e-commerce website represented by holiday packaging

Avoid the Holiday Blues: Test Your E-Commerce Website to Prevent Lost Orders

The holiday season – from Black Friday through the day after Christmas – is when many retailers make most of their profits for the entire year. Yet, one of their major assets – their e-commerce website – may cost them more profit than they realize if it’s not properly tested.

Not Testing an E-Commerce Website Could Drop Holiday Sales

The number one reason e-commerce sites crash is due to a lack of testing. All too often, marketers, business owners, or salespeople push their updated or brand news out before the holiday rush without taking the time to test the software properly. This can lead to the following issues:

  • Poor Load Times: Consumers want to quickly surf websites to find out if the site has what they’re looking for and how much it costs. If a site takes too long to load, potential customers aren’t going to wait around before searching for another, faster e-commerce website. In other words, they’re going to bounce to the next site.
  • Bad Shopping Cart: Many consumers get all the way to the checkout process and then abandon their cart. Why? Sometimes, they changed their minds. Other times, it’s related to cart issues. Major cart problems can lead to significant sales loss. Common cart issues include a lengthy order process, excessive load time, or a complicated design.
  • Filters not working: E-commerce websites often have filters for different sizes, colors, availability, etc. If filters are not properly working, a customer may assume you don’t have what they need. For example, let’s say that you have four different size sheets: twin, full, queen and king. A consumer is looking for a king size, but the filter says it’s not available – even though there’s a full inventory. A consumer is not going to follow up with the company to find this out; instead, they’re going to move on to a different site resulting in lost sales.

Failure to properly test an e-commerce site leads to poor site design and negative user experiences. Additionally, poor testing often results in lost sales. For many companies, failing to make a sale at this critical time of year could lead to more than lost revenue – it could potentially put the company out of business. To ensure this doesn’t happen, we recommend testing all e-commerce websites before launch.

Need assistance testing your e-commerce website or software application? Contact iBeta to learn how we can help.