Like any of the relationships in your life, the one with your eCommerce store is both personal and involving. In many ways, that’s how you’d want it to be. However, as with those other relationships, it’s possible to be too involved to gain a realistic picture of exactly what’s going on. You’re seeing everything from your point of view, based on your insider knowledge, experiences, feelings, desires and the like.

To put it bluntly, this can lead to a specific danger, and it’s this – you can end up selling mainly to yourself. You know the positive points of your products, understand the benefits that can be gained and sub-consciously believe that the rest of the world (aka potential customers) should feel just the same. Maybe they should, but that is not usually their starting point!

What happens when you take that step back?

When you take a step back from your eCommerce site and start to approach it from the potential customer’s angle, then you can start to appreciate what it really needs to achieve. And that’s to match your products to the needs of those conducting internet searches that could lead to them doing business with you.

Therefore, it’s vital that your eCommerce site presents your products in a way that offers the results they seek. A very simple example: people don’t buy packaging tape because it’s sticky, but because they want to send securely wrapped parcels.

Two other ways that can get in the way of making eCommerce sales

A second ‘insider error’ is to use the type of descriptive language that is understandable to those who know the products intimately but not necessarily to those who don’t. This often includes the use of both unexplained technical terms and industry-specific jargon.

Matched to this is a third possibility: that descriptions are incomplete because those creating them have sub-conscious assumptions that others will know part of the ‘working story’ of that product. You could compare this to asking someone for directions when in a town you’ve never visited before. As a local, what they tell you might be inadvertently incomplete, simply because they are taking a familiar journey in their head, and are missing out some important points because they are so obvious to them.

Can we step back with you?

The above is just one of so many areas our skilled Magpie team can cover when completing an eCommerce Effectiveness Audit for your online business. To find out more, please contact us now for an obligation-free chat about how our eCommerce consultancy could best work with you.