Robert Lochrie

Big Brand Mistakes in eCommerce

Big brands equal good ecommerce. Every company in the country realises the potential for their brand online – their largest retail store, their largest audience and most importantly, their largest potential for increased revenue.

The crux of the matter? The statement isn’t true; big brands don’t equal good ecommerce. Searching the internet for ecommerce opportunities, I’ve came across countless brands not realising their potential, throwing away money on big budget PPC campaigns but ultimately advertising sites that are full of consumer friction.

It’s like a football team spending their budget on an expensive striker but forgetting to shore up the hole in defence. You need the solid foundation of a consumer-focused site before you start driving new customers through other channels.

Whilst I’m not going to focus on one site (this isn’t a case study) I wanted to highlight a number of friction issues surprisingly prominent on big brand ecommerce sites.

Lack of Guest Checkout

Usernames, passwords – for some consumers they are the enemy! It’s ok to remember the combination for your email, or your online banking, but there is a certain level of frustration when the user is forced to create another username and password for a site they wont be using regularly.

Out of this frustration, guest checkout was born, a means for the consumer to checkout without the hassle of passwords and usernames. Surprisingly, despite a Forrester Research report suggesting 26% of consumers give up when forced to create an account, it is still not a commonplace feature on UK sites.

That’s not to mention the customers who do come back and forget their information, contributing to a greater drop off at the dreaded forgot your password link.

If you are insistent on pushing the account creation, at the very least sell its advantages. Are there exclusive offers? Can they check out faster next time? Check delivery status? Give people a reason to sign up.

Asking For Too Much

Ok, you’ve convinced me, I’ll create an account.

— Password please. More than 6 characters, but include at least one uppercase, one lowercase and one number.

This time, you really will send them scrambling for the exits. Your bank doesn’t need such a restrictive password, but your FootLocker account does. Yes you want consumers to have a secure password, but in the interests of them actually coming back and remembering it, you shouldn’t impose over the top security measures.

Foot Locker’s password requirements

Asking for too much extends past the checkout too. Contrasting ASOS and Topshop in their newsletter sign up, both provide a text field on their homepage, allowing you to easily sign up.

After entering your address, ASOS’s reloads the page – thanking you for joining. Topshop however links to another page with an 11-field form including gender, date of birth, student status, year of graduation and postcode.

Yes, it is great to have information for targeted marketing; basing email campaigns on gender, location or even age, but leave the information as optional, allowing you to have a base campaign for those who didn’t want to share the information.

Limited Payment Options

More than ever, multinational companies are running a number of locales off one backend. Ease of use for them in terms of stock management and software costs, but often they don’t effectively customise each site for localised payment methods.

An example of this is the new UK North Face store, ran on Magento – whilst the site itself is positioned well towards its target market in terms of visuals – the payment options leave a lot to be desired.

Accepting only Visa, AMEX and Mastercard, with no option for Maestro, the site immediately alienates a huge percentage of the user base, sending the users searching for the exit.

North Face’s payment options

Promo and Voucher Codes

The Internet is full of saving-conscious consumers and the promo code text fields are the starting pistol to a journey that starts and often ends outside your checkout. In the worst case scenario, the dreaded brand name voucher codes search term gives birth to a multitude of results even when the codes themselves don’t exist. The consumer begins the search, doesn’t find a code, but does find one for a competitor.

You could remove the field when there are no voucher codes active but if you use codes with affiliates, this isn’t an option. A better solution may be URL parameters, allowing you to enable the field for specific sessions, meaning those that do arrive through affiliates will be able to input them, whilst those who come through regular channels are none the wiser.

Narrowing Down the Search

Users want to find what they’re looking for quickly. Whilst most stores utilise on site search and filtered navigation, one that surprisingly omits both is the new site from Gap. With no means to search for that lovely black cardigan you seen in the press, your only choice is to file through categories to locate it. How important is it? According to Forrester – 60% of users demand an effective site search online.

The new Gap site and its lack of search

Limited Product Pages

The product page is the second most important page on your site. Give the user everything they want – product information, stock information, images, returns info – and quickly you will have nudged them gently into the checkout process.

Yet it still surprises me how many aren’t optimised for conversion. Poorly placed Add to Cart buttons, restrictive usability for size selections, limited copy – mistakes that are all to commonplace and easily amended.

A good example of this is Ultimo, the well marketed lingerie brand based in Glasgow; below is the product page for their Animal Satin range:

Ultimo’s product page

Working on a monitor with a vertical resolution of 1050 pixels, there isn’t an Add to Bag visible on the screen, instead the most important call to action sits below the fold, out of the consumer’s sight.

Size selection opens up usability issues. With the grid of checkboxes, there is a natural urge to use that for selection as opposed to the drop down boxes – it’s more user friendly and efficient, but it isn’t functional. Yes you can click on a size that is out of stock for a notification, but you can’t click on the size you want to buy, that function is reserved for the dropdown box.

A default quantity of zero. Ultimo isn’t the only store guilty of this, but I can never understand the oversight. The majority of users will look to purchase only one, so why add another layer of friction by leaving the quantity set to zero.

In the case of Ultimo, it is limited by the entire collection using the one Add to Bag button, but surely by updating the quantity on selection of size, you can provide the user with a more seamless experience.

Conclusion

Are these the worst mistakes to make in ecommerce? Maybe not. Do they have a significant effect on conversions, customer satisfaction and cart abandonment rates? Without a doubt.

Sure you can send more consumers through PPC, affiliates and email marketing, and yes, you will continue to convert (some consumers are just more resilient) but those oversights will gradually eat away at your revenue, and perhaps worse still, lose you returning customers. According to Forrester, over 75% of customers, when dissatisfied with an online shopping experience, will opt not to purchase from the site again, and it’s these numbers you should take note of.