Why are visitors not buying from me – Part 3
In the previous blogs, we looked at the first and second biggest loss of purchases, which were “a complicated, confusing or difficult to follow website or sales process” and then “is your website old fashioned, unprofessional or using outdated imagery?” We discussed the fact that there are dozens of articles and reports online, where you can find the latest, most up-to-date statistics on visitor behaviour and how our blog is not one of them.
From reading through these articles and reports, and then comparing them directly with our customers’ feedback, we have narrowed these down to the core issues, which between them account for the bulk of visitors not buying from you.
In this blog we will focus on the third largest reason why customers do not purchase from you namely:
Having a Poor On-site Search Experience
This is probably one of the most overlooked features of your e-commerce customers’ experience, but can have a big impact on whether or not they buy from you, and you missing out on potential add-on sales.
At a simple level, imagine your customer is looking for cupcakes and your site search box shows only that, or worse, if you have none in stock, may return nothing. But then think if your on-site search engine said ‘We have cupcakes and how about these?’ or ‘We have no cupcakes in stock but how about these?’ and shows a list of alternatives.
So how can the site search experience be improved?
A good site-search system should be able to track your customers’ behaviour and adapt, perhaps offering relevant products or even showing popular items or a current offer.
Autocomplete in the Search Bar should be typo-tolerant
This is becoming increasingly important as more potential customers are shopping online using their smartphones. When you couple this with the size of the on-screen keyboard when compared to the size of a finger, typing mistakes and odd auto-corrects are inevitable. How many times have you not noticed these typos but with a poor autocomplete you will see ‘No Results’. Possibly you may check and see the error but equally, you may conclude that your desired product is not available from this site.
Making sure for yourselves that your on-site search can tolerate typos and still bring back relevant results is essential. A really good autocomplete solution can start to display product options with very few characters, this helps to prevent potential typos affecting results. Being proactive could avoid customers “not buying from me”.
Creatively Yours…
Creatively Yours Ltd helps businesses like yours succeed online through website design, website development, and our Helponomics system that offers support and training as you need it and highlights areas that could increase your sales.
For more on our thoughts please find us on our social media channels Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, You Tube, Instagram or to read our previous blogs click Here
Then why not drop us a line to helping@creatively-yours.co.uk, or simply call us on 01536 23 98 98 or 01493 718 300
