Most people marketing, managing or running websites online that have ecommerce on them are aware of a very popular blog called “Get Elastic: The Ecommerce Blog“. If not then subscribe to it NOW. You can thank me later. Any who then had a recent called Reducing Friction in the Sales Process that you need to check out. Simply put, it kick ass.
They basically spell out a whole list of problems (they call it Examples of Friction) that websites have. The “Examples of Friction” can clearly cause issues wiht you converting your visitors. Lets list them from the post:
Home Page Friction
1. Slow loading pages
2. Difficult to find search boxes3. Showing too many products on a single page / cluttered design
Friction in Navigation
1. Navigation in sidebars
2. Tombstone navigationFriction in Site Search
1. Inability to handle synonyms and mispellings
2. Inability to locate non-product informationCategory Page Friction
1. Too many products, not enough filter options
2. Tiny Thumbnails
Friction on Product Pages
1. Can’t find buy button (or can’t read its text)
2. Hey, did I just add to cart?
3. Irrelevant cross-sellsFriction on the Cart Summary Page
1. Continue shopping means what?
Sign Up Forms / Registration Resistance
1. Too much required information
2. Form design
3. Vague email sign-up calls-to-actionCheckout Process Friction
The number one cause of cart abandonment is “sticker shock” or the addition of unexpected taxes and fees in the checkout process. One way to avoid this is to show pre-checkout tax and shipping based on a zipcode lookup
Email Marketing Friction
1. Spammy sender name
2. When scent wears offYour landing pages should pick up where your emails, PPC ads and banner ads leave off, using consistant imagery, messaging and pricing:
404 Not Found!
404 pages without links back to the site need no explanation.
I only outlined what was covered in the post above. In the Get Elastic post they have descriptions of each and example images/video. it is must see for sure. They also have a humorous and insightful You Tube video page describing some fo the issues we all face with websites everyday.
