Why Customers are Leaving Your Website & How to Fix It

It’s a top concern for online retailers: keeping people on their website and getting them to buy. But with nearly 70% of the people who add items to their carts online abandoning them, it’s clear that your work is cut out for you. The good news is: there are typically a few reasons why people leave a website before completing a transaction. Determine which of the following are true for your customers, and you can instantly boost sales with a few small tweaks.

1. It’s Not Mobile-Friendly

These days, more people are browsing the internet on mobile devices. If your website renders awkwardly, maybe squishing everything into the tiny screen or making it challenging to click minuscule hyperlinked words, people will immediately leave your site. If it’s been several years since you updated your website design, your site probably isn’t mobile friendly. If you’re not sure if it is or not, use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. If it’s not, it’s time for a responsive website upgrade. Today’s website builder tools, as well as website designers, automatically create a mobile-friendly version of your business website. The mobile version may have limited menu options, so focus on the pages that are most relevant on a mobile device.

2. It Takes Too Long to Load

People want instant gratification these days, but not every site delivers it. In fact, 40% of shoppers will abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Three seconds! That’s not a lot of time to keep your visitors’ attention! The key to a fast-loading website is to minimize heavy graphics that take a while to load. You can compress them so that they’re not such large files, and that will help. There are other more technical ways you can increase your site’s loading speed, so ask your web designer to help.

3. There’s Not a Lot of Value

People return to sites that give them a reason to come back. If you’re selling online, what motivation does a shopper have to go to your site if she’s not actively looking for a product? Having a blog on your retail website is a great way to get people to visit your site often. Create informative content regularly so that people can get tips on using your products, develop useful gift guides, and publish other content in your industry that will be appealing to your audience. Amplify it by sharing across your social media profiles.

4. Navigation is Difficult

You may think that you’ve designed your retail site efficiently, but it’s really in the hands of your customers. If it’s challenging for them to find what they’re looking for, they’ll leave your site before they start shopping. Look first at your menu bar. Anything more than seven items on your menu may overwhelm visitors. Make sure the menu titles are descriptive of what people can find if they click to those pages. Keep the site clutter-free. That means use easy-to-read design elements and bond fonts to make your most important content stand out. If you use a popup, look for a tool that allows you to time the popup to come up after a visitor has been on a page for a certain period of time, or one that only appears if she scrolls down on a page. If she’s visited once, the popup should recognize that fact and not bother her every visit. If you’re not sure what’s turning people off, have employees or friends browse your website, even buying products, and then providing you feedback with where it was challenging to navigate. Use this data to make improvements to your website, then analyze visits and sales to see if you increased them as a result. Your website should be inviting and appealing to visitors. They should be able to easily find what they’re looking for and make purchases quickly. If that’s not the case, it’s time for you to find out the cause and make changes for the better. Contributed by Fit Small Business.