Top 12 Ecommerce Design Flaws That Lead to Failure

Many people start an ecommerce site hoping that they can be the next Amazon, but the same hopeful people often spend very little time in developing and maintaining a good and practical ecommerce site and then wonder, “Where are the sales?” Some start blaming the problem on the search engines or the hosting company. However, the real blame sometimes belongs to the ecommerce site owners.

I have seen many ecommerce sites that are poorly designed, products have incomplete description, photos of products are blurry, can not easily navigate and find a product, scripts errors popping up left and right and to top that off, there is no way to contact the owner of the site!

I always wonder, how these people expect to sell products online. I come cross these people daily and I ask them straight: “Would you buy a product from a site like yours?”  And they get very quite.

Trust is the most important factor in consumers’ decision making when it comes to online purchases. 96% of ecommerce sites that are “non-professional”, will fail within the first two years.

Below is the top ten flaws that can easily lead to ecommerce failure:

1. Poorly designed, developed and structured sites.
2. Incomplete product description and clumsy product showcase.
3. It is not easy to navigate and find a product.
4. Not optimized for best search engine indexing.
5. Not listed on any major directories.
6. Received bad reviews from online review sites.
7. Do not list phone number and physical address.
8. Requires credit card numbers before displaying the total charges after shipping and taxes.
9. Online form for entering credit card information is NOT secured.
10. Does not have return policy, customer service page, or privacy & security policy.
11. Forces you to login before you can make a purchase.
12. Payment information is redirected to a third party site with a different look.

Most online consumers are getting more savvy, sophisticated and experienced in online shopping. They can easily spot a non-professional site. With so many identity theft issues are occurring these days,  consumers are very hesitant in using their credit card on doubtful and non-professional sites or non-secure forms. Sites that do not display their phone number, address and location will portray the message that they have something to hide or not running a professional business.

Also, one of the successes stemmed from online businesses is the convenient of online shopping. Unfriendly sites that take the convenient of online shopping away will not earn the ecommerce business. A good example are sites that are hard to navigate or find the product or sites that forces users to login or create a login before they can make a purchase, or sites that forces users to enter their credit card number before even knowing how much is the final cost after the shipping and taxes.

Good product showcase and description is also is an important factor. People want to be certain about what they are buying.

And finally, many consumers want to see the return policy and privacy & security policy of the online business. They want to know what happens if the product is shipped defective and how the business handle their information after the purchase - specially the credit card information.

There are some ecommerce businesses that are getting away with breaking the above rules and have no problem selling online. For example, sites such as walmart.com, target.com or Joe’s eBay store a power seller with over 99% satisfactory rating.

These companies have spent years building their brand and consumer’s trust, they do not need to make that much effort to draw and gain online customers.

There are other factors which is out of the control of the online businesses, such as products that require physical inspections, heavy products which would have expensive shipping cost, or very low cost items that does not justify delivery cost.