Your Site’s Design Could Mean a Drop in Sales

web-designWhile retailers are obsessing over how to avoid cart abandonment, they might want to start looking at their home and product pages first in order to decrease early abandoners, according to a recent blog post from ClickZ.

When first entering your site, according to ClickZ, many of the visitors will go directly to your search bar. If a visitor can’t find something they want when using that feature, before anything has even been placed into the cart, they will click out of your site and head somewhere else to buy.

This is why, according to ClickZ, “a robust on-site search functionality can make or break a significant part of the visitor experience.”

If you have tested and analyzed your queries from visitor searches, you probably have a good understanding of what perspective buyers are looking for. So, for on-site search terms of more popular queries, insert a “featured” result to help them find what they need quicker, above your site’s on-site search results, ClickZ recommends.

But, if you are not keeping track of what visitors are looking for, you better start doing so.

Sometimes a part of the search process includes clicking the drop down tabs on the homepage. This could be anything from “Footwear” to “Men’s” or “Kitchen,” depending on the merchandise you sell. The mistake many retailers make with these drop down menus, according to ClickZ, is that tabs tend to get overloaded with options.

Omit less popular inventory from drop down menus, ClickZ states, because if a visitor doesn’t find what they are looking for right from the start “they’ll just look elsewhere.”

Another major factor in the successfulness of your site design is if your customers feel safe to shop there. “By default, visitors do not give away trust freely, and the bar is even higher for ecommerce, where bad decisions can be costly and immediately noticeable,” ClickZ states.

This is why it is imperative to put trust symbols throughout your site. While most marketers end up placing trustmark symbols at the bottom of their pages, ClickZ states that “by default, many seem to put these important trust symbols in the footer, giving them about as much weight as their copyright symbol, where few consumers will look.”

It’s not enough to just have an image of the security features you use on your site. According to ClickZ, “new visitors should see your trust symbols when they first arrive on your site (without having to scroll), and also in key positions throughout the purchase process, especially on the page that asks for credit card or payment information.”

While ClickZ admits that none of these tips will magically fix your site, they will help you understand what works and what doesn’t and create a much more buyer friendly environment.