A poorly developed and designed website is the bane of every online customer. Slow loading speeds, an appalling user interface, inoperability when opened from a phone, etc. will make users leave and never come back. You’re then stuck with close to no sales, a low reputation, and other business frustrations.
To ensure you never have to go through such pain, here are some things to avoid in eCommerce website development.
1. Bad User Experience (UX)
This is as bad as it gets – having a bad user experience is a big turn-off for customers looking to shop online. No one has the time to wait for minutes for pages to load or look through poor-quality images or videos. Everything should be nicely arranged and attractively designed, and the site should have an overall perfectly polished look.
Understandably, you may lack a skilled team to do all this for you, but with top-notch custom eCommerce website development services from a provider like Launch, you’d be sufficiently covered. The goal is to keep customers exploring your website and loving every bit so much that even after they have found what they were looking for, they’ll still want to come back to see what else will catch their interest.
2. Lack of Cross-Platform Compatibility and Responsiveness
Another annoyance for majority of the online users who know what to expect from a high-quality eCommerce website.
Cross-platform compatibility is a technique that ensures your website can load on devices using different platforms (such as macOS vs Windows) while maintaining its User Interface. Responsiveness is all about adopting the user interface to different screen sizes (for instance, having a website open on your phone in a way similar to how it would open on a desktop computer).
The site you launch for use by your customers should be cross-platform compatible and responsive. Or did you not know that the idea of a good eCommerce experience is having the freedom to shop from any device, wherever you are, and whenever you feel like it? Your customers want you to give them that freedom, and these two techniques will come in pretty handy here.
3. Missing Out on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Well, search engine optimization is not directly linked to the user experience, but it gets you connected to the users, in the first place. For starters, SEO best practices are not all about ranking for the bots at Google or any other search engine provider. There’s no point in having a website that takes the first position in the search engine results but experiences crazy bounce rates.
Your site should rank for humans first, and that’ll make it automatically rank for the bots. The idea is to have an impactful site that people come to feeling helpless and leave in high spirits, looking for a friend or contact to share the link with.
You want to make your site all-rounded, not just about selling products. Publish helpful content, make the user experience pleasant, and do everything else that makes your site a lovely one to explore, and the traffic will generate itself.
4. Lack of Branding /Uniqueness
Through research, it has been established that giving your customers a personalized experience, offering high-quality products, publishing meaningful content, and doing more to complement your visual branding can make your clients feel more connected to your company. Failing to brand your business decreases the chances of your customers taking your brand personally.
They will view you like just another ordinary company that is all about making sales and generating profits without giving the slightest care to adding real value to their customers. Then the sales will take a nosedive.
5. Missing Out on Security Optimization
You can’t be running an eCommerce platform and act like you don’t care about the safety of your customers’ financial data. That’s a punishable offense that can end your business! Do everything from implementing HTTPS and performing regular SQL checks to employing two-factor authentication and having a policy that prohibits storing credit card data. Work with experts, and never leave anything to chance.
Always remember that failing to take security seriously in eCommerce won’t just make you lose customers; it ruins your chances of ever being trusted again. Don’t let it get to that point.
In a Nutshell,
If your business is all about success and being the best player in the field, you have to be cautious and avoid the aforementioned mistakes during your eCommerce web development project. Doing so will increase the likelihood of achieving your top business goals, such as customer retention and continued growth.
