You’ve heard it before: around 70% of people who visit your ecommerce store abandon their shopping cart. Even fewer will create a cart. Shoppers leave your site for a lot of reasons:
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Poor product image quality
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Not enough product images
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Limited product descriptions
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Lack of reviews that provide social proof
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Too many popups, widgets or announcement bars
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Too many clicks in the checkout process
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Poor mobile experience
Unfortunately, you can’t tackle everything today. You can (and should!) take a few small steps that will make a big difference. In this guide, we will help you think about the shopping experience from your customers’ point of view—and give you some immediate next steps to optimize the shopping experience.
Improve Your Product Images
Spice up your product pages with great images. Instead of just a flat image of your product alone in a white room by itself, create a “lifestyle” image of the product in the space where someone might use it—even better, show a picture of someone using it.
If you’re selling a coffee mug, pour in some coffee. Or have someone hold it with steam rising from the mug. You want your customers to be able to picture themselves using your product.
Next, make sure you have multiple images per product. People want to see the front and back of a shirt. They want close-ups of coffee mugs. They want to fully understand what they might be spending their hard-earned cash on. Don’t leave any questions unanswered.
Finally, ensure that product images are high-quality and optimized for mobile. Large images or not formatting images as PNGs will cause them to load slowly. Count to three out loud. Come on, do it. Could you imagine waiting three seconds for an image to load? Now, image bouncing to the next page and waiting three more seconds. You’d probably get frustrated and leave. Don’t let that happen to your customers!
NEXT STEP: Do a quick audit of your product images. How are the quality, quantity, and size of your pictures? You don’t have to solve everything today. Just start by documenting your opportunities for improvement.
Include Reviews for Social Proof
Speaking of improving product pages, let’s talk reviews. Every ecommerce store needs customer reviews for social proof.
Include a system for reviews on your ecommerce site. If you’re using a plug-in, make sure that it’s hooked up properly and recording reviews for specific products. Add calls to action on product pages, within confirmation pages and emails, or in receipts. Make it as easy as possible to leave reviews for specific products, and make the page easy to find.
Don’t have a review capture tool? Get one! We recommend Junip —they specialize in reviews for ecommerce brands.
When you’re collecting reviews, ask for written reviews. Words are more believable and helpful than star or number ratings. Ask people to write something they really enjoy about the product, or why they would recommend it to someone else. The worst they can do is not write anything.
It’s better to get a bad review you can respond to and learn from your customers—rather than an annoyed customer who doesn’t say anything. Responding to negative reviews is a great opportunity to show other customers that you care and provide great support.
We know it’s hard to believe. Check out these stats:
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97% of online shoppers say reviews influence their buying decisions ( Fan & Fuel ).
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92% of consumers will hesitate to buy something if it has no customer reviews at all ( Fan & Fuel ).
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73% of shoppers say written reviews make more of an impression on them than star or number ratings (V12).
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The average consumer reads 10 reviews before feeling able to trust a business ( BrightLocal ).
- Around 20 [and running up to 50] is the optimal number of reviews for a product to have to give consumers the confidence that it has been tried enough by enough people (Northwestern University).
NEXT STEP: Make sure you have the ability to collect product reviews. If you don’t, implement a system for reviews. This is the first step towards building more trust between you and your customers.
Optimize Your Checkout Experience
It’s easy to learn if your checkout experience is a good experience—pick up your phone and buy something from your store.
Purchase an item in incognito mode so you can get the full experience as a new customer. Here are some questions to ask yourself:
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Does everything load quickly?
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Are there popups or banners that get in the way of a good shopping experience?
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Am I able to add items to my cart easily?
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Can I navigate to and from my cart seamlessly?
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Once I start checking out, can I check out in five clicks or less?
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Are shipping, return, and customer support policies clearly defined during checkout?
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Am I able to opt into marketing communication during checkout?
NEXT STEP: A clean, simple checkout experience is key. 64% of ecommerce brands have a checkout process that is 5 steps or less. If it takes more than 5 steps, fix this today using the above questions to guide you.