Part II of e-commerce website mistakes to avoid covers – the payment system, site design and inadequate or outdated information, and is a follow up to Part I
The payment system
This is the section which probably leads to most of the complications. There are a lot of aspects that you need to address here, the first one being data entry. Now on many occasions, users might fill up the entire form but miss out a certain field. If they have to fill all the data again for missing just one field before, it can be a very frustrating.
The other aspect is the default value present in the menus. For instance, if most of your business takes place in the United States, then the default value in the menu should be United States. Also, you should remember that there is a specific sequence for entering credit card details that is used by most of the sites. If you change that order, then it may lead to the user entering the wrong data.
Site design
A lot of site owners do not put too much emphasis on the design, which can lead to some serious problems. The most common issue is that too many colors and designs are used, when shoppers want things to be put in simple manner. If you use more than 2 to 3 colors and fonts on a page, it may end up confusing the user.
Photos of the products play an important role in an e-commerce website. Buyers want to have a look at what they are purchasing. So, you must have high quality photos of the product from multiple angles. Also, there should be a feature to enlarge the images. If the buyer is able to see the tiny details about the product, then it provides them the confidence to go ahead with the purchase.
Inadequate or outdated information
Keeping irrelevant or outdated information about products can be very off-putting for the buyer. Keep updating the product information section and provide latest news regarding the product. You can get a professional content writer to do this for you. Also, remove broken links because they not only frustrate the visitors but hurt your search engine ranking as well.
Information about products is not the only thing customers might look for. They often look for contact information if they want to learn more about your services or the products. E-mail, phone number and fax number should be easily accessible to the user from any page on the site.