Nothing is perfect and the same goes for your online store. No matter how much you plan and how meticulous you are in executing your plan, there will be some things you look over.
While the mistakes you may have overlooked aren’t clearly visible to you, your customers tend to see these mistakes and when they interrupt the great customer experience they have come to expect from online stores it becomes an ecommerce pain point.
In this article, I will be addressing five of these pain points and will also be sharing some solutions I know can help in solving them.
What Are eCommerce Customer Pain Points?
E-commerce pain points are problems or inconveniences your customers (new or old) experience when they interact with your e-commerce store.
They can be a huge problem for you as they prevent your customers from having an amazing experience.
Anything from difficulty finding products on your site to poor customer service can be a pain point.
E-commerce pain points should not be confused with challenges faced in e-commerce enablement. The former majorly affects the customers while the latter is more focused on the business person i.e. you
Just see it like this, if it can annoy your customers to the point they just leave your website without making a purchase or returning the product they purchased, it is an e-commerce pain point.
The dangerous thing about these pain points is that some of them are not easy for you to identify but your customers will immediately notice them. All you will see is your customers abandoning their carts on your website and as many as 69% of customers do this.
Since your goal is to run a profitable business, finding solutions is paramount
5 Common Ecommerce Pain Points And Their Solutions
Pain Point #1: Poor Product Searching Capabilities
With the number of targeted ads and machine learning (ML) driven suggestions customers face online per day, an expectation has been created in them that you as the business person should know what they as the customer want i.e. read their mind.
You will agree with me that reading minds is impossible but despite that, there are things you can do to at least make their search easier.
1.As you build your website, ensure it clearly shows what your store is all about, that is, what kind of products you sell. That way your customers will know they are in the right place.
2.Include search functionality in your store website. Allow your customers to make searches based on various parameters such as brand, product name, manufacturer, the purpose of the product, and if possible part number.
3.Include filters in your search bar. This will allow your users to narrow their search down and make the whole search process easier.
4.With the recent advancements in A.I. technologies, you can use them to improve your search bar’s functionality.
Pain Point #2: Low Number of Payment Options & Bad Checkout Experience
I am putting these two pain points together because while they might seem like two separate processes to you as the business owner, to your customers payment and checkout pretty much happen at the same time.
When it comes to paying for products on an online store, nothing turns off customers more than being restricted to a certain payment option or having to endure a long, unneeded checkout process which usually involves creating an account.
In a survey conducted by the Baymard Institute, it was found that 25% of customers abandoned their carts because the site wanted them to create an account before they could pay.
Another 18% abandoned their cart because of the website’s long and complicated checkout process.
And finally, 11% abandoned theirs because there were not enough payment methods available at checkout.
You need to understand that for a first-time customer, coming to your store is usually to test it and see if the experience is worth coming back. To them, creating an account during their first contact with your store is not a plan of theirs.
So insisting they create an account before purchase can send them running.
Also, when it comes to payment, there are a variety of options that exist in today’s world that your customers might be using.
Apart from the traditional payment methods like using debit and credit cards, other options like Stripe, PayPal, Payoneer, and Square exist.
Some might even want to use cryptocurrency to pay or pay with cash upon delivery.
Now some of these options might not be for you but, it is best to address these pain points to the best of your ability.
Let us see some solutions to this pain point:
Provide Multiple Payment Options
This should be an obvious one; by offering a variety of payment options, your customers will be able to pay using the ones they have and might even be able to choose which will be beneficial to them. Some options you can include are Apple Pay, Skrill, Google Pay, and the ones I listed above.
Simplify the Checkout Process
You may want to glean as much information as you can from your customers but the checkout stage is not the place to do so.
Make this process as quick and smooth as possible. Your goal at this point is to get your customer to pay as fast as possible, remove any distractions that could make them leave your store to search for something or get tired and abandon their cart.
Allow Your Customers To Checkout As Guests
Give your customers the chance to buy from your store without signing up. As I said earlier, the customer might just be giving your online store a trial and may not be ready to register.
Your best chance at retaining such a customer is to allow them to experience your store’s uniqueness as a guest. You can direct the customer to an appreciation page that also includes a link to the sign-up page.
Pain Point #3: Poor Description Of Product
Let’s say a potential customer comes up to your online store in search of a particular product but cannot find it, not because you don’t have it on display but because they cannot recognize it from the description and images you attached to it.
Or a customer buys a product from your store based on the description you put on the product.
Upon delivery, they discover that the product does not perform as fantastically as you may have painted it to. As a result, they end up returning the product.
In both scenarios, the customer is unhappy and you have lost a sale.
Bad product content and description are major and common pain points in the e-commerce industry.
Up to 30% of online shoppers state that they have abandoned their carts due to terrible product descriptions.
64% of customers have also been reported to have returned a product they bought from an online store due to inaccurate product content.
But probably the most important statistic regarding product descriptions is that 76% of customers look for descriptions of the product, images, and reviews before making an online purchase.
All these stats show just how much effort you need to put into your product content.
Let us see what you can do to alleviate this pain point.
Write Clear and Concise Product Descriptions
When writing your productions, ensure you focus on key features or benefits of the product. Make sure the message is clear and cannot be construed in a different way.
It also includes things like the product’s dimensions, weight, materials, and care instructions.
As you write, remember that your customers cannot observe and feel the products firsthand before purchasing so it is whatever you provide as a description that they can use to judge if they would buy or not.
So ensure you write without overhyping the product beyond what it truly offers.
Do not include incorrect information!
Use media
Images and videos are a great way to show the customer what they will be buying.
Use clear, well-lit product photos and well-recorded videos taken from multiple angles to show the customer how it looks.
You can even go a step further and take videos and photos of the product being used in various situations to help the customers visualize how the product functions better.
You can also take photos and videos of the product beside other common household items to give customers a sense of how large the product is.
Include Reviews
What better way is there to decide on whether to buy a product than seeing the reviews and ratings of other people who have purchased it already?
Pain Point #4: Bad Customer Service & Support
Whatever business you venture into, you will agree with me that providing impeccable customer service is critical to retaining customers and building brand loyalty. Yet, bad customer service is still a major pain point in a lot of online stores.
This pain point is so critical not just because you are losing one customer, but it also extends to tarnishing your brand image.
When your customers say good things about your store and leave great reviews, more customers get attracted to your business. In fact, stats show that 20-50% of all purchase decisions are influenced by word-of-mouth.
Let us see what you can do to alleviate this pain point:
- Prioritize proper customer service.
- Provide instant responses through live chats that are integrated into your websites. This may require that you hire a customer support manager once your customer base grows to a point.
- You can also use chatbots to answer the inquiries of customers. Just preload answers onto the chatbots that would get triggered once certain keywords are passed into it.
Social media is another great way to provide support for customers. Not only can they reach out to you through direct messages, but you can also post content that answers frequently asked questions.
This can be helpful when you are not available to attend to customers immediately.
Pain Point #5: Issues With Business Website
Slow-loading websites, websites with broken links, and websites with bad design can be frustrating for customers. If your website has a lot of ads too, it can get annoying for your customers.
Some things you can do to alleviate this pain point:
- Optimizing images and videos: Images and videos are the most common elements that slow down a website, as they take up a lot of space and resources.
Therefore, it is important to optimize them by resizing, cropping, compressing, and using the right format. For example, JPEG is better than PNG for photos, and WebP is better than both for web images.
- Test and monitor website speed: Testing and monitoring website speed is essential to identify and fix any issues that may affect the website’s performance.
There are many tools and services that can help measure and analyze website speed, such as Google PageSpeed Insights, and GTmetrix.
Conclusion
Those are pretty much the major e-commerce pain points you may have to face and their solutions.
From this article, you have seen how these pain points can have a negative effect on your online store and your brand. This means that you need to take immediate action to act on these issues.
As added advice, you need to learn to listen to your customers. The customers are more likely to know what pain points they are facing so they are in the best position to provide feedback on where you should take action.
Globallyfulfill can also help you overcome some other challenges you may face as an e-commerce business person. From product sourcing to warehousing to on-time delivery, they provide a wide range of services.
