Smashing Magazine: 15 Common Mistakes in E-Commerce Design

Smashing Magazine has a great post on common mistakes made in ecommerce design.

Some key mistakes that people who sell downloads in particular might suffer from:

• Hiding contact information
• Long and confusing checkout process
• Requiring an account to order
• A poor shopping cart design
• Confusing navigation
• Not including store and shipping policies

Luckily DPD addresses many of these points- checkout using the DPD storefront system is quick and easy with only 3 pages- cart, payment, and delivery. No account is required to order using the DPD system, and the DPD shopping cart follows Smashing’s recommendation to load an item in the cart right on the product page without taking the customer to another site or page.

In the course of supporting vendors we look at a lot of sales sites. The most common problems we see amongst DPD vendors are lack of contact information and store / shipping policies.

Lack of Contact Information

Just because you don’t need the address and contact information of your customers to “ship” their download doesn’t mean they don’t want to know who it is they’re giving their money to. Making your contact information visible will go a long way to increasing buyer trust. We understand that you might be working out of your home (probably 80% of DPD vendors are home based with no actual store or business address) but that doesn’t mean you have to share your home address and phone number. There are always web based PO Boxes and web based phone services that can be had for as little as $9.99 a month. At the very least you should give an email address or web based contact form.

Store and Shipping Policies

DPD provides for instant delivery to paying customers. This is one of the strongest selling points for download products and one not enough vendors exploit- they buy it now they get it now! This is something that can be made in to a key selling point and benefit of buying from you- not some boring policy left off your site.

Check out the full article at Smashing Magazine and see if any of these points apply to you: Smashing Magazine: 15 Common Mistakes in E-Commerce Design