Here is a little tour of the main Web Performance KPIs that should catch your attention.

Loading time: a basic metric, but a little outdated

Loading time has been the first performance indicator used. It simply represents the overall loading time of a page (until the last pixel is displayed).
It is interesting to follow this indicator but it does not represent the customer experience. The main reason for that is that a page is usually displayed progressively and become interactive before being fully loaded, which makes the user feel like the page was loaded before the total loading time was reached.

Speed ​​Index: a weighted measure of loading time

The Speed ​​Index is a measure of the display time that takes into account the actual user experience. It is expressed in milliseconds. A low score means a fast display and therefore a better user experience. Concretely, the speed Index represents the average display time of all pixels above the bottom of the screen.

Let’s take an example:

Page A is displayed progressively (30% of pixels at 0.5 seconds, 70% at 1 second and 100% at 1.5 seconds) vs page B which is displayed in one time (0 to 100% at 1.5 seconds).

Page A and Page B will have the same loading time (1.5 seconds). However, the user experience will be much better on page A.
In the case of page A, as the page is displayed gradually, it has a double positive effect for the user:

• He has a visual confirmation that the page is loading: it helps him to wait and keeps him focus on the page.
• He can already use some of the page contents: the loading time is no longer “lost”.

The Speed ​​Index calculation will take this difference into account to favor the progressive display. Thus, Speed ​​Index page A will be 1000ms when the one of page B will be 1500ms.

What is a good Speed ​​Index?
It is commonly accepted that after a 1 second wait, customers will lose their train of thought and their purchase intent. After 3 seconds, more than half of them will leave the site out of frustration. Therefore, a good Speed ​​Index should ideally be (and stay!) under 1000ms. Between 1000 in 3000ms, the navigation remains “acceptable” but fragile. And above 3000ms it is absolutely necessary to improve it as the risk of losing visitors if becomes very high.

​​Page Speed Score: a best practice compliance indicator

The ​​Page Speed score is a very different indicator. It does not represent the loading time, but Google’s best practice recommendations.
This score is a global grade out of 100 and made up with the compliance grades of each different best practices.

Thus, Google Page Speed ​​is not an indicator representing the user experience, but rather a tool that will highlight optimization opportunities. It is very complementary to other KPIs as following your PageSpeed score will help you build the optimization roadmap to ultimately improve your Speed Index and User Experience.

As a conclusion, there are many indicators to track the Web Performance of your pages. But in the end, what you need to follow the big picture which is “how is my User Experience?”. To answer this question, the Speed ​​Index is the reference. On the other hand, once you have identified which pages need to be improved, you need to know what to do next to be able to improve, and this is when the ​​Page Speed score makes the most sense.

L’article Loading time, Speed Index, Score Page Speed… which indicator better represents the User Experience? est apparu en premier sur Quanta.

L’article Why using a CDN is critical to your web performance est apparu en premier sur Quanta.

Our analysis focused on business elements (conversion rate, page views, turnover, etc.) and their technical implications, by comparing the activity of 450 sites on the first day of the sales period VS the average metrics recorded the day before the beginning of the sales. Well, it’s safe to say that we had some surprises. ^^

The great upheaval

As early as 8 am, the indicators began to rocket. At the end of the day, the turnover registered an average increase of + 359%!

This end result was the combination of several factors:

More visits

Many visitors meet, that day, on the exact same time slot as early as from 8 am (+ 155% of sessions).

More pages viewed

Visitors click more on this one day, and go further in their sales funnel (+ 182% of additional page views per visit).

Better conversion rate

The prices are more attractive and the Internet users are competing with each other to “seize” the best deals, so the conversion rate is also above normal (+ 38% on average).

That is how the combination of all these factors (more visitors, who go further in the sales tunnel, and thus buy more) has led to this +359% global increase in sales.

Congratulations to all for these results. 😉

But do not think it is simple to get there. These results were made possible thanks to a good management of the load by the platform, kept almost the whole time in operational conditions. One could even go further by talking about optimal conditions, ie the platform held the charge, at the peak of traffic, with page load times as fast as in the off-peak periods.

Small reminder on this point: in the ecommerce world, every 100ms of additional loading time impacts the final conversion rate. That is, if a site is slowed down by 2s per page during the first morning of sales period, you can expect it to register 20% less than predicted!

By analyzing the measures recorded on the hosting infrastructures during that same morning of sales, it’s easy to grasp the magnitude of the difficulty encountered by any emerchant who is preparing for a strong traffic on the day of the sales.

A technical challenge for estores

Because, yes, the very good results that the ecommerce sites recorded during the sales have a significant technical cost for the infrastructures.

Increased demand for infrastructure

Metrics showed this summer a +149% CPU load increase on french ecommerce infrastructures. This increase can be easily explained by the execution of the order processing and the CMS code (whether it is based on Magento, Prestashop, OroCommerce, or even a “home” solution).

What does it tell us ? From this number we can say that in order to keep a little room for mishaps on the infra, and to withstand this sudden increase in the load, it is often necessary for the emerchants to have 4 times more infrastructure on the D-Day, than on the rest of the year. On a so-called “fixed” infrastructure, this amounts to paying a quadruple capacity compared to its average need, and just for… 2 days in the year (the first day of the winter and summer sales) ! You can understand easily why elastic (or cloud) infrastructures have the wind in their sails at the moment.

To correctly anticipate the provisioning of infrastructures before the D-Day, the most recommended option remains the implementation of upstream load tests. On the subject, if you have any questions about how to set up these tests, do not hesitate to read our article dedicated to this matter.

Greater response times during peak traffic

There was a +44% increase in page response time, demonstrating that despite the addition of supplementary infrastructures for the D-Day, some users are still suffering from unoptimized and slower-than-usual software processing, hence the importance of:

• Upstream optimization,
• Load tests (yes. Again!),
• And caches at all levels => varnish, cache block, …etc.

What does a 44% increase in response times represents, you say?

With an average of 600ms of page rendering time (this is the time for our panel of measured websites), a user has a navigation experience of an additional 250ms of loading times with each click, on the morning of sales period.

According to various studies, including that of the star, Amazon, 250ms of additional loading time is equivalent to about 2.5% of turnover loss. For the entire French ecommerce, it is therefore several million euros that can be lost in a single day, if the anticipation on traffic peaks is not properly carried out!

Indeed, there is a combination of a slowed time precisely on a day when the turnover is much higher, the effects of speed on conversion are thus multiplied.

This analysis of the summer 2017 sales shows how closely the commercial success of a website is linked to its technical preparation in many aspects:

• The availability (an unavailable site does not sell anything and deteriorates the image of a brand),
• The speed (each 100ms counts for the conversion rate … and the SEO too),
• And how the infrastructure handles the load in general

In other words, this shows that success and web performance are intimately linked when talking about ecommerce.

See you soon in January 2018 for an upcoming analysis of the next french biggest peak of activity of the year. But by then, do not hesitate to contact us for an expert advice during your preparation.

L’article French Summer Sales 2017 – Health status of the ecommerce websites est apparu en premier sur Quanta.

The increased weight of your files is not something trifling. It has a direct impact on the speed of your website, and thus, on your user’s experience (as it has been discussed at length on this blog 🙂 ). But what about conversion and ROI?

Most of the major players in the tech world, among which Amazon and Google, agree on the importance of fast loading times for conversion to ensure that customers make it through the entire sales funnel, and actually make the purchase.

This is why more and more websites are striving to make web performance their top priority. And it was certainly the case for Jonak.

An enhancement by 630 ms

Jonak is a Parisian women’s shoes brand generating a high volume of traffic (more than 3500 visitors per day). Their website took on average 5.52 seconds per page to load just before their optimization period, in December 2015 – way above the market accepted medium estimated at around 400 ms per page.

Aware of the consequences of poor performance, the brand decided to manage (monitor and then optimize) its web performance with QUANTA.

The results were outstanding, as Jonak experienced an improvement of 630 ms per page.

It may seem like a small improvement at first sight, but try to multiply this by the number of pages seen per year by each visitor, and you’ll end up with a total cumulated loading time superior to a year and a half!

Just think of the frustration of a visitor experiencing all this waiting in front of a blank page…

Highly positive impacts thanks to optimization

Following the adoption of QUANTA and an optimization project on their e-commerce platform, Jonak reduced by 10,5% their loading times.

But even if these numbers are impressive, the most important information is the effect that these optimizations had on the conversion rate that increased by 32% by the end of January 2016! Yep. 32%.

The work undertaken by Jonak’s web teams enabled a major increase in conversion and online sales. The website is now faster, more accessible, more fluid, and thus optimal for a better user experience.

So thanks to this case study, we can clearly see that working on web performance leads to a better R.O.I. for each visitor, basically more sales with the same amount of marketing investments.

Web performance is therefore a key for your e-commerce website’s conversion.

L’article +32% of conversion for Jonak thanks to web performance est apparu en premier sur Quanta.

We’ve been working with Footcenter (a Panini company) for some time now, and they’ve been nice enough to let us share their data, and good results, with you, to testify of the importance of web performance for e-commerce websites.

BEFORE OPTIMIZATION

Let’s start this case study by just having a quick look at the timings of Footcenter store at the beginning of the mission.

That is how we found out that the loading times for each step of the classic sale funnel were far above what we recommend:

The total loading time for the classic sales funnel was, on average, 7,84s!

At QUANTA, our recommendation is that each page should load in under 300ms, which means that the entire sales funnel should load in no more than 1,5s. It’s a conservative goal compared to the “100 ms goal” decided by Google. These loading time goals are crucial when talking about SEO, User Experience, ..etc.

So you can see how the numbers of Footcenter were far from being satisfactory and that’s why they mandated us. But the main focus of QUANTA is not (and never should be) in the loading times by themselves, it should be: what is the impact of these loading times on the turnover of an e-commerce website?

Well, just see for yourself. Here’s a parallel between:

• the loading times monitored,
• the conversion rate per minute,
• and the estimated turnover loss due to slow page load times.

Footcenter before optimization – Screenshots of the “Page load time”, “Conversion rate” and “Turnover” widgets from QUANTA

Not so good, ha? A conversion rate per minute of 0.91% on average, and thus an estimated turnover loss of almost 13%. And all that because of a slow website, at each step of the sales funnel.

Of course, we didn’t pull these estimations out of a hat. 😉 These estimations were calculated by QUANTA’s “Conversion rate” and “Turnover” widgets, two of the many widgets available in the Business Dashboard feature of our monitoring tool, powered by none other than Google Analytics data.

But getting back to business. After we realized how important the margin of improvement was, both in loading times and turnover, it was time to get to work.

And that’s when working hand in hand with a conscientious web agency comes in handy. Not convinced? Well, just have a look at the results below!

AFTER OPTIMIZATION

As said before, our straightforward plan, in working with Footcenter, was:

• Improve the page load times for every step of the sales funnel.
• Increase the conversion rates.
• Reduce the turnover loss due to slow page load times.

And we did it ! Here are the graphs, after optimizations, that give you an idea of the power of web performance.

Footcenter after optimization – Screenshots of the “Page load time”, “Conversion rate” and “Turnover” widgets from QUANTA

You can clearly see in the graphs that optimizing the website had a drastic effect on page load times. The “Home” load time went from 1.44s to a very good 23.94ms on average. For the entire sales funnel, Footcenter went from a staggering 7.84s, to just 1.37s on average! It means that the entire sales funnel process is now 81 % faster than before optimization.

And as you can also see in the graph, this surge in speed had a spectacular effect on conversion rates, and thus turnover.

The conversion rate per minute went from 0.91% to 1.12%, which indicates an increase in conversion of 23%.

And the turnover loss due to slow page load times went from 12.55% to just 1.67%, which indicates a reduction by 86% of the losses in turnover. That translates to a staggering 23% of additional turnover, far exceeding our expectations!

CONCLUSION

Optimizing a website can be touchy, and costly, if you don’t have the right tool and the right team for it. But, it’s really worth it.

In Footcenter case, the ROI due to the optimizations was about 500%, in just 4 weeks (and this includes QUANTA’s annual license price, and the time spent working on this case by QUANTA’s and web agency x2i’s teams). So, over a year, your investment is going to be 60x reimbursed.

Before bringing this case to a close, 2 piece of advice:

• The link between slow page load times and increased conversion rate / turnover is undeniable. So it is essential to optimize all e-commerce platforms, or take the web performance into consideration when building one.
• When your site is optimized, keep it that way. Really, it’s easier to keep your site optimized, than doing heavy optimization sessions like this one.

And for the final word. Be it in terms of accuracy in the predictions, monitoring, optimizations, or the features offered by QUANTA, this case study really shows that our tool can be a crucial asset in improving the web performance and the profitability of an e-commerce platform.

Now? Would you be willing to spend 1$ to get 5$ back in just 4 weeks? Of course you would… right? 😉

L’article How Footcenter gained 23% of additional turnover thanks to webperf! est apparu en premier sur Quanta.

A cache is a technology used to save pre-generated documents and datas that are likely to be reused later on by a server, in order to avoid it to do unnecessary overwork.

That may sounds too vague for you. Imagine then a librarian who stocks the Lord of the Rings books in shelves far away from his cash register. A customer enters the shop and wants to buy the trilogy. The librarian goes for it, but he sees other customers coming in and looking for the same books. Tired of crossing the store and wishing to gain time, he puts all of the LoTR books on the same shelf near his cash register.

Now replace the librarian by the server, and the shelves being first the hard drive, and then the cache. This is the main idea of a cache : gaining time by storing datas you want to reuse if a similar request occurs.

For instance, when using a cache, a server is able to display a website page almost immediately if another user has already visited the same page. This usually leads to dramatically faster processes. Interesting, isn’t it ? Then, let’s have a look at it.

First and foremost, you must know many different caches exist to speed up a Magento application.Here are four key caches that can lead you to gain better performance.

1. Varnish, the Magento gatekeeper

Varnish is a very powerful asset when aiming at speed optimization for Magento. Indeed, it is a cache server who plays the role of a mediator between the users and your server (known as ‘reverse proxy’).

It allows you to store static HTML pages (when one do not grant interactivity with the users) that have already been loaded previously. It prevents Magento, and so the server, from running at all !

The benefits are really important : just imagine a customer who goes through a catalogue, clicks on several pages, and then wants to go back to a previous page to perform an impulse purchase. He will experience a very smooth user experience, thus being more likely to go through the whole sales funnel. He may even be willing to come back on your website next time he shops online.

Varnish is licensed under BSD, and therefore is free to use for your applications.

The only issue you could experiment while using it is whether you should cache a particular item or not, depending on its reusability. To use it in an optimum way, developers have to spend time installing it and configuring it correctly. However, it appears really worth it at the end of the day, since you will end up with one of the best performance-improver tool on the market.

2. Magento Full Page Cache for faster websites display

Along the same lines, Full Page Cache grants you basically the same functionalities as Varnish. However, FPC is a module already included in Magento Enterprise Edition and Magento 2.0, which can spare you the task of installing it. Moreover, it can be really useful for high-traffic Magento websites using average servers, as FPC can cope with peak loads pretty well. Very effective, it can boost the speed of your webpages by 6 to 25 times.

This extension also allows you to configure easily which pages you want to exclude from the cache compared to Varnish.

3. Avoiding reloading some piece of code with BlockCache

Now is time to work inside the Magento system so as to get rid of your slow pages. We have already seen that it is possible to store reusable static HTML pages, but what if they content real-time display that has to be modified depending on the user logged ?

That is the purpose of BlockCache. BlockCache is the default cache system implemented in Magento. You should better use it since it is able to store some selected pieces of an HTML code (known as ‘blocks’) you want to reuse on another page. This tool prevents Magento generating the same blocks over and over, which will result in your app being considerably faster for a logged user. It is really simple to use and won’t take long to be up and running.

4. Magento still too slow ? Opcode Cache, the icing on the cake

Until now, we focused on how to optimize HTTP requests on static pages and Magento itself. However, there is one step left before totally speeding up your website. Yes, we didn’t talk about the engine (PHP!) yet.

Magento is a framework based upon PHP programming language. The particularity of a code written in PHP is that every instruction has to be compiled before a web server can execute it, in an intermediate language named “Opcode”. However, numerous requests your PHP code addresses to your server are eventually identical, thus forcing it to repeat the same process over and over. Doing so is time and energy consuming. The idea behind Opcode Cache is to save those compiled versions of the code in a cache in order to execute them without the need to compile it every time, meaning much faster.

Don’t underestimate its benefits. On average, you can save up to 30% of the execution time. Moreover, it allows your server to handle more requests at the same time, which means more users can visit your website without it crashing. Using an Opcode Cache is an easy and key work if you are eager to make your Magento faster and lighter.

And last but not least, third party solutions

CDNs, reverse-proxies and others PHP accelerators can help you save some precious hundreds of milliseconds.

To name some great solutions :

• Fasterize acts as a reverse-proxy outside of your architecture and, like Varnish, can make sure that your Magento almost never get to run for pages that are most viewed by your visitors.
• Litespeed is a software to be installed on your server. It replaces apache with a webserver with a built in cache.  Unlike reverse proxy solutions such as Nginx and Varnish, it handles everything in one single solution.
• NitroGento is a Magento extension that allows you to use a Full Page Cache system even on Magento Community edition, and many other additional cache features.

Monitoring your speed is key

Now, you have all the keys in hand to boost your speed and gain tens of conversion percentage for your Magento store.

Nevertheless, it would be reckless to rely only on the caches you just put in place in case of slowdowns and wait until your dev team finds out. You must keep in mind that speed equals conversion. In order to keep your customers on your website and never lose a sale, monitoring your speed with appropriate tools is key.

Getting a simple alarm system monitoring your server is not enough since it won’t warn you about slowdowns, but only about an overheat of your server or cut downs.

L’article 4 Magento cache systems to speed up your Ecommerce est apparu en premier sur Quanta.

Numerous factors can have a major impact on the daily hosting capacity of a site: production works, changes in the database, increased traffic, addition of new modules, back-office modifications, etc.

Sales (like all large commercial operations) represent a major challenge for the turnover of your e-commerce website (according to WL Panel, 35 % of orders in a year are made during sales periods & Christmas)

So how does your website will behave under load? Let’s not leave anything to chance!

In this context, a load testing should allow :

1. to measure the actual limit of your site’s capacity, especially before a sales period.

2. to compare simulated traffic with real time visitors

3. to precisely identify bottlenecks and means of optimisations to increase this limit

It is typically recommended to perform a load testing right before a peak in real user traffic, after a migration, or before / after an optimisation phase to objectively measure the benefits.

By conducting these test phases with QUANTA , it is possible to analyse what exactly happened in the last minutes before the architecture overloaded.

Kind of like the blackbox of an airplane, the analysis of these data proves crucial to identify bottlenecks and prioritize optimisations to be conducted next.

How does it work?

Before, a load testing would usually require hours of preparation by technical teams (software configuration, creation of Visit scripts, “human” monitoring of indicators in real time, manual shutdown of the test, writing reports …) at an average cost of $5,000 per test, not including the cost of time spent in its organisation by the E-commerce team.

Today it’s… 2 clicks.

QUANTA load testing is based on the preconfigured scenarios (see explanatory video) and automates calibration of virtual users on your actual users as measured in Analytics. 2 clicks later, the test starts :

When to end the test? QUANTA , as a monitoring tool will check every minute that the platform responds properly, therefore as soon as the probe begins to record excessive slowdowns, the load testing will automatically stop upon reaching the capacity limit of your e-commerce platform to host. So basically it takes 2 clicks, then you can go have that cup of coffee!

The test is completed? Perfect, We now know the limits of your architecture after each load test :

It is essential to compare virtual users with the real users . The aim is not to be able to say, “we can take 2500 requests / minute” because this does not explain whether the situation is problematic for visits that are expected in the future. One can instead say , “we can handle 2.5 times or 3 times more the recorded traffic in the last sales…“. In QUANTA, virtual users are equal to Sessions in Google Analytics [*].

How to handle a bad surprise?

Let’s imagine  the worst case scenario … we realise that the capacity measured is below the expected traffic on the ‘Sales’ day ! Without preventive action, the site will naturally break as the traffic increases in the following days.

There’s no need for panic; we now can “rewind the film” to identify the causes of slowdowns that occurred during the load testing by clicking on “More details” in QUANTA (this option is available when the Magento profiler is activated, which is possible from the Starter Version license onwards)

Would you like to learn more about this service or obtain an offer? Don’t hesitate to contact us at support@quanta-computing.com or via our online form.

L’article 3 keys to a successful load testing with Quanta est apparu en premier sur Quanta.

ETAM’s page speed load time reduced by 700 ms

Etam is a luxury lingerie brand among the top 5 sites using Magento in France, with over 200 million page views per year. When we met with Etam’s website managers, their site only had a 1.2 second page speed loading time. Not really shocking at first sight. It is common to see e-commerce shops charge slowly. There is a lot of space for optimisation.

With the support of Quanta monitoring and tracking solution, the load time of Etam’s online store has been reduced to 500 ms, thus saving 700 ms. This may seem like only a slight gain but if we multiply the time saved, by the number of page loads  per year (200 million),that makes 4.4 years of waiting time saved! This is HUGE!

It shows how a small win has ultimately a strong impact in a global context. Imagine… 4.4 years of waiting time before a blank page while hoping for the desired page to be displayed!

By saving time, users enjoy a more comfortable navigation. They take advantage of a better UX and are therefore inclined to see more pages, interact more strongly, and will thus subtly go further in the sales funnel! E-shopping is no longer a stress but instead a nice ”ride” from the browser. Are they more likely to buy at the end of the funnel? Yes.

The impact of improved speed on ETAM performance

After optimisation, ETAM’s site has seen several of its indicators increase in Google Analytics:

• The number of page views per session has increased by 28%;
• The average time per visit increased by 21%;
• The conversion rate increased by 20%.

The optimisation work carried out by Baobaz agency and ETAM’s web team using the Quanta solution is a textbook case! Indeed, the brand now enjoys a site that is accessed faster, deeper, and transforms better. The effectiveness of the marketing team with the offers on and off-site is strengthened. Speed was the missing link to generate new sales and provide better visibility to the product range without any external action.

If you want to calculate your ROI linked to an action on your website’s speed, remember that Quanta offers diagnostic performance of your Magento website. Our experts will then connect to your site and make an initial assessment with you, letting you know the  percentage of conversion possible to aim for.

L’article ETAM earns 20% of conversion by optimising its online store est apparu en premier sur Quanta.

An e-commerce site has become a complex machinery

We all know it. Today, an e-commerce site is a big factory. Whether you offer hundreds or thousands of products for sale, there are many technical layers that overlap and interrelate. To complicate the whole thing, it is not one team but rather many technical and marketing teams that work on the site (web, system, network, brand).

The performance of the site is linked to the operation of the entire technical chain since each element is very interwoven with the others. We can thus schematize it as a huge machine:

If a slowdown appears on the site, where should you look? Which part of the machinery is jammed? Is it a server problem? Is it a problem with Magento? Is it the source code developed by my agency? Is it my database?

A partial view of this machinery does not allow understanding the slowdowns or the differences in performance.

Performance Intelligence

So, how can you quickly identify issues? There is a method called Performance Intelligence. This is the method that was used in the conception of Quanta, the Performance Intelligence tool SaaS is devoted to optimizing Magento platforms.

What is the approach? The approach is to regroup the performance indicators of each cogwheel on the technical chain. By having a comprehensive view, you can correlate, analyze and finally optimize effectively the performance of a site.

So how much do you gain in the end?

The effects of improved speed on conversion

Google and Amazon are not the only companies to have noticed these effects. Today Quanta Computing along with 250 Magento sites in France, may of these are top 40s, have measured effects on conversion rates that revolve around the same ratio of 100ms = 1% conversion rate, identified by Amazon!

Lets consider three examples of Magento e-commerce sites that use the Quanta solution to improve their pages’ loading time, and let’s look at the impact on sales:

• For Blanc Cerise, an online retailing site that specializes in linen, a gain of 2 seconds in loading speed translated into an increase of 27% in conversion;
• For Octant Design, which offers furniture design and interior decoration products, 1.2 seconds gained and an increase in conversion of 15% was observed;
• For  ETAM, a lingerie and ready-to-wear retailer, 700ms gained allowed increasing the conversion by 20%.

Optimized speed causes a chain reaction: The number of page views per session increases because the navigation is more comfortable. Visitors appreciate this comfort and spend more time on average on the site. They see more products, interact, and ultimately, they transform more.

L’article Performance Intelligence to Accelerate Magento est apparu en premier sur Quanta.

Although each business is unique, we can find common reasons for these failures. Understanding these factors should help you defy the statistics and make your e-commerce a success.

Poor planning and forecasting

Good planning and market research are preconditions to build your e-commerce site. You should consider these factors and know if there really is a demand for your products online, what the figures from your competitors are, will your site be profitable and afterwards, for how long, etc …

Lack of differentiation

Most online retailers do not really present demarcation on their market; these businesses have a natural tendency to imitate their competitors. A tip: do not start in a market because everyone pitches in. Instead, define what makes your site unique.

Wanting to sell everything to everyone

Do not try to sell too many products initially, be honest with yourself and determine if you can afford to spend time managing the procurement, inventory, sales and after sales service of your products. The goal is to succeed in providing a great pay-for-value and an impeccable customer service.

Poor user experience

User experience must now be placed at the center of concerns for e-commerce sites and it must go through 4 components of the UX design:

• emotional (graphic communication)
• technical (performance and speed)
• statistics (analysis)
• ergonomic (User Interface)

Lack of quality content

The lack of content can have a very negative impact on your sales. In addition to its impact on the ranking of your site, your content (product sheets, blog articles, guides, descriptions …) should encourage prospects for consumption on your site. User comments and feedbacks(positive and even negative!) for example, could help you to gain prospect’s trust.

L’article The 5 main reasons for the failure of an e-commerce site est apparu en premier sur Quanta.