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To keep things running smoothly for your small business, there are some elements that you should often check, particularly if you run an online shopping site as part of your business. The use of eCommerce tools is great for businesses, but it needs to be kept up to date and always functional, so it’s up to you to make sure that everything is always working properly. These are two big elements to check so that you can always feel confident that customers are not frustrated as they navigate your website and that they complete their purchases every time.
Practice Shopping
It is imperative that online customers are able to quickly and easily add items to their cart, no matter which page of your website they are currently browsing. You need to make sure that this element of your website is working well, and the best way to do that is to shop your own website. Make sure that you aren’t logged in or, if possible, use a computer that you normally don’t use for business. If you have a mobile device and a mobile website for your business, use that, too. Make sure that you are easily able to view items, select sizes or colors or quantities, and add them to your shopping cart. You should also make sure that pages load quickly, that images load quickly and are easy to see, and that the text on each page looks right. Don’t stop after you’ve added just one item either since you want customers to purchase as many items as they can, making sure that it is easy to continue shopping once you add an item to your cart.
Check Your Checkout
Once you are confident in the way your shopping features function, it’s time to check the integral part of your business that makes it possible for you to get paid. You need to make sure your point of sale software is working flawlessly. If customers get to the checkout page and it doesn’t load properly, they are liable to abandon their carts and not make any purchases. If they try to enter their credit or debit card information and the site doesn’t work well, again, they are likely to walk away. It is incredibly important that the checkout process is as simple and easy as possible for all of your customers, no matter how much they are buying. If they get frustrated, you will lose sales. So check this out by going through the entire process from start to finish yourself, and don’t stop until you have an order confirmation number. This is the best way to ensure that everything is working well and that customers will have an easy time making purchases.
Using eCommerce is an efficient way to run a business, but you need to make sure that all element are in proper working order at all times. When you run an online business, even a few minutes of errors in the process can result in a loss of sales, so help yourself out by giving your online business, your website, and all its software, regular and thorough checkups.