Common content mistakes in online stores

Published on September 04, 2012 Common content mistakes in online stores

As it’s hard for visitors to assess the quality and integrity of your business online, incomplete information on your website can lead to your customers forming negative opinions about the quality of your products and service before they have even looked into your product offering.

Keeping some basic things up to date on your website can really help you manage positive perceptions about your online business and improve conversion rates. Here is a quick list of ten easy things that you can change or complete to ensure your store meets the minimum standards it needs to compete with the most successful sites in your industry.

Content Mistakes Checklist

1. Do any of product or content pages have “Ipsum Lorem” text in them? Ipsum Lorem Dolor is “fake latin” text, that web design companies like us use to fill in the space where your actual text would go – to give you a better sense of what the page will look like than to just have big blank spaces everywhere. This needs to be replaced with your actual text before you go live or it makes your site look to customers like it is either in a foreign language, or is not completed/cared for.
2. Is your checkout encrypted by the “padlock” – customers are encouraged to look for this. If your payment provider doesn’t require SSL on your checkout you may have opted not to use this, but we strongly recommend that you reconsider.
3. Do you have a shipping policy and payments page completed? People want to know what they are paying, in what currency they are paying, how they will be charged and how long their items will take to get to them.
4. Policies:
   Do you have a returns policy? If you do accept exchanges/returns you might want to use the built in Returns Management Facility in your store to collect data in the right format and keep track of your returns requests. If you don’t accept returns/exchanges (except for your statutory requirements under Australian law) then you should state that you don’t accept exchanges for change of mind, so that people are clear where they stand before they buy. Otherwise they think you’re trying to hide something. Do you have a privacy policy? Your bank will require that you complete a privacy policy but more customers than ever are looking for them as well – they are increasingly concerned about the potential for identity theft online for example.
5. Promotions:
   Do you have promotions advertised on your site that have expired? Get rid of “Happy New Year” messages before August, promotions that have expired two months ago and coupon code that can no longer be used. These just frustrate people and they go looking for competitors to buy from.
6. What is the copyright date on your website? Legally, you can choose to show the date you first claimed copyright or the most current time, but if you don’t choose to make this the current year, then customers will wrongly assume that your site is not up to date even if you know it is.
7. Do you have up-to-date information on your About Us page about your people, place of business, contact details etc? If you have staff who have left, don’t advertise them on your site as they might be working for competitors and you could end up driving business away.
8. Are you listing products that are all out of stock or last year’s model? Products that are known to be out of date make your site feel tired. If you don’t stock products any more, then remove them. You might think that showing out of stock products makes your site look popular, but in general it just frustrates buyers. It might even drive them to go looking for that product on a competitor’s website.
9. Are your brands up to date? If a brand has been renamed or isn’t available any more, make sure that you update this on your site. Attention to detail helps instill confidence.
10. Do you have seals to give the customers confidence in your site? If you are using recognised third parties then show people this – show the credit card logos of the cards you accept, the logo of your payment providers if they are well known (but don’t include a link back to them as that just benefits them and not you) – PayPal have a clickable piece of Javascript you can add to your site, your SSL security provider (for Ozcart customers this will generally be RapidSSL).