By Graham Cooke, CEO, Qubit
In the e-Commerce game, collecting customer feedback has been critical as it answers the “why,” which strengthens the “what” and “who” that web analytics answers. But collecting this data is only half the battle. It’s what eTailers do with that data that makes all the difference. Since 2011, brands have discovered the voice of the customer can be as colorful as the channel they chose to express themselves.
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More often than not, they are not touting praises but rather airing their many grievances. For instance, 71% of customers expect assistance within five minutes if their experience goes awry (i.e. cannot process a payment, promotion code isn’t working, etc.). Moreover, 48% abandon the site they’re visiting if they don’t receive immediate company feedback. Clearly, customer expectations are rising faster than the click of the mouse or tap of the screen.
To give eTailers a better understanding of those shopper pain points, Qubit analyzed more than 1.5 million pieces of feedback from the visitors of 400-plus retail web sites using Qubit’s Visitor Opinion tool, which predicts the user is leaving the site and automatically organizes feedback into topics using Natural Language Processing (NLP). Despite recent triumphant developments in areas of site speed and functionality, customers are still clamoring for a better experience. Below is a synopsis of the feedback — the elements of which retailers should heed when it comes to their customer’s feedback in order to elevate and prioritize the customer’s overall path to purchase.
The Top 10 Biggest Complaints From Shoppers
1. Price: No surprises as to what takes first place. The price of products is always at the forefront of your mind when you’re buying, so why wouldn’t it come first in feedback? On the Internet, it’s even more intense. Consumers are approximately 7.4 times more price sensitive online than offline, so remaining price competitive is paramount. It’s critical for retailers to convey messages around value, as many consumers simply want money off. It’s far more powerful to convince consumers of how the value of your product will enhance their lives.
2. Product Range: Do you have a page for up-and-coming, new products? Can people easily navigate around so they can look at the full extent of your product range, or will they be disappointed if they perform a search and can’t find what they want? According to Experian, one of the biggest reasons for shopping online is having a greater product range than your typical big-box store. To go online and struggle more than you would offline can be a real turn off.
3. Size: The average of the Internet Retailing 500 return rate is 4.96%, whereas Internet-only retailers experience an average of 3.47%. The majority of these returns tend to be people who order the wrong size item of clothing, which is understandable. Not everybody knows the difference between American and UK sizes, for example.
4. Site Functionality: If your web site isn’t keeping things simple, expect your consumer to get frustrated and leave. For Chrome users, your competitor is only a Google search about 500 pixels away from your product, causing your revenue to suffer. With the increased move towards mobile and tablet, usability atrocities are strictly deemed unacceptable. This type of feedback is a huge one to keep an eye on. One of the most annoying and conversion-killing things to occur on your web site is the breakdown of functionality. Just imagine if the checkout button of your web site stopped working. If Amazon’s checkout button was down for just an hour, that could lead to $2 million worth of lost conversions.
5. Latency: Just a one-second increase in the loading speed of a web site can lead to a 7% fall in conversions. If customers begin noticing slow loading times, you should really think about doing something. As time goes by and customers expect smoother and quicker online shopping experiences, it’s no longer going to be acceptable to get by with a slow web site.
6. On-site search: Nothing’s more infuriating than trying to use the on-site search system and it never being able to find what you want. With Google as the standard, people expect the best search engines everywhere. Indeed, some web sites have seen up to 30% of site visits beginning with on-site search. If your products are not coming up neatly and quickly, you need to sort it out. If you don’t even have on-site search capabilities, you either have a web site that doesn’t have many products, or you’re missing out.
7. Stock availability: It’s annoying when shops don’t have stock available; even more so when you’re online, where expectations of stock variety and availability are often much higher. For shops it can make sense, as stock inevitably just runs out. But why keep an image and product posting on the web site if you’re just going to be a tease?
8. Navigation: If it’s difficult to find the checkout, specific types of products or the search bar, your visitors might be put off coming back to the web site. Up to 88% of consumers say they are less likely to return to a web site after a poor experience. Poor navigation can ruin long-term engagement with customers.
9. Discounts and sales: Don’t make your discounts confusing, and definitely don’t make your voucher code box too obtrusive. People can often be put off if other people are getting a better deal than they are. Discounts are great, but don’t run your business into the ground by offering them too liberally. Discounts are the nuclear bomb of targeted messaging, and you should treat them with caution. Not every business can afford to take a loss on a leading product in order to turn a profit on other items; competition on price is ultimately unsustainable.
10. Imagery: According to NNGroup, up to 79% of people always scan rather than properly read any new page they come across: it’s difficult to get people to read lots of text. The Internet has made us a visual bunch of consumers, so it’s crucial to break up your text with visual aids to ensure your content is engaging, incorporates intrigue and encourages the user to read on. Pictures, videos, diagrams and infographics all work. Also, if you’re selling a product, people want to know what they’re getting. No picture can often lead to no sale. The reduction in complaints about this implies that retailers have fully internalized this as a problem.
Graham Cooke has been working with web technology since 1995, designing and building websites with emergent technology. Prior to founding Qubit, he spent 5 years working at Google. His most recent role there was as global leader on Google’s strategy for conversion rate improvement. This involved working with Google’s largest and smallest customers to improve their online conversion rates as well as developing the Google Conversion Professional program. Graham has also worked extensively with Product Management and Engineering teams to deliver tools to build more effective marketing solutions with the AdWords auction system as well as management of campaigns with millions of keywords. Prior to Google Graham ran his own technology company delivering Internet Protocol television systems to the advertising industry.
