Don't disappoint your customers
What are some of the pitfalls to look out for? Put simply:
anything that disappoints your customers. Examples are listed
below.
Site Design & Build
- Difficulty navigating the site or finding the right
product
- Forcing users to register and forcing them to register to find
out shipping costs - at least give them a shipping calculator
up-front
- Not accepting the right payment methods or not being able to
accept international payment methods
- Your shop is too slow to use
- Complex user journey to get from browsing to payment
- Ensure that the technical components (e.g. cart) have been
evaluated to meet the requirements of your business
Security
- Do not store credit card information - it's not worth the risk.
If you have reoccurring payments use direct debit or contact the
customer each time - every contact is a sales opportunity.
- Ensure that appropriate security is in place for gift cards /
vouchers.
- To help to detect fraudulent behaviour and assist with customer
problems, log user interactions - particularly around payment,
whether successful or unsuccessful.
Content
- Ambiguous information
- Out-dated or incorrect information e.g. on inventory or
delivery time
- Don't make the rest of your website too interesting or the user
will browse instead of buy!
Process
- If orders are passed directly on to a supplier, make sure they
are actually capable of dealing with your anticipated volumes
- Know and abide by the laws of the jurisdictions that you
operate in - returns policy, information privacy, sales tax
etc
- Make sure all of your technical components and your business
processes are able to service anticipated volumes of enquiries and
sales.
- Interface with business systems to log orders and synchronise
inventory - otherwise you might be selling items online that have
already been sold in your physical shop
