How To Lose An E-Commerce Sale In Three Easy Steps

Modern e-commerce design theory beats online retailers over the head with the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) design mantra. Pare navigation back to a minimum. Use advanced analytics to reduce clicks-to-purchase. Deploy advanced search algorithms to get the customer to his destination more quickly. Pursue one-click checkout with all your might.

For customers, the journey from landing page to purchase page has never been easier, never been faster.

For some online retailers, however, the single-minded focus on rushing the customer to checkout seems to have displaced a fair amount of common sense measure once the customer is there.

Here’s a glaring example. A recent barn improvement project on my little homestead found me looking for an item I couldn’t find locally—I needed 30 feet of door track cover for a large sliding barn door. It’s simple stuff—light-gauge steel bent into a nifty shape that neatly conceals an otherwise unsightly steel door track and protects it from the elements.

Having no luck finding it locally, I turned to the Internet. To my delight, a quick Google search turned up just what I was looking for. At little more than $12.00 per ten-foot section, the $36.00-and-change purchase was a no-brainer (see “Step One” screen grab below).

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