Abandonment – Why Visitors Don’t Turn Into Customers

Every good eCommerce business should understand the value of conversions versus hits received. Far too often, businesses become fixated on the hits they are receiving instead of monitoring their hit to sale conversion rate. This misguided focus is the road to ruin because it fails to take in the issue of abandonment.

Abandonment

“Abandonment” is one of those terms that has a unique meaning when applied to the Internet. The term refers to reasons why a user abandons a site before taking the action the site owner desires, typically purchasing a product or making an inquiry.

There are a number of beautiful sites on the Internet with unique innovations. Unfortunately, these sites rarely turn a profit or unnecessarily limit their profit potential. Website owners should focus on only one thing when building a site – converting visitors to customers. To avoid abandonment issues, you should focus on the following:

  1. The site should always load as quickly as possible to accommodate visitors that are using slower internet connections.
  2. The site should be designed for ease of use, not just “what looks good.”
  3. All advertisements should click through directly to the items that are being searched, not the home page of the site.
  4. Site pages should be kept short to improve load times.
  5. Either offer a mobile version or make sure the site loads properly on a mobile device.
  6. Signing up for a newsletter or other info should be made as easy as possible.
  7. Customers should be required to fill out the minimum of information to make a purchase.
  8. All images should be compressed for quick loading.
  9. If the customer has left the shopping cart with items in it, think about sending them a discount code to complete the order.
  10. Offer free shipping on all items if possible.

The list is fairly endless, but you should always view site designs and advertising from the perspective of the customer. The universal question for each project is, “How could we make this easier for customers?” By emphasizing this approach, you will bypass many of the problems you see on the net and avoid wasting your advertising dollars.

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