Affected by the pandemic, online purchases have been increasing over the past few weeks, and traffic jams in logistic centers have become the new norm. Unable to go out shopping, most people have resorted to online methods - the global trend last year. According to the statistics from Digital Commerce 360 website, online shopping accounted for 44 percent of the total retail sales revenue in 2020. Nearly half of the people rely on the Internet for survival. As the Internet environment changes, is it feasible for your website service to remain unchanged?

Now is the time to perform an overall health check for the website and online services provided by your brand. Don’t let your website visitors come and leave without getting any feedback. 5xRuby Executive Director Sho Chang stated that: “The methods by which consumers learn about brands have changed, and online channels have become the key.” Brand managers and marketers must recognize the current situation and act now to revise and optimize their websites.

Five Major NG Conditions of Websites and Internet Services

When a user is directed to a website after searching for a product using Google, they would be disappointed by various NG behaviors, such as when the website fails to load, or the check-out function crashes. The user may look for a competing platform or shop on another website offering better user experience, and they may “never look back”. Sho Chang reveals the five most common dilemmas below, so take a look and perform a health check on your website!

1. The website looks like an image gallery

Even with highly sophisticated Internet technology, some product websites still fill their web pages with pictures and images. Regardless of the aesthetics of the graphics design, when a user attempts to enter the site, a large amount of time is required for image loading. With the existing 4G and 5G Internet services, even though the speed of the network seems sufficient, the network and hardware environment is different for everyone.  An examination of the image source code shows that the SEO keyword has not been used. The entire website looks like an image gallery, challenging the patience of website visitors.

2. A mixture of incomprehensible Chinese and English texts

Internationalization is indeed important. However, some local brands without international sales operations present both Chinese and English texts on the same webpage. When the user browses the web page for information, the English portion becomes needless information, even increasing a burden on users. English content is not intrinsically bad. However, it is necessary to understand whether an English version is needed on the brand website. Even for local brands aiming to expand their market overseas, it is better to divide the English and Chinese texts into two different pages in the design.

3. Complicated SEO keyword Design

Whether a website contains texts or images, SEO “keywords” are usually embedded in a page. However, sometimes the full name of the product is used without any layout design or editing, which may become a disadvantage for the brand. For example, when a user wants to look for “goggles”, they will intuitively use that as the search string, and select various goggles from the search results. Users would not input some complicated search words such as “Ocean swimming adult beginner streamline style goggles”. This is something often ignored by the brands. If your products contain some technical terms, choose words from the perspective of  consumers for the construction of suitable SEO keywords.

4. Shoppers Find Themselves Stuck at the Checkout Page Despite a Great Product

An online product might be very creative and presented on a very decent web page design. Everything seems impeccable, except that when the consumer enters the checkout page, the webpage gets stuck or crashes. All the efforts spent creating a good user experience flow becomes wasted – even though the web design had successfully captured the attention of consumers, it does not allow them to complete the purchase. Sho Chang said that she once worked on a well-known fundraising project, which enjoyed such a positive reception that the original fundraising platform crashed due to being overwhelmed by traffic volume. The problem was resolved when the customer asked 5xRuby to rebuild the checkout interface and mechanisms in a hurry. Therefore, in addition to presentation of the content, a good website must also take into careful consideration of the system architecture design.

5. Monitoring Network Traffic Manually in the Age of Automation

Even though most Internet services have become automated, some websites still rely on manually monitoring and regulating the traffic flow. As mentioned above in Item 4, if the number of visitors surges, and the system’s inability to respond leads to a crash, the website loses out when the consumer is unable to checkout. The advantage of an automated monitoring system lies in its ability to respond and adjust the traffic flow at all times to resolve issues in a timely manner. Sho Chang said that this is essential for the brands. Currently, consumers have a multitude of online shopping platforms to choose from. When the checkout function crashes on one website, shoppers can immediately switch to a better platform to check out. Chang recommends replacing manual monitoring so the problem can be resolved permanently.

How to Improve a Website that Fails the Health Exam

To properly prepare for the details and issues related to websites services, the first thing to do is select a team with experience in “developing online services”. A team may easily overlook minor issues that might lead to big problems if they lack experience developing a large-scale Internet service or do not specialize in this area. After all, “the devil is in the details”. Only a professional team with extensive implementation experience can offer the right solution.

Product pages on company websites that were seldom visited previously may have the opportunity to be noticed. Many products that used to be looked over and purchased in physical shops have been forcibly transferred to online stores. Optimizing brand websites and Internet services should be considered the most important task “at this stage”.