Selling Online - Make It Easy

I was looking to order some cd’s online the other day. I spent about half an hour looking and deciding what I wanted and finally made a decision. I started the order process and filled in all my details and then hit the next button. I was immediately returned to the previous screen. I had failed to check the box that said I had read the terms and conditions. My mistake I accept that, but what was really infuriating was that it had cleared all the fields so I had to re-enter all the information.

I did this again and hit next and once more it returned me. This time I was reliably informed that the two passwords that I had entered did not match. Again, my mistake and I was paying for it by having to enter all my personal information for the 3rd time.

The third time was the charm and I got through to the part that required my credit card details. I scanned the invoice to make sure that I had ordered exactly what I wanted and noticed that the charge for mailing the stuff to me was over $10. I have no idea where that amount came from and how on earth they could justify it but I knew that no way was I paying $10 mailing on a $30 order.

I suspect that in an attempt to keep their prices low that this particular company tried to make some of it back on the shipping charges but for me at least it did not work. I immediately shut the site down and will not be going back.

If you are trying to sell anything and I do mean anything. Make it as easy as possible for your customers to part with their money. I accept that I made errors but I also know that it is possible for a site to retain information that has already been entered without making you do it all over again. I also know about auto complete and that I could set up my PC to use that if I wanted, but that isn’t really the point, I was trying to give them some money and failing!

Time and time again I visit sites that do this kind of thing and it leaves me exasperated. We have all had our experiences of trying to buy online and giving up halfway through because the process is too complicated or we can’t find what we are looking for even though we know it is there, or the site refuses to accept the order for reason or reasons unknown, or we need to speak to somebody and can’t find a telephone number and any number of other reasons.

I accept that the Internet is still in its infancy and that as a dynamic beast there will always be issues to contend with and overcome. I also realize that the individual websites are at the mercy of many other external factors out of their direct control, which is why it is so important to do the easy stuff well. 

If you are selling online get other people to try out your ordering system on a regular basis, get feedback from your customers about what you could do better, after all, they are the people that really know. Check out some of the really successful sites and see what processes they use that maybe you could adopt and acquire the attitude of continual growth and improvement. Maybe even bring in an expert to help.

The Internet is getting more and more competitive and more and more innovative and if you want to succeed you have to keep up. Don’t put all your time and effort into getting people to your website only to have them walk away again because they couldn’t place an order quickly and efficiently and with no hidden surprises because they are the kind of people that never return.

Enjoyed this post? Please share it!

Digg it | Stumble it |

 

Comments are closed.