Whether it is five minutes, two seconds, or fifteen minutes, visitors on your website will eventually leave. However, you shouldn't use this pseudo-philosophical line as a mantra for your marketing efforts. The goal is to keep these visitors on your site as long as possible. The longer the visit is, the more time a visitor has to look at your products and explore other parts of your website.
Still, you have to accept the fact that people abandon your website before buying. However, there are many reasons why people do that. Some of them should worry you, others are just a fact that you can’t change.
In this article, I’ll present 11 reasons why visitors abandon eCommerce websites without making a purchase.
1. Your Ads Don't Match Your Website
Pay per click ads is one of the most popular ways of increasing traffic. Your ad is a promise. People click it because they expect you to fulfill a promise that you give in an ad.
For example, someone types ‘skiing equipment’’ into Google and sees your ad, which says you offer the best skiing equipment. Sound good so the person clicks. However, your website directs them to images of skiing gear that doesn't match your ads, or even worse, the wrong page and displaying the wrong products.
The inconsistency will cause users to immediately leave your site. Now, you've left a bad impression for your visitors that may cause them to never return.
2. Unclear Navigation
ECommerce websites tend to have a complicated structure. You divide products into multiple categories and catalogs. It’s understandable - otherwise, people would get lost immediately.
However, if the order you implement is not logical to your visitors, then they will leave as well. The logical structure is especially important to people who enter your website through a product page. It should be easy for them to find their way to a category page if they decide to browse other products.
3. Unappealing Designs
You've probably spent a lot of time designing your website so that it’s nice and modern. If not, you should have.
Unfortunately, the truth is that you can't please everyone with your design. You are bound to have a people who aren't going to like the way your website looks.
If one out of 1000 person doesn't like your site, then it’s not a big issue. However, if 60% of visitors hate your design, you might want to work on redesigning your website.
Sometimes small changes can change the way visitors perceive your website and decide whether a person bounces off or stays on your website. You don't always have to completely alter the design of your site. When making changes to your site, try not to over-complicate the design. Remember: Keep it Simple Silly!
4. Lack of Contact Information
Some visitors might need your assistance before they make the commitment to purchase a product and becoming a customer.
Often times, they might want you to clarify the return policy or shipping costs. They might have questions that your FAQ section isn't able to answer.
If your contacts page or contact information is hard to find due to poor navigation or layout, then your customers may leave your site without making any purchases and buy from a competitor.
There are several ways for you to address this issue. Some websites have implemented live chats to provide quick customer service for their users. However, this isn't always the best option for businesses. Therefore, the easiest method is to create a "Contact Us" page and contact forms on your page to help users find your telephone or email.
5. Performance Issues
Who likes waiting? No one. This why your website needs to load quickly.
According to Kissmetrics, 47% of customers expect your website to load in 2 seconds or less.
Optimizing the performance takes many forms, from compressing images to using cache.
Luckily, it sounds more complicated than it actually is. If you run your website on a popular platform, like WordPress or Shopify, you’ll easily find free plugins that will do it safely for you.
There are different ways to improve the speed of your website. You can reduce server response time, enable compression, minify resources, and more. What's great is that speeding up your website can improve your conversions by 7%.
6. Lack of Trust
People only buy from people and companies they trust. Not a surprise, especially when you're handling their money. If you are a well-established brand with lots of positive reviews online, chances are, people will trust you more already. However, if you're a new business, customers and visitors may be more hesitant in making a purchase from your site.
To build trust with your visitors, you can add testimonials, trust logos, and highlight security certificates on your website. By including trust logos and certificates, it allows visitors to know that their information is being protected when they are filling in sensitive information through your website.
Another important factor that creates or ruins trust is being honest about any additional costs that may be associated with their purchase. Visitors are afraid of purchasing when they don’t know how much they will pay for shipping or if there are additional charges. Therefore, you want to make the information accessible and easy to find.
7. Take Away all the Distractions
In order to encourage visitors to become buyers, eCommerce websites tend to place pop-ups and overlays to grab the visitors' attention and offer discounts.
Studies show that the overall effect of using pop-ups is positive, but some people simply hate them and might leave your website if they see anything like this.
If you want to use pop-ups, find alternative ways to make it less intrusive. When you're too aggressive with the pop-ups, it can become distracting and cause visitors to leave your website.
Many websites choose to implement a pop-up that appears when visitors initially visit a site. This pop up is often used to encourage visitors to sign up for their newsletter or email list. If they fill out their information, it gives you an opportunity to reconnect with them via email.
8. Low-Quality Photos and Product Descriptions
Why do people even shop in brick and mortar stores? Buying online takes less time, you can do it in the middle of the night and it's extremely convenient!
Well, people want to know what they are buying. Maybe it’s not so important for electronic gadgets because you can research the information online. However, products like clothing and shoes are a different story. Often times, consumers want to try them on to ensure the fitting is correct.
This is why you should provide useful information on your website to assure your customers that they’ll be satisfied with their choice. When you provide them with a detailed description of the products, it helps them to better make their decision. In addition, it will prevent them from any surprises when they receive the product.
Tip: you can shoot great pictures of your product yourself without spending a fortune!
9. It's Not Responsive!
Mobile is everything now. People are constantly on their mobile devices searching for information. In fact, they account for over 50% of traffic.
If your website isn’t responsive and doesn’t look good on mobile devices, you lose a big opportunity. You shouldn’t expect high conversion rates from mobile traffic because consumers are still making many of their purchases through a desktop browser. However, their first touch point with your business is often through a mobile device.
When consumers are doing research through their mobile devices, it is best to have a mobile or responsive website that can provide them with a positive user experience. This way, they will be more inclined to continue their purchase through a desktop browser.
10. You Don’t Offer Products Visitors are Looking for
People often visit your website looking for a certain product. If you don’t offer it, they leave.
Sometimes, it might be worth it to find out what it is that your customers are actually looking for. Sometimes, if it fits with your business, you can offer the product and increase conversions.
So, how will you know what your visitors are looking for? Don’t be shy and ask them! Run a poll on your website or send out questionnaires. The collected answers will show you what people are expecting when they visit your site. Take a look at this case study to learn how beneficial it can be.
11. No Intent to Buy
Finally, visitors leave your site because they only visited out of curiosity.
They heard about you through the grapevines and decided to visit. These visitors aren't looking to make any purchases and are just here to browse around.
Although they don't have the intention to purchase right now, they may be interested in your products or services in the future. You can implement retargeting strategies to guide them back to your website. This will increase brand recall and awareness for you business. Don’t let people forget your website and show them relevant ads. A well-planned and managed campaign can help you create or maintain buying intent after the person leaves your website.
As you can see, reasons for abandoning your website varies from those related to the performance of the website, through its design to characteristics and intent of people who visit your website. It’s worth finding out the reasons behind visitors leaving your site.
