Previously, we brought you seven problems commonly faced by online merchants as well as a few avenues you could take to avoid them. Here we’re bringing you nine more. These are all issues commonly faced by those who sell online, and every one of them is avoidable. From a lack of payment gateways to confusing or nonspecific category pages, here are even more problems faced by online businesses. Heed our advice and don’t let these troubles catch you unaware.
1. Your Online Store Is Peppered With Technical Glitches
A site that has technical trouble is going to encounter many issues. Two of the most important are that UX and UI will suffer drastically and that a site’s search engine optimization will suffer as well.
Sites that are troubled by technical errors are a real bear to navigate and they just smack of untrustworthiness. After all, most of us are aware that it’s 2020 and see technical issues as a thing of the past. At the very least, most customers expect companies to spend adequately to do away with glitches, broken links and other technical problems.
Then there’s the fact that all of these issues will be recognized by search engines and will probably hurt your rankings. A simple audit of your site will uncover many of them, so there’s really no excuse for letting them persist. Just as an example, we here at 1Digital Agency will offer you a free website audit that will help uncover technical issues that can usually be easily fixed.
2. Your Online Shop Doesn’t Offer Enough Payment Gateways
As if technical problems weren’t enough to turn customers away, a site that doesn’t offer adequate payment gateways can be a real turn off and hurt conversions. No one wants to begin a checkout process only to find out that your website won’t accept their favorite credit card. It sure doesn’t help if you won’t accept any of their credit cards.
That being said, credit cards are only one of many payment gateways that your online store should offer to your customers. Lack of payment options can directly counter produce conversions.
Don’t fall into this easily avoidable trap. Many eCommerce platforms enable you to accept many payment gateways. Better yet, work with us here at 1Digital Agency to create a custom design and checkout process that offers a better user experience. Speaking of checkout processes…
3. Hidden Fees In Your Checkout Process Cause Shopping Cart Abandonment
The last thing you want to do is hide fees in your checkout process. That’ll cause your customers to break records for the quickest speed to bounce off a site.
As anyone has ever experienced (perhaps even you) beginning a checkout process only to get blindsided by some additional fee you didn’t expect (shipping and tax typically not included) can make you feel slighted. Your customers feel the same way. No one wants to see an “environmental fee” or a “finder’s fee” or some other nonsense tacked onto the price of their online order.
And so, as a result, customers will abandon shopping carts in droves. This is really more of a matter of site design that you can control yourself, so be mindful of it.
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4. Your Category Pages Are Confusing or Non-Specific
Category and collection pages are the most under-managed high-value pages in most stores. They rank for the broad, high-intent queries ("men's running shoes," "stainless steel cookware") and they are where browsers decide whether to keep going. Two failure patterns dominate: categories so broad the shopper cannot narrow down, and category pages with no unique copy so they neither rank nor convert. Fix it by giving each major category a short, genuinely useful intro paragraph (buying considerations, not keyword stuffing), faceted filters that match how customers actually shop (size, price, use case), and a sensible default sort. Treat the top five revenue categories like landing pages, because that is what they are.
5. Thin or Duplicated Product Descriptions
Manufacturer-supplied copy is on hundreds of competitors' sites verbatim. Search engines will not reward you for it, and shoppers do not get the decision-making detail they need. Prioritize unique descriptions for your best sellers first: lead with the use case and the problem the product solves, then specs, then social proof. You do not need a novel — 80–120 honest, specific words on a top product beats 300 words of fluff.
6. No Trust Signals Near the Add-to-Cart and Checkout
Security badges, a visible return policy, real review counts, and clear shipping expectations belong where the decision happens — on the product page and in the cart, not buried in the footer. Surprise costs are the single most cited reason for cart abandonment in industry checkout research; showing shipping and tax expectations early is a conversion fix, not just a UX nicety.
7. A Site That Is Slow or Unstable on Mobile
The majority of eCommerce traffic is mobile. Core Web Vitals (loading, interactivity, layout stability) are both a ranking input and a conversion input. Compress and correctly size images, defer non-critical scripts, and test the actual checkout on a mid-range phone on a normal connection — not on your office wifi on a flagship device.
8. No Plan for Abandoned Carts and Repeat Purchase
Acquiring a customer is the expensive part; failing to recover an abandoned cart or earn the second order wastes it. A basic three-message abandoned-cart sequence and a post-purchase flow are among the highest-ROI things a store can ship. We cover the specifics in our eCommerce email marketing work.
A quick self-audit checklist
- Run a crawl (or our free site audit) and fix broken links and orphaned pages.
- Offer the payment methods your audience actually uses, including at least one digital wallet.
- Show all-in cost (shipping + tax) before the final step.
- Rewrite the top 20 product descriptions in your own words.
- Give the top 10 categories unique intro copy and useful filters.
- Pass Core Web Vitals on mobile for your top templates.
- Ship an abandoned-cart and a post-purchase email flow.
None of these require a rebuild. They require attention to the details that compound. If you would rather have a team handle the audit and the fixes, contact 1Digital Agency.
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