7 Things Customers Consider When Buying Something Online (And How to Put Them in Place)

If you’re an e-commerce website owner, you may already know that running an online store fundamentally differs from selling things offline. It requires persuading customers differently, and the customer expectations are also completely different from what they’re in an offline setting. Therefore, it’s important to know what people consider buying something online. There are about 7 of them, which we will discuss in this article. Then, we’ll see how they impact your customers’ choices and how they do that. Let’s begin!

1. User Experience

One of the first things that matter for someone while browsing an online shopping site is the user experience. If the expertise provided by a website suck, they’d not want even to look up the product that they wanted to purchase. Loading speed, proper display of content, ease of navigation across pages, and placement of pop-ups are some major factors that affect the user experience of any website. If you can get them right, you can set a perfect foundation for the UX of your e-commerce site. Here are some suggestions:

• Ensure that your website isn’t slow to load. You can use Google’s Page Speed Insights tool to determine whether your website is fast or slow.
• Try loading your website on devices with different screen sizes to find out whether it loads fine or not.
• Include breadcrumbs, mobile-friendly menus, and evenly spaced-out buttons to ensure easy navigation across your website.
• Avoid usage of pop-ups as much as possible.

2. Product Information

The product is the second thing people care about when buying something online. If your product pages don’t provide all the information about a product and leave unanswered questions in customers’ minds, then there’s a good chance that people won’t want to buy from you. To avoid that situation, always create information-rich product pages with multiple large images, product descriptions, specifications, and everything else your customers may want to know. Also, keep a way for people to ask questions about any product and post your answers to them on the product page itself.

3. Price

The third most important thing about any online purchase is its price. If you’re not offering the best price for something, then there’s a good chance that people will buy from your competitors, offering a better deal unless there’s a major difference in the product sold by your competitors and you. That’s why it’s important to provide the best possible price on your products. If you can’t offer the best price for some reason, try to give a price that is at least a fair bargain.

Read more: 5 easy and free link-building tactics for e-commerce to start today 3 Steps to Increase Conversion Rate For Your Website Stay At Home And Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

4. Reviews

In the offline retail world, people see the product they’re buying. They can experience the product quality with their own hands and eyes and determine whether it’s reliable. In the online shopping world, however, that possibility is not available. That’s where customer reviews come into the picture – they allow people to see people’s experience with the products they purchase. If many people are saying good things about a product in their reviews, people buy it. Otherwise, if the feedback in customer reviews is not very positive, they don’t. As a result, customer reviews are also one of the most important things people consider before buying something online.

5. Security

There’s also the angle of cybersecurity involved with online shopping. Before people buy something online, they want to ensure that their financial information is safe with the company they’re buying from. If they don’t feel safe at your website, there’s no way that they’re going to buy from you. This is where installing an SSL certificate and switching to HTTPS help. It ensures encryption of in-transit communication between the web server and the client browser, thereby engendering customers’ PII security. Here are some steps you can take to make them feel safe on your website:

• Install a wildcard SSL certificate if you think to secure your chosen primary domain and multiple first-level subdomains under it.
• Comply with Payment Cards Industry Data Security Standards (PCI-DSS), so you can put a PCI-DSS compliant seal on your website.
• Put some other Secure Site seals (i.e., Secured by Norton, Comodo Secure, McAfee secure, Verified by GeoTrust, etc.) in your footer.
• Enable 2-factor authentication for user accounts.

Before buying any SSL certificate, you should check pocket-friendly SSL certs that can save hard-earned money and offer the same level of encryption standard. So, a cheap SSL certificate could be ideal for your website’s requirements.

Read more: 10 Proven Tips for Securing Your Website From Hackers

6. Shipping Cost

The next major thing that concerns every online shopper is the shipping cost. People don’t want to spend their money on this particular thing – at least not if it’s too high or higher than what’s being charged by your competitors. So, you must keep your shipping costs as low as possible. The best situation is when there’s no shipping cost and you offer free shipping, but if you can’t do that, try to keep it at a minimum. You can also consider combining it in the product’s price and then listing the product with a free shipping label.

7. Return and Refund Policy

Finally, customers want to be sure that if something they buy is not as per their expectations, they can return it and get a full refund. Your website needs a return and refund policy that clearly outlines how return requests are handled and entertained. This policy should be easy to understand and accessible from all your product pages. If it’s not, there’s a good chance that people will not want to buy from you because they’ll have questions about whether their money will be refunded if they wish to return the product.

 → Learn about flat shipping rate: What Is Flat Rate Shipping and How Does It Work?

Conclusion

So, these are seven important things people consider before buying something online. If even one of them is missing, there’s a high chance that most of them won’t buy from you. Therefore, your website must include all these factors to ensure maximum sales and revenue. If you’ve any questions about all these factors, please share them in the comments. And if not – then start putting them in place today!

About the author – Mariya Adems Mariya Adems is a Digital Strategist, having 5+ years of experience in the field of Internet Marketing. She is a social media geek, a complete foodie, and enjoys trying varied cuisines. A perfect day for her consists of reading her favorite author with a hot cuppa coffee.