Mistakes to Avoid during eCommerce Website Development

With the increase in the level of competition on the web, it has become more challenging to design and develop a successful eCommerce site. And here are the most common eCommerce website development mistakes developers must avoid.

Online selling and buying have gone more viable than ever before. Having an eCommerce site lets business owners tap into faraway markets in times of social distancing and this pandemic situation and gives the shoppers a much safer way to easily buy whatever they need or want. It also helps businesses to cut down the costs significantly. However, now you need to understand and remember that almost every business has gone online and you have to make sure that your online shop is much better than what’s already there on the web. Right from designing to development, you have to be very careful and make sure no mistakes are made during the entire eCommerce website development process so that your potential customers are not driven away.

So, here are the mistakes the eCommerce developers must avoid to ensure to offer a great shopping experience to the customers and to stay on top of the competitors on the SERPs.

Complicated and time-consuming checkout process:

Having a complicated and lengthy checkout process is one of the main reasons why shoppers tend to abandon the cart and leave the store. This also reduces the conversion rate. This makes it essential to make sure once the visitors have picked their required products, they can easily purchase with just a few clicks and without much hassle. The developer’s and designer’s responsibility is to make the checkout process as simple and quick as possible. A single-page checkout is preferred the most by the buyers.

Lack of enough shipping options:

There are many times when customers look for more convenient shipping options. This makes it important to include enough variety of shipping choices in terms of price and delivery time. It can be inconvenient for the customers if they find only one or two shipping options or if the shipping costs are the same or too high as compared to the product they are buying. Providing them with more shipping options will increase the chances of more customers buying from the store at their convenience.

Insufficient product descriptions:

Providing clear and sufficient descriptions or details about the products is important. Cover all the selling points and benefits of the products you are displaying. The more clear the information or product description, the better the customers will understand the product, and more will be the chances of buying the product. A clear product description also works as the answer to all the questions the customers may have in their minds about the products. Include things like the product dimensions, other aspects like the color, material, benefits, price, warranty if any, etc., in the descriptions.

Poor sorting, searching, and filtering options:

Not including enough sorting, searching, and filtering options is a big mistake. The customers must be given more of these options to allow them to easily narrow down their search and find the exact product they have been looking for more quickly and effortlessly.

Not using high-quality images:

Not using top-quality images is a big mistake. Do you know, one of the biggest driving forces of an attractive eCommerce site is the high-definition images or graphics used? As the customers cannot physically touch and feel the products, the images must be of the best quality to give the shoppers a clear idea about what the products actually look like. The zoom-out option must also be there, but even after zooming out, the product images don’t get blurred.

Apart from these, there are a few more common mistakes eCommerce web developers often tend to make like:

Offering poor customer service by not including easy and quick chat and other communication options.

A complex navigation by making the UI more complicated, confusing, and cluttered with too many elements.

Not making the site mobile-friendly as today most of the online shoppers use their mobile phones for shopping. And,

Slow site loading time. A customer will not wait for more than 2 to 3 seconds for the page to get loaded and most of the developers often ignore this point.

Today, for every eCommerce business, having an innovative and customer-driven website is a must. After all, the online portal is the main source of revenue and sales. And this again makes it imperative for the developers to avoid all the mistakes outlined above and build the website flawlessly and offer a world-class experience to the online shoppers out there.

Johan Smith is a well-versed and proficient eCommerce web developer associated with a top-rated and reliable eCommerce website development company in Australia, GetAProgrammer. The author has written this article to help developers identify and avoid certain mistakes to end up with competitive online store development.

Kimberley Black is an App Development expert and currently a senior tech consultant with GetAProgrammer.