Avoiding the Mess-Ups

Retailers spend a lot of time, energy and resources on luring shoppers to their sites. Yet, too often consumers face online usability issues that cause them to ultimately leave Web sites -- and their potential purchases -- behind.

“Companies may get consumers to the point where they are ready to make a purchase, but as shoppers run into usability issues, they lose patience and leave. This is costing retailers literally millions of dollars in lost revenue,” said Megan Burns, senior analyst of customer experience for Forrester Research, Cambridge, Mass. Burns discussed these issues during the session, “Ways to Raise Conversion Rate Without Breaking the Bank” at the eTail East conference held recently in Baltimore.

To emphasize the point, consider this example from the movie “Hitch,” in which Will Smith plays a character that coaches socially awkward men on how to talk to women. Smith gives the following advice to a client who is about to go on a date: “When wondering what to say or how you look, just remember she’s already out with you. She said yes, and she could have said no. It’s no longer your job to make her like you -- it’s your job not to mess it up.”

The same rings true for retailers, according to Forrester's Burns. Once shoppers visit a Web site, it’s critical for merchants to make their experience as seamless as possible. She offered the following low-cost, low-risk tips on how companies can avoid small mistakes that could stand in the way of closing a sale:

Get rid of unnecessary content. Users shouldn’t have to wade through extraneous information to get to want they want. Make it easy for them by highlighting the most popular areas on the site, and remove what’s less important. But be cautious: Research shows that people often can’t find the content they want on the site. (A low-trafficked page might actually be high in demand and just harder to locate). Retailers should cross-reference their analytics data, and re-evaluate where certain features should be placed on the site so consumers can effectively find what they want.

Don’t assume how people use the site. Consumers may use your site differently than you think. For example, a shopper might use a search tool to find out information about a return policy. However, many search engines might read that request as a product search and give them an error message.

“An error message of any kind is a big red stop sign for shoppers. Customers might leave or work harder than they have to -- both of which are not good for the brand,” Burns said.

Make sure your search tool can handle various inquiries, as well as misspellings and slang. Analyze the keywords that shoppers use and see how they refer to certain items in your ratings and reviews section.

Help users recover from errors. Consumers often get far in the checkout process and end up leaving their cart due to unclear error messages. Burns said there are three characteristics that make a good error message. “They should be integrated into the page, explain the problem clearly and show how to fix it,” she said.

In the design process, many retailers allow the developers to write error messages. “But don’t,” Burns warned. “Give the error messages extra care and let the right people write them. Also, be sure to inform shoppers explicitly why an error occurred.” (e.g., The ZIP code doesn’t match the city and state.)

The order review page shouldn’t look like a confirmation page. Shoppers often mistake the second-to-last step as the final one. Be sure to make the text, design and location clear, so people know they have one more step to go.