Recently we needed to buy a spare battery for the WebMate camera. So I turned to Google and Skroutz (Greece’s biggest price-comparison site and marketplace) to see what was available. Prices ranged from 60 to 80 euros, but I also spotted an offer for 42 euros that stood out for its low price.
The online shop with the 42-euro offer was listed on Skroutz, which gave me an extra sense of trust. Shops on Skroutz (even though this one was not part of the marketplace itself) seem to have a certain level of seriousness and reliability, because they have to submit various documents to take part.
Pleased to have found the offer, I clicked the link that took me to the product page via Skroutz. The eshop was not exactly what you would call impressive or confidence-inspiring, but for a 42-euro purchase it didn’t bother me much. The page loaded at an average speed, neither very fast nor very slow, which didn’t bother me at all, since I wasn’t in a hurry for the battery.
At the back of my mind was the thought that the price was unusually low compared with the rest of the market. I thought they might not have updated the price or the stock, or that something might not be working properly on the eshop. Even so, I decided to go ahead with the purchase, since the offer looked very good value. So, feeling optimistic, I clicked the button to complete the purchase.
The eshop checkout and some thoughts
The checkout process seemed a little complicated at first, because it required registration, which was the default option. I had to manually choose to continue as a guest, which wasn’t a big obstacle, since I knew this was typical of older websites. So I carried on as a guest and filled in the necessary details. What really bothered me was that there was no option to request an invoice, which I wanted because the purchase was for business use. Although the amount wasn’t high enough to make this a critical issue, the missing option made me wonder how complete the buying experience was.
So who is this eshop?
I decided to look a little further into the business I was about to buy from. First I checked the website’s terms of use, but found no information about the company. Then I visited the page on purchases and personal data, hoping to find some details there, but again found nothing. The lack of basic information about the business made me seriously reconsider buying, as my trust in the eshop began to evaporate.
Wider online presence
Despite my initial hesitation, the attractive offer made me keep looking for more information. I decided to look the business up on Google Business Profile, where I found only a basic listing with few details or reviews. I also checked the business’s social media, where Facebook and Instagram had only a few posts a month and not many followers. This didn’t exactly convince me that the business had an active online presence, but the offer was still there, holding my interest.
I decided to give it one last chance by looking more closely at the eshop and the company’s other pages. But what I saw made up my mind: pages without photos, showing only the missing-image icon and the alt text. I decided not to bother any further and to go for the marketplace at the average price, which guaranteed quick delivery and a reliable return option if anything went wrong. The cash-on-delivery option was tempting, but my daily life already has enough challenges without adding the purchase of a battery to the list.
The whole process, from searching to deciding not to buy, took no more than 5 to 6 minutes. It was quick, and I made my decisions quickly too. There was no single serious problem that put me off, such as a missing cash-on-delivery option. It was the small issues in the eshop, the kind an owner may not pay attention to. Yet these small details can put customers off every single day. It is important to give your eshop and your online presence in general the right care and attention, so that simple oversights don’t lose you customers to platforms like Skroutz or to other eshops.
What to watch out for so you don’t lose sales on your eshop
Look beyond the big mistakes in your eshop: pay attention to your wider online image too, and to every small improvement you can make. Picture a person’s perception as a bar that fills up to 100. If an eshop or a website is not attractive, the bar jumps straight to 30. As they run into problems it rises further, and with the slightest extra issue it can go past 100, leading the visitor to leave the page, so you lose a potential sale or lead. On the other hand, a good-looking design can bring that negative perception down from 90 to 40, improving the chances of a successful enquiry or purchase.
Branding & awareness
Now, on top of all the above, think how big a role branding and advertising play. What if I had heard of this eshop before, or had seen videos or ads from it on social media? Would I have trusted it more? How important is advertising after all, and how much of a role does simple awareness play?
And how to write good articles!
Apart from the experience and the mistakes to avoid, it is worth taking away the storytelling method we used to write this article, presenting possible problems with your website and your eshop through an experience of our own. We have done this before with the beautiful bathroom and with the orchid article, and we like doing it because it holds the reader’s interest more. Finally, it is worth noticing how we used artificial intelligence. We wrote the texts and the content ourselves, then asked the AI, paragraph by paragraph, to correct our article and make it read better in a friendly, everyday tone.
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