I did an interview with CIO.com, the website for corporate tech and IT managers about different ways businesses lose customers or sales online. My thoughts can be found in #10 – #12.
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In today’s super competitive, I-want-it-now mobile world, you only have a few minutes (or seconds) to engage potential shoppers. And if your site isn’t mobile friendly, considered trustworthy or a dozen other things online shoppers deem important, that potential customer will go elsewhere.
But never fear. Help is at hand. Following is a list of the 12 fastest ways to lose online shoppers and what you can do to prevent potential customers from buying from your competitors.
Help and contact info are hard to find (or don’t exist).
“It is critical for companies to have tools in place to respond immediately when a guest asks for help online,” says Liz Osborn, vice president of Product and Solution Marketing at Five9, a provider of cloud contact center software. “For instance, having a chat application in place, or at the very least an easy to find ‘Contact us’ button, is essential to keep online visitors happy,” she says. “It’s the same as walking into a retail store, where you expect someone to be available to answer your questions. If there isn’t, the experience is diminished and you may just leave, without the intended purchase.”And don’t make contact forms your sole method of contact.
“Contact forms present an unnecessary barrier between a business and its customers,” says Sakita Holley, founder, House of Success PR, a lifestyle PR firm. “Ecommerce sites that only have a contact form and not an email address or phone number listed signal to potential customers that they don’t really want to be bothered.” Instead, provide “a contact email address and/or customer service phone number that leads to a human interaction,” she advises. “Humans have a better chance of saving/closing a sale than an automated message.”