In Your Customers’ Shoes – 4 Gripes That Are Costing You Conversions

By Sherice Jacob

One of the best ways to improve conversion rates is to identify and eliminate major stumbling blocks that are preventing your users from moving forward. Typically these are common issues like “Not Found / Out of Stock” errors, technical glitches, reducing clutter and removing distractions like third-party ads.

But sometimes the gripes are so common and so pervasive that visitors simply tolerate them (albeit with a great deal of frustration and aggravation) rather than go elsewhere.

But you can bet they won’t be back.

Gripe #1: “Just Copy Amazon”

Amazon is one of the web’s largest and most profitable websites, so it stands to reason that they put a considerable amount of time, money and emphasis on making their site as easy to use as possible (even patenting certain methods, like 1-click-shopping). Knowing this, many beginning website owners understandably assume that Amazon must be doing something right with their layout – so they copy it.

Jumia is Nigeria’s Amazon – right down to the layout, categories and color scheme

Amazon has many things going for it that the average new webmaster doesn’t take into account when designing their own site – for example:

• Everyone is familiar with Amazon – They’ve been around so long that they’ve practically become a one-stop shop for even the greenest internet user. They’ve got brand recognition nailed down to where they’re a household name. People have come to expect a certain experience when shopping on Amazon, just as they expect superb customer service when buying shoes from Zappos. It has been ingrained into who Amazon is and what they stand for.
• Amazon’s traffic comes from multiple sources – They’ve built up their markets over time, and as a result, their traffic comes from all kinds of places. People generally search for a specific product on …read more