Bad online shopping experiences would prompt your customers to leave the site, and never come back. Hence online retailers need to deal with practices and activities that kill sales and growth.
eCommerce development platforms like Magento solve these problems with a diverse array of features and functionalities. Many businesses prefer to hire Magento experts to analyze requirements and develop an online store accordingly.
Let's discuss the main factors affecting the sales and growth of online retailers.
The success and failure of an online transaction ultimately depend on whether or not the buyer completes the checkout. It is, therefore, extremely important to create a seamless checkout experience. The visitors reaching checkout are the ones who've decided to buy something from your online store. You don't want to lose them at any cost, do you?
Services like Magento eCommerce store development enable you to own an online store that provides a completely frictionless shopping experience. You need to follow a strategic process to make sure that visitors always get the desired experience on your eCommerce website.
Keep a testing process in place to monitor and analyze how buyers' behavior changes due to various factors. For example, if you make any modification on the site, you need to how it impacts the visitors. Reduce the number of steps in checkout. Buyers don't like to go through multiple steps before they can place an order.
Most buyers would make an online payment while purchasing an item. Make sure that they have multiple payment gateways to choose from. It's suggested to have multiple digital wallet alternatives along with options for card payment.
2. Bad mobile experience
A significant percentage of your customers would purchase things using a smartphone. This percentage is often likely to be higher than purchases made from a PC. Always make sure that your website is perfectly mobile-optimized and user-friendly. Mobile-friendly online stores have a higher conversation rate. Many businesses are even adopting a mobile-first strategy when it comes to online retail.
3. Lack of sales tax management
Sales tax eats away a large portion of your profits. If you sell products that fall into the high sales tax goods, you need to have a stringent sales-tax-compliance and filing process. The best way is to automate the tax calculation and reporting system. Numerous software solutions are available for sales tax automation. Automated sales tax solutions could increase your operating efficiency while saving a significant amount of costs hiring accountants.
4. Inefficient payment processing
A complex checkout process is responsible for a significant amount of shopping cart abandonment worldwide. Online retailers should carefully monitor payment processing. Automate the entire payment process to make things simpler and more efficient. Automated payment processing drastically reduces cart abandonment by increasing smoothness and speed across devices.
To stay ahead in the competition, always upgrade your payment processing solutions. Consider implementing the advanced capabilities offered by a payment gateway to boost efficiency and sales.
5. Lack of flexible payment options
Offer your customers flexible plans like pay-over-time to build customer confidence and loyalty. It also boosts customer satisfaction and cart conversion rates. Millennials and Gen Z shoppers prefer a completely transparent payment process. Having transparency and flexibility can greatly help you to drive sales. You should also consider integrating the payment gateway and mobile payment apps. Payment methods like Amazon Pay, PayPal & Paytm will increase the chances of cart conversions.
6. Inconsistent customer experience across channels
Consumers today are more aware and demanding than ever. Providing them an omnichannel experience has become a pressing need. A growing number of retailers are offering added services like buy online pick up in-store. Trends like these are making the omnichannel experience a more important part of online retailing. Inventory management is critical to maintaining an effective omnichannel sales process. Unifying your online and offline payment channels (if feasible) would be a strategic step towards long-term growth.
7. Absence of an effective growth strategy
While dealing with all these obstacles to online sales, you should always keep a growth strategy in mind. Successful online retailers make a well-researched growth strategy before entering a new market. Analyze the market conditions, trends, and demands there. Based on these findings, create a tailored marketing strategy. If you are planning to enter an international market, consider offering relevant payment channels according to the specific country. Besides, get familiar with the country's regulations, especially the tax laws. Seek legal advice in that country, if the need arises.
In all, retailers need to take a comprehensive management approach to deal with the factors that kill online sales. Develop a frictionless checkout process. You may consider to hire Magento developer for building a feature-rich online store. Be careful about what kind of mobile experience your online store provides.
Bad experiences can prompt visitors to turn away and never come back. Talking about customer experience, payment processing is also crucial. Automated payment processing is the best way to increase efficiency at a minimal cost. Magento eCommerce store development and similar services have made it easy for businesses to enable efficient online stores.