Last updated - July 8, 2021
Humans tend to make snap judgments based on appearances alone. The phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover” sounds great in theory, but may of us don’t exactly live by this advice.
This is doubly true when it comes to the digital world. According to research performed by the Missouri University of Science and Technology, the average person needs less than a fifth of a second to form a first impression of a website.
In the blink of an eye, your site has the unenviable task of capturing users’ attention, presenting them with your brand’s core idea and personality, and showing your business in the best possible light.
Thankfully, a good web design company with lots of experience in the field will be able to create a website like this.
But how are you supposed to know if your current website needs an overhaul in the first place? Below, we’ll discuss several tell-tale signs that it’s time to make some changes.
You’re Not Converting Traffic into Sales
If your eCommerce store is pulling in lots of traffic, you’re on the right track. However, your work is not done yet. You must focus on converting all this traffic into sales.
Highly skilled ecommerce web designers will perform A/B testing to determine your website’s usability. They will also use tools like Google Analytics to discover any leaks in the conversion funnel. In short, this will identify the obstacles preventing casual visitors from becoming customers.
When the designers find these problems, they can implement the proper content solutions and boost your conversion rates.
Your Site Has a High Bounce Rate
If you’re seeing many visitors leaving your site (bouncing) immediately upon entering, it’s time to hire some experts to deal with the problem. A high bounce rate shows that your website is not doing its job of forming a good first impression or that users are finding it too difficult to navigate.
Whether the problem is the navigation or page layout, a redesign is the best way to rectify it. It might also be a good idea to take advantage of the opportunity and deal with other usability issues or update your branding.
Start by focusing on the most important pages, such as the landing page, checkout page and store page.
Adding New Products to Your Store or Updating Product Information Is Too Difficult
An eCommerce store is not your run-of-the-mill business website. While the latter can be static, with an update or two every so often, a store requires constant modification. Therefore, you shouldn’t have to call someone or spend a fortune any time you need something changed.
Focus on eCommerce designs with straightforward content management systems (CMS). These have user-friendly interfaces that let you add, modify and update products and categories without knowing anything about web design.
Loading Times Are Too Long
If a site takes too long to load, it will suffer from a high bounce rate. In general, people are not willing to wait for sites to load, especially if they have no prior connection with your brand. This means you are running the risk of losing many prospective customers.
If your loading times are running high, you should look into optimizing performance. The most common ways to do this include browser caching, shrinking image files, and optimizing content.
Your Site Is Not Properly Optimized for Mobile
In 2021, most of your traffic will come from mobile devices. Research done by Shopify back in 2014 showed that more than half of all ecommerce traffic comes from smartphones and tablets. As you can imagine, the number of smartphone internet users has only grown since.
This is why it is vital to employ responsive design. Regardless of the devices your customers use, a responsive website will give them the best experience. Any delay in switching over to a responsive website will cause more of your potential customers to run to the competition.
It Is Difficult to Navigate
As we mentioned earlier, poor navigation options cause users to leave your site before getting a good look at it. Even those who choose to stick around are less likely to return if they have trouble finding what they were looking for.
Hopefully, your campaigns will show results, you’ll do proper SEO and social media marketing, and your website will start getting many new visitors. But it would be best if you made it easy for these prospects to find your products by giving them a layout they are accustomed to.
This doesn’t mean you can’t be original. However, keep any experiments in a controlled environment until you’re sure they are ready for your potential customers.
Ensure that your store gives customers a multi-tiered navigation system, helping them find products easily. This can be tricky because you want your visitors to go through with the purchase as quickly as possible, but you also want to nudge them to keep exploring the site.
Product Information Is Too Generic or Confusing
Product descriptions can make or break your online store. Although you may think that the product’s quality will speak for itself, it’s not worth much unless your customers understand exactly what they are buying.
Make sure to provide clear and engaging product descriptions and help your audience know as much about your products as possible. Misleading, vague, and scanty descriptions make customers suspicious about the purchase.
That said, you shouldn’t make your product descriptions too complicated or lengthy either, as this can cause disengagement. As with most things in life, the trick is finding a balance.
How to write better product information?
Checkout Is Long and Complicated
Even though it is near the bottom of our list, this is one of the biggest problems that ecommerce stores face. Lengthy and complicated checkout processes are among the main reasons people choose to abandon their shopping carts in online stores.
In fact, this is the third most common reason for incomplete purchases, right after account creation and shipping costs.
Therefore, you must focus your website design on making the checkout process easy and straightforward. Make sure to keep things transparent as well by clearly displaying any additional taxes or shipping costs.
How to optimize WooCommerce checkout?
There Aren’t Enough Ways to Contact You
This might not seem as important for an eCommerce store as it is for a business website. After all, your customers are there to make purchases, not chat with you. However, customers will often want to know more about your return policies, for example.
It is always a good idea to provide an easy way for your customers to reach you, no matter what type of website you’re running. Display your phone number and email prominently, and, if possible, include a live chat option.
Aside from helping your customers reach you with questions, contact details build trust in your brand. Knowing they can reach you easily helps customers feel more secure and comfortable with their purchases.
