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View Full Version : Common Mistakes in Ecommerce Design



vangogh
10-09-2009, 01:59 AM
I found a pretty good post at Smashing Magazine, 15 Common Mistakes in E-Commerce Design (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/10/08/15-common-mistakes-in-e-commerce-design-and-how-to-avoid-them/), that's definitely worth a read if you own an ecommerce site.

I won't list all the mistakes, but here are a couple.

1. A lack of detailed product information - This one always gets to me, because when I see a lack of information it comes across that the site owner was being lazy. I know it takes a long time to write product descriptions and add all that extra information, but if you can't take the time to tell me about the product why should I take out my credit card?

7. Tiny Product Images - I can't touch the product and examine it. Let me at least see it. Your description is important, but that image is worth a whole lot of words. Make sure you have images big enough to let me really see the product.

Those are my thoughts next to the mistakes. The author of the article will give you his along with 13 other common mistakes.

What mistakes do you commonly see on ecommerce sites?

Paper Shredder Clay
10-09-2009, 10:49 AM
I totally agree. When I surf ebay, if I don't see an image, I forget it. There is no reason nowadays not to have a good size image on your site or listing. Heck, I've used my iPhone to shoot an image and photo shop the object out of the background to use in a site. No one can tell that I didn't use a fancy digital SLR camera to take the shot.

vangogh
10-09-2009, 11:50 AM
I think too many people just grab any shopping cart program and add the minimal info they can about their products and then wonder why no one every buys anything. The if you build it they will buy thinking prevails.

Most of the shopping cart sites I come across online are so bad I couldn't even imagine buying anything from them.

KristineS
10-09-2009, 12:43 PM
One of the ones that I see a lot is inadequate or hard to find contact information. Same goes for policies, like return policies. I know I won't buy from anywhere that doesn't tell me up front what will happen if I return something. I also want to know how to get in touch with the company if I have a problem.

That seems pretty basic to me, but it is something a lot of first time site builders forget.

billbenson
10-09-2009, 02:32 PM
Images aren't always that easy. My manufacturer drop ships and only has images for about 60 % of their products. I have 2000 products on the site. Putting a generic image isn't that great of an idea as the user wants to know what it looks like. Descriptions from the manufacturer are lousy as well. Without better information, its hard to put together an attractive site.

As far as contact information, I only have email and telephone contacts on there. I work out of my house and I don't want people Googling me. The only people that ask for the address are purchasing people who need to enter me into their system. It probably varies depending on the product, buy I don't think I have ever lost and order because of the lack of address information.

vangogh
10-09-2009, 06:39 PM
You do sell a very specific product Bill, so the rules may be different for your site. I realize you have to rely on the manufacturer for images, but could you add to their descriptions or rewrite them in any way. Some of what the article meant by providing more information was less about the description and more about making sure to include all sizes and colors and things like that. The description talk was mine.

Still couldn't you offer more of a description than the manufacturer gives you? You shouldn't be using the same thing as them anyway.

I think you're fine with that contact information. I'd say the more contact info you give the more trust you get back, but I think email and phone are the most important to include. The phone number is probably the one thing that helps most to establish trust.

Patrysha
10-09-2009, 08:06 PM
I think that too many business owners overlook in e-commerce is that they have to overcome the lack of touch, feel, smell and ambience with one simple image. They owe it to their sales to invest in a photographer or invest in the learning and equipment to do a professional quality job themselves (even if it is a cell phone and photoshop - or GIMP if you're cash-strapped). I personally find altering photos to be painstaking and boring work, I'd rather work with a good original shot and focus on the words, but then I love writing descriptions...not so great with graphics. (Passable but not professional)

billbenson
10-10-2009, 01:36 AM
You do sell a very specific product Bill, so the rules may be different for your site. I realize you have to rely on the manufacturer for images, but could you add to their descriptions or rewrite them in any way. Some of what the article meant by providing more information was less about the description and more about making sure to include all sizes and colors and things like that. The description talk was mine.

Still couldn't you offer more of a description than the manufacturer gives you? You shouldn't be using the same thing as them anyway.

I think you're fine with that contact information. I'd say the more contact info you give the more trust you get back, but I think email and phone are the most important to include. The phone number is probably the one thing that helps most to establish trust.

Actually, I've had the short descriptions rewritten for me. The long descriptions will be more difficult. I've said it before, but site navigation is a nightmare. Just to many products and it would be several layers deep to have proper nav to them. I've pretty much decided on having good nav for the money makers and mediocre for the rest. Otherwise, I'll have 40 items in the left nav bar. I keep trying to hunt down more or better images. Just isn't that easy.

I guess my point is, cart sites aren't always that easy to present well.

vangogh
10-12-2009, 12:35 PM
You shouldn't have to to many layers deep in the navigation. At the very least group everything into about 6 or 7 categories and then only have those categories listed as the main navigation.

Then when someone clicks into category 1 show them all the subpages in that category. Most sites can get away with that 2 level deep navigation.

If you list everything in the sidebar it's too many choices for people and it's hard to find what you're looking for. There's nothing wrong with 2 deep or even 3 deep navigation.

Paper Shredder Clay
10-12-2009, 01:52 PM
I understand that vendors oftentimes do not have pictures for all their products but you should mention it to them. It will benefit them and you. If you sell a lot of one item and it doesn't have pictures, then buy it yourself, bite the cost and snap the pictures and then put it online. Do that slowly over time. Maybe even sell the product you bought just for pictures on sale.

billbenson
10-12-2009, 04:41 PM
Steve, 3 layers deep and I could still have 100 products in a category. Thats why I'm leaning to categories that make the most money.

PSC, products are thousands of dollars and can be hundreds of pounds. The taking a photo option isn't really viable.

vangogh
10-12-2009, 05:30 PM
Right, but when it comes to navigation you can't really put links to all those products on the home page. What I'm saying is think about how they can be categorized. Find 5 - 10 main categories and build a section of your site for each. On the home page have your main navigation link to the main section page for each category.

On the home page you could also show featured products or something similar to link to the money makers. Link directly to those products, but keep the navigational links to a minimum. I'm mostly thinking of the typical shopping cart that has 50 - 100 links down the left side and then throws in another 50 - 100 links down the right side, thinking it'll help people get to products quicker. It doesn't. It just makes any single product that much harder to find.

You could also add better search functionality to get people to specific products quicker.

billbenson
10-12-2009, 10:21 PM
The products are just to extensive, Steve, to put the navigation as you suggest. At best I could put 20 categories. Some would have a few subcategories, but most would have to be nested several categories deep to find the product. A good site map makes sense, but the site visitors won't go there. The site visitors are looking for a "product". They aren't generally computer literate. They won't dig for the information. They don't know that product x is a subcategory of product group y. They only know that they need product x.

Because of the computer literacy issue, search doesn't work very well. I can be talking with someone on the phone and say put product x in the search box in the right column. They put it in the address bar and get a redirect.

The real thing that has worked is making my phone number prominent.

Just increased my adwords bid on several products. It's early, but it seems to have tripled my phone calls.

vangogh
10-13-2009, 12:30 PM
I'm not buying that. You can always find a way to group things. If you're not seeing a way it's because you've become too familiar with the product to see it any other way. There's also no reason why you have to nest many levels deep.

Look at all your products and find 5 - 10 different possible categories. Then place all the products in one of those categories. You don't need to go any deeper if you don't want, though there's nothing wrong with going 3 levels deep.

Send me a PM with a link to the site. I guarantee I can come up with a handful of top level categories.

billbenson
10-13-2009, 05:18 PM
Alright, I'll send you a pm.

billbenson
10-16-2009, 01:58 PM
I think what I'm going to do, VG, is make a static index page. I believe the one that is there is static. I'll link to a site map that has all the categories and items under those categories on it. That gives me a whole page to dedicate to navigation. I'll put a wp directory and a catalog directory under that. I'll use the wp for product information. Since catalog is already in a subdirectory, I should be able to keep uri's from changing so I don't need to make a bunch of changes to my adwords campaign.

Make sense?

vangogh
10-16-2009, 08:54 PM
It makes sense to create a sitemap page. Good for search engines too. You can make that page in WordPress if you want. You have to create a new page template and call it whatever you like and then create a page in the WordPress admin that uses that template. If you know the tags you can have WordPress create the sitemap page and I'm pretty sure there are a few plugins that will do it for you.