¡Greetings Yclas friends! This week we share the most common errors in eCommerce and how to avoid them.
Nowadays internet makes it easy for us to create a platform where to sell products, of course, all websites at the beginning are not perfect, and those who have more active time online maybe continue making mistakes.
The competition you'll find is very huge, but, there are common errors that many websites make on eCommerce.
Here we mention some of them.
Bad Website Design
People are getting used to buying almost everything online. The design of the website is essential because a good design will allow customers to navigate your site in an easy and fast way.
Some things you should keep in mind are to implement a responsive website, easy navigation, to allow purchases as a guest user, and short steps to checkout.
Also, the use of an old-fashioned and low-quality logo makes your website look bad, go ahead and renovate your pixelated logo, you will not regret it.
Not Knowing Your Target Customers
Another common error is not knowing your target customer or niche, which not only happens in websites but also in companies. You must think like your final customer and how he/she acts.
You have to study and create a base in terms of demographic information, behavior, and all the needs your customers have.
Bad Quality Images and Videos
This is one of the most common mistakes on eCommerce, remember that the customer can not touch or try the product, it would not be fair that the customer can not see the product either.
You must use high-quality images, and from different angles, so the customer has a close 360º visual experience of the product (e.g. clothing, it should be pictures of models posing and wearing the product).
An extra tip will be the use of full-screen zoom (as a pop-up), that's why you should have large and expandable images.
Slow Website
Here, we mention two important points: a slow website because of performance, and a slow website because of bad hosting.
When it comes to performance, problems can come from different sources such as excessive use of plugins, non-optimized images, or a problem with the template in use.
Now, if it's about bad hosting, make sure your website is hosted in a good quality host. Sometimes websites are sharing their IP, which translates into shared servers and this will make your website run very slow.
We recommend that your server be physically located in the country where you want to position your site or, you can contract services with private servers that will be dedicated to your website.
Descriptive Texts
This is a mistake that too many eCommerce sites make, we are talking about long descriptions that nobody or almost nobody will want to read to buy a product.
The descriptive text of the product will be better and will have more impact if you make it short and simple, so that customers know right away essential info and what the product is about.
Not Using Reviews
In marketing and online sales, reviews are very important. Knowing the opinions of other people who have bought the product you want, brings security and confidence.
Checking the reviews nowadays, it's a standard procedure customer made, when they are making any online purchase.
The reviews are very influential when it comes to a customer clicking on "buy".
Shipping Costs
Did you know that a large percentage of customers leave the purchase when they see the shipping prices? of course, we are not telling you to delete them completely, but, you could offer some extra affordable options which depend on the shipping time (e.g. Free shipping if you want to receive within 5 days for premium users with a low annual fee).
What the Latest Data Says: Checkout Abandonment and Speed Targets
The errors above are easier to prioritise when you know how much each one costs. Here is what current research shows.
Why shoppers really abandon checkout
The Baymard Institute's cart abandonment research (page updated 22 September 2025) puts the average documented abandonment rate at 70.22%, based on 50 studies. Baymard also surveyed why shoppers who were ready to buy (not just browsing) left during checkout. Several of the top reasons match this article's sections:
| Reason shoppers abandoned checkout | Share | Related error in this article |
|---|---|---|
| Extra costs too high (shipping, tax, fees) | 40% | Shipping costs |
| Delivery was too slow | 20% | Shipping costs (slow delivery options) |
| Did not trust the site with card details | 19% | Bad website design, not using reviews |
| Site required creating an account | 18% | Bad website design (no guest checkout) |
| Checkout too long or complicated | 17% | Bad website design (too many steps) |
| Website errors or crashes | 17% | Slow website |
| Returns policy not good enough | 13% | Not covered above, so worth adding to your checklist |
| Could not see the total cost up front | 12% | Shipping costs |
Two practical takeaways. First, show the full price, including shipping, as early as possible, on the product page if you can. Second, trim the form. Baymard finds that an ideal checkout needs only 12 to 14 form elements (7 to 8 fields), while the average US checkout shows 23.48 elements by default.
"Fast enough" now has a definition
Google measures page experience with Core Web Vitals. The recommended targets on web.dev are:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): 2.5 seconds or less, roughly how quickly the main content appears.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP): 200 milliseconds or less, how quickly the page reacts to taps and clicks. INP replaced First Input Delay on 12 March 2024.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0.1 or less, so buttons don't jump around while the page loads.
Measure these at the 75th percentile of real visits, separately for mobile and desktop, for example with PageSpeed Insights. Heavy plugins and unoptimised images, mentioned in the "Slow Website" section, usually show up as poor LCP and INP.
Server location matters less than it used to
The advice to host your server in your target country needs updating. Google's guide to multi-regional sites (updated 10 December 2025) says server location is not a definitive signal, because many sites use content delivery networks (CDNs) or are hosted abroad. For country targeting it points to stronger signals. A country-code domain (such as .de or .co.uk) is the clearest, followed by subdomains or subdirectories, plus hreflang annotations. For speed, a good CDN close to your shoppers is often a simpler fix than moving your server.
Product Filters
This is not so essential, but we recommend using it, this will improve the customer experience and they will quickly reach the product they want.
You can also use orientation content like wizard search.
Deleting Sold Out Products
This is a beginner's mistake on eCommerce, but a very serious one, affects both customers and SEO, If you have deleted a product on your website and someone had linked it, or Google has indexed it when a client tries to enter to this specific page again, he will get an "Error 404".
So, we recommend to do not deleting any product that has run out of stock.
Follow these tips, improve your eCommerce website and let us know if these tips have helped you.
If you know of any other common eCommerce errors, feel free to tell us
Regards,
YCLAS team
