Ecommerce Pro-Tip: Clutter Kills Conversions
Have you ever walked into a department store to find clothes strewn about and clutter everywhere? It probably turned you off to shopping there. The same is true for online stores. Sure, virtual storefronts won’t be littered with crumpled jeans or wrinkled T-shirts, but they could be crowded with advertisements, grainy images and distracting design elements. No matter how amazing your products are, visitors aren’t likely to buy from your site if it is cluttered and poorly designed.
In other words, clutter kills conversions.
Luckily, it’s pretty easy to create a beautiful ecommerce site if you know what to include and what to avoid. Below are a few tips to get you started.
Poorly Designed Website
If your website is rough on the eyes, customers will probably bounce as soon as they see it. Shoddy design elements include low-definition product images, gaudy color combinations, flashing gifs and anything else screaming early 1990s.
Instead, make it a point to follow good design principles when creating your e-commerce store. Use a maximum of three accent colors, employ a professional logo on your site along with high-definition images.
Pro Tip: Use an e-commerce builder, like Shopify, to create an attractive website quickly and easily.
Too Many Choices
Offering a variety of products is a great idea for any e-commerce site, but posting too many products on your homepage seems desperate. Give your merchandise space to breathe on your site.
If you want to promote a flash sale or product release, make it the most prominent item on your homepage. When you start crowding the page with top items, blog posts, banner images and more, you are hurting your chances for conversion.
Let only one or two items stand in the spotlight.
On-Page Advertisements
Sometimes websites suffer from low profitability, so they begin to accept paid advertisements from third-party sites. While this is a good idea for struggling bloggers, it’s not ideal for e-commerce vendors.
Advertisements are attention grabbing by their very nature, which means visitors are more likely to miss or ignore your products. Advertisements can also be annoying – pop-ups, banner ads, full-page displays, auto play video with sound – who has time for that? Especially when these ads slow down the load time of your page.
Do yourself and your customers a favor; nix on-page ads.
Complicated Checkout Pages
Clutter kills conversions, especially on checkout pages. According to research conducted by the Baymard Institute, 27 percent of cart abandonment is due to a lengthy or complicated checkout process. The message is clear. Clean up your checkout page or suffer the consequences.
Start by reducing the whole checkout process to no more than two or three pages: financial information, delivery information, confirm. Display the customer’s progress to keep them invested in the process. Finally, remove any obstacles to check out including “you might also like” or coupon codes. While these are a good idea, in theory, they can stymie shoppers from sealing the deal. Save them until after the transaction has been completed.
Hiding Important Pages
A chaotic website can often obscure important pages or elements necessary for quality customer service. When customers have to wonder where your menu bar or search field is located you have a problem. Is your About Us page and contact information easy to locate? Are your FAQ and customer service pages readily discernable? Your visitors should never have to look for these elements. Make sure they’re immediately apparent to anyone visiting your site.
Stagnation
Last but not least, remember to keep your website fresh and up to date. While the above tips are good practices, web design evolves over time and shoppers might be accustomed to the new way of doing things. Stay abreast of the latest developments in web design. Your customers will appreciate it and don’t forget—clutter kills conversions.
