12 Reasons Nobody Is Buying From Your Online Store

If you are a new dropshipping business owner or maybe, you are a seasoned ecommerce store owner, there’s still a high chance that both of you share the same goal; boost your sales.

Sadly, there are some mistakes that both seasoned and new ecommerce owners make that affect your sales negatively. So, we are going to share some of the best tips and solutions to your problems. Here are the top reasons why people are not buying from your online store and how to fix them.

1. Get Rid of Distracting Pop-ups on Your Online Store

Having pop-ups popping everywhere on your online store is a great way to frustrate your visitors and turn them away from buying anything. If you have an email subscription form, some kind of push notification, and any other pop-ups just flashing all over the screen then it’s very likely the visitor will just leave.

Especially, the visitors on mobile devices will close the website instead of the notifications/pop-ups because that’s easier on smaller screens.  If you really want a pop-up on your store then make sure that you only have one. To be honest, pop-ups aren’t as effective any longer. So, always keep an eye out on your pop-up’s analytics, see if it’s working as desired or not.

If the pop-up is supposed to collect emails, then you should always track the conversion rate for that specific pop-up to see if it’s better than the alternative approach. If it does convert better then keep it, and if it doesn’t then you can do away with the little distraction.

2. Make Your Checkout Process As Simple As Possible

Lengthy and complex checkout process on ecommerce websites is one of the main factors contributing to cart abandonment. Customers are never going to put up with endless forms to fill. Online shopping is often impulsive, and having a plethora of steps in your checkout can pretty much cancel out the spontaneity of online shopping which leads to you losing precious sales and customers.

Here are the things that you should keep in mind when designing the checkout process for your online store:

• Allow guest checkouts: People really hate signing up for accounts to make a purchase. For that, you can provide them with a simple guest checkout option to make it easier for them to buy from your store.
• Limit the checkout process: Make sure that your checkout process comprises of as few steps as possible. Stick to the basics like Shipping/Billing, Order review, Payment, and order placement.
• Progress indicator: Adding a progress indicator at the top of the page to show your customers how many steps are left in the checkout can also improve the conversion rate on your store.

Also, check the One-Page Checkout process to see if that works for your online store.

3. Say No to Broad Targeting on Your Store’s Ads

So, you get a lot of traffic, but nobody buys anything, right? We see that happen a lot in new stores. It mostly happens because newbies try to target everyone and anyone with your Facebook ads. If your niche is too broad, then chances are you won’t be selling much to anyone.

There’s nothing wrong with selling t-shirts on our online store, but there’s a high chance that if you aren’t an already established t-shirt store, you aren’t going to rank much high in the search engines. A T-shirt is a very competitive term, and the brand’s like Macy’s, Cafepress, etc. dominate this term.

What you should do is get rid of the broad targeting and focus on laser targeting your audience. How about instead of t-shirts, you target niches like Gaming t-shirts, vintage t-shirts, etc.

This allows you to target customers that are specifically looking for the products that you are selling which increases your conversion rate easily. Use tools like Facebook Audience Insights to find laser focused buyers for your niche and how to narrow it all down.

4. Limited Number of Payment Methods

When your customers reach the payment page, the only thing that can turn them off of completing the purchase is the lack of their desired payment option. You need to make sure that you offer all the popular payment options on your online store.

Credit/Debit cards are one of the most common options, but in today’s world, numerous other online payment options make purchasing easy. The most popular payment methods are PayPal and Stripe for ecommerce. Finally, mobile payment options like Apple Pay and Google Wallet are also gaining traction among the younger generation.

So, you need to take a look at your online store and see if you are providing your customers with plenty of payment options if not, then you need to integrate as many payment options as possible.

5. No Retargeting/Abandoned Cart Recovery Funnels

Retargeting is an intelligent method to use all the data you collect about your visitors and turn them into customers. In a nutshell, retargeting is highly effective if done right. It lets you match known customer behavior to specific marketing campaigns.

Picture credit: Rejoiner.com

Check out our article on email marketing strategies featuring email marketing guru Israa Alrawi here.

If a customer visits your store and browses all the vintage shirt categories or product pages, but goes away without buying anything. Retargeting will let you target that visitor on other platforms like (Facebook, Google, etc.) and show them ads related to the products/categories they were browsing on your store. This can boost your ad response rate by a whopping 400%.

Abandoned Cart recovery is also another form of retargeting, but this time instead of targeting visitors, you are actually targeting warm-leads who did put items in their shopping carts but abandoned the carts without making any purchases. You retarget these cart-abandoners by sending them targeted emails. You can incentivize the process by providing them with a coupon/discount on their cart, so they end up completing the purchase process.

6. Unclear Shipping and Refund Policies

A quality UX/UI relies on clear and active communication between the ecommerce website and their customers. Before they finalize a purchase, customers will want to check out your store’s return and shipping policies.

Picture credit: returnrefundpolicytemplate.com

It’s essential to set up clear and straightforward shipping, returns, FAQ, payment, and Customer support pages on your online store. These pages provide that your online store is quite trusted.

Clear shipping and returns policies provide your customers with the credibility and trust they require to finalize the purchase on your online store. These policies show your customers that you are a credible store with clearly laid-out policies about your system.

7. No Social Proof at All

Nobody trusts your business. Visitors are not life-long friends who are going to trust you with their money, and even friends don’t do that anymore. So, you have to gain their trust, earn it, to be honest. You need to do something that proves you’re not just trying to rip your customers off. You need to show that you are better than others and you will not disappoint the customers.

Picture credit: Socialmediaexaminer.com

Social proof lets you gain trust. When your visitors see positive testimonials and reviews from other customers, they instantly think that this store is legit because others are satisfied. So, you need to actively inspire your customers to share their positive feedback, testimonials, stories, etc. It’s a known fact that people trust other people more than they trust brands, so urge your customers to leave positive reviews on your store.

8. Incomplete Display of The Cost and Hidden Fees

You know what customers hate the most? When they select all the product they want, add them to the cart, and complete every step only to realize on the checkout that the final amount after adding hidden fees is more than what they expected.

Source: Slideshare

If you don’t show all your extra charges on the cart review page, then your customers are definitely going to abandon those carts once they get to the extra charges. So, if you charge extra shipping or VAT or any other fee then be upfront about it and let them know right when they are reviewing their carts. This way they will know if they want to go ahead with the purchase or not. Hiding any charges until the last step is a great way to turn off your customers completely from purchasing on your store.

9. Setting Prices Without Analyzing The Market and Customer Perception

Sadly, not everybody shares the same perception as you do for the value and quality of your offerings. Also, nobody is going to appreciate the pricing model you have set for your products. Everyone prefers a different price, so you need to come up with the price tag that sits well with most of your audience. You can do that by using:

• Price Model Adjustment: Check out the prices used by your competitors. This should give you a general idea of what the average price is in your industry. You can then set your prices according to the industry standards, or even undercut your competition.
• Perception Analysis: You can also use the trial and error method to see what your customers like and what they don’t appreciate. Test different price tags on your products to see which ones sell better and use that data to set the prices of your products.

10. Your Call to Action is Plain Boring

Most newbie store owners don’t realize this, but if your CTA (Call to action) is boring or not attention grabbing then you will see a drop in the conversion rate. People love it when you grab their attention and in order to make them buy your products, you need to make sure that your CTA buttons pop-out.

You need to use vibrant colors on your CTA buttons that don’t get mixed with your store’s background. The colors should be vibrant and compliment your store’s background to make it aesthetically attractive as well. Also, add the CTA buttons right at the top beside the product image/description.

11. Not Using Product Videos at All

According to various stats, people who watch product videos are 80% more likely to buy the product after watching its video. However, videos are not easy or cheap to make, so if you can’t afford to make a video then you can do without them.

If you can actually afford to put up videos for your products then you should at least put videos for your popular products. It’s a simple and easy way to boost your conversion rate without having to resort to any other shenanigans.

12. Not Using Any Trust Badges or Guarantees

Another reason why people are not buying from your online store is the lack of security. Customers are trusting you with their most sensitive information including credit card/payment information and personal details, so they expect you to keep them safe and secure at all times.

Most customers may not even complete their purchase if they are worried about the security. So, try to include SSL certificates to your website and add security badges to the store as well. Also, make sure that when you use badges, you’re using recognizable badges like “Norton secure”, etc.

Conclusion

It’s tough to cover and fix every possible issue/problem that might turn off your customers, but you should always strive to do as much as possible. It’s alright to miss a couple now and then, but the most crucial thing is your willingness to create the smoothest, most pleasurable, and streamlined shopping experience for your online customers.