience can drive your shoppers away, which in return affects your conversion rate. Let’s look at some of the DON’Ts that will not only attract the leads but also aid you to convert as well as retain them.
Non-Responsive Website
One of the biggest mistakes an online business owner can make is to forget about mobile commerce. Statistics have shown that 51% of people prefer to shop through mobile devices. A bad mobile site can drift your customers away and look out for a competitor site to fulfill their goals. Google also lowers the ranking of the site which is not responsive.
NetSuite SuiteCommerce has a built-in responsive design capability that ensures an excellent shopping experience to the customer on whichever device they prefer to use; mobile, tablet, laptop or desktop. Check Folio3 responsive demo store – it’s easily accessible on all the devices.
Complex Navigation
Navigation is one of the essential parts of an e-commerce website. It can either help you increase your conversion rate or let go of your customers. Make sure the layout should be clean and minimalistic so it’s easier for the customer to navigate and find the right product. Poor navigation with no distinct categories makes it difficult for a user to find a specific type of product.
NetSuite SuiteCommerce offers easy-to-use navigation with proper categories. It also provides multiple display options for a listing page and filtering categories.
No Guest Checkout
Online shoppers usually abandon the shopping cart due to mandatory registration. Forcing the customer to sign up before placing the order in the checkout process is considered as an additional hassle. Guest checkout allows customers to place an order by providing minimal information and helps them to make a quick checkout.
NetSuite SuiteCommerce offers a very simple way to set up the “Checkout as a Guest” feature to your website; enabling the users to place an order without going through the hassle of the registration process.
Poor Product Details
Product details are one of the key points online businesses should keep in mind when creating a web store. While shopping in a brick-and-mortar store, buyers have the advantage to feel and see the product but this is not the case when purchasing online. Thus, a good quality, sharp & crisp picture with a detailed description of the product must be provided to the potential customer. The website should have a feature where users can zoom in the image of the product and help them finalize their purchase.
SuiteCommerce Advanced provides comprehensive details of the products, displays the relevant pictures, and lets the user zoom in product pictures.
Lengthy Checkouts
A study conducted by Baymard institute indicates that 30% of the shoppers abandon their carts because of complicated & lengthy checkouts. A good e-commerce website must ensure that once a user has added a product to their cart, they can easily purchase them in just a few steps. It’s good to ask only for concise and relevant information from the customers. If the checkout is seamless, shoppers are more likely to return to your site in the future.
NetSuite SuiteCommerce website provides both multi-step and a single page checkout process. The single-page checkout provides users to check and enter their billing and shipping information on a single step and can easily place their orders.
Inefficient Site Search
Site Search makes it easier and quicker to find a product. If a customer knows what they’re looking for, chances are they will use site search instead of navigation. The search bar, therefore, is visible to users regardless of the page they’re on. The search must also work well and preferably have filters to let users refine their results.
NetSuite SuiteCommerce provides an efficient faceted site search by providing suggestions as shoppers type their search query.
Great product discovery is an essential key to conversion. You don’t want your customers to browse several pages before they find the product of their choice. SCA provides Faceted search which is a great way to provide valuable information about your product in an easy to browse format which makes it easy for the shoppers to browse, filter, and shop based on their specific choices.
Customers can sort their bag of choice by the following filters:
- Product type – like Laptop bags, Schoolbag
- Size – Depending on the size of the bag (medium, large, small)
- Price – Filtering options based on different pricing level
- Colour – Filtering options based on the choice of color by the customer.
- Material – Filtering based on the material of the bag
No Promotions
The users love giveaways and it can’t be denied. If you want to have better conversion rates and boost your sales then providing promotions could be very beneficial. By running promotions around holidays and special occasions, you can generate more sales and it helps you gain long-term customers. Promotions provide an effective way to engage the traffic – shoppers usually are on a lookout for discounts and promotions. If they aren’t going to buy it chances are they subscribe to your mailing list when promotions are involved
NetSuite SuiteCommerce offers a wide variety of promotions such as stackable promotions, shipping promotions, auto-apply promotions, gift offers and many more. It also provides complete control over them making it easy to manage
No Quick View
A quick view allows users to view the details of the product and add to their cart without navigating to the individual product page. This is a very helpful feature that saves the customer’s time and provides a smooth checkout flow.
NetSuite SuiteCommerce provides a built-in quick view to the fast shoppers. The view includes product details, quantity, pricing and the ability to add to cart.
No Reviews & Social Sharing
Social media can bring huge traffic to your website but it is often overlooked by retailers. If you want to bring in a broader group of potential customers, you must allow your user to share the product on different social media platforms. Similarly, customer reviews are also important. Reviews eliminate any doubts the potential customer may have about a product. Users like to read online reviews before placing any order and therefore they are now needed to be a part of the e-commerce website.
NetSuite SuiteCommerce allows the user to share their experiences along with product ratings. It also lets them share their favorite products across social networks thus engaging more audience and potential customers.
No Easy Access to the Cart
Navigating back and forth to check the items in the cart could lead to a frustrating experience for shoppers. To minimize the effect, mini-cart plays an important role. Mini-cart popup displays the important details of the cart without having to leave the page they are on.
NetSuite SuiteCommerce provides an expandable mini cart preview displaying a shopping cart summary and also allows you to navigate to checkout from any website page.
No Wishlist
Wishlist allows users to create a personalized collection of products for future purchases. Wishlist creates immense value for your e-commerce website. It creates an opportunity for customers to save an item that they aren’t able to purchase at that moment and find them quickly whenever they return to your store.
NetSuite SuiteCommerce improves shopper’s e-commerce experience by providing a wishlist feature. You can easily allow your customer to create their personalized list by enabling this feature
Upselling Unavailable
What are the chances that you wouldn’t buy a product if you are bound to hear “would you like to purchase a pair of shoes with the outfit that you’re purchasing?”. The retailer suggests related items to you that go with the one that you’re buying. This is called eCommerce Upselling, and it’s an effective strategy to boost your sales and generate more revenue. This technique is used by many major brands, including Amazon, and the lack of this feature might result in lower engagement levels and a weaker bottom line.
NetSuite offers an upsell feature that automatically suggests products to a customer based on their purchasing history, items in cart, best sellers, and more.
Slow Response Time
Poor website performance reflects negatively on your business. Slow websites lose orders to fast websites. Studies have shown that a loading time delay of just one second can reduce your conversions by 7%. The research also shows that 80% of the users find a slow loading website more frustrating than a temporarily down website.
With NetSuite SuiteCommerce, you can get a fast and scalable website. The applications on NetSuite are built on single page architecture with edge caching and best-in-class content delivery network caching (Akamai CDN) ensuring a quick and seamless shopping experience for your customers. Folio3, being the NetSuite Commerce Partner, runs a BTP (Built-to-Perform) Checkpoint on SuiteCommerce sites to ensure performant websites even after customization.
Final thoughts
User experience is central to e-commerce because it ensures that your customers can easily navigate the store, find what they need, buy and come again in the future for similar purchases. The success of an e-commerce business relies on it. Using an e-commerce platform such as NetSuite SuiteCommerce saves you from making the most pressing UX mistakes. Folio3, being one of NetSuite’s premier SuiteCommerce Advanced Partners offers businesses with fast and robust e-commerce websites that make every step of the journey a joy for your users!