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I have been around ecommerce for a while, and one thing always reigns true, things go wrong. Whether it is a bug that stops products from making their way into the cart, or it is a problem with the checkout page it happens on a regular basis (especially if you use Magento).

Unfortunately, error checking and user testing feels like a one and done task. I am guilty of assuming that because it worked last month, it still works today. That is not always the case and you can resolve conversion issues often times by simply going through all of the interactions you want your customers to take with your site.

#1 Your SSL certificate is throwing warnings

Whenever a page has both secure and non-secure elements, a warning message appears in the user’s browser. Any trust you have established with a new visitor is immediately lost making it much more difficult to close the deal.

When I have encountered this problem, it usually involves a module or image that is being called with the ‘http’ protocol instead of the ‘https’ protocol.

If you have cleared this error in your browser, you may not be getting it now even though your visitors are. To test, use a computer you haven’t in the past to check the site, or clear all of your cache and history.

#2 Your add to cart button is broken

Recently, after upgrading Magento a client informed me that Internet Explorer would not allow the add to cart button to function as a form. It was an error within the site that had went unnoticed for several months.

The company leadership were frantically trying to figure out why their sales had dropped off dramatically. They attempted layout changes, price drops, and aggressive email marketing during those few months only to discover a large segment of their customers was unable to add a product to the cart.

Make sure this process is working well, all the way up to the checkout page.

#3  Your credit card processor is returning errors

At least once a month, you need to run a test transaction with your credit card to make sure there are no errors with the credit card processor. Sometimes, the XML or other API protocols could be malfunctioning and timing out before finishing a transaction, denying your customer the ability to complete the transaction.

Ask your payment gateway to give you an error log for any issues that have been encountered by your customers.

I have run into this problem with large gateways like Authorize.net. No one is exempt from software bugs.

#4 You give your customers the “Nuclear” option

When it makes sense, allow your customers to change the quantity of an item they want to buy. In some cases, you can even provide a little red “x” or delete button. Conversion testing will let you know what works best.

However, some shopping cart software has an “empty cart” button conveniently located next to the “proceed” button. Giving a customer the perfect opportunity to actually hit the wrong button and empty their cart, causing frustration and cart abandonment. I think you get the picture…

#5 Your images are broken

During some recent development, one line of code caused about 50% of the images in a major ecommerce store to disappear. We eventually fixed the problem…its a good idea not to work on a store in production by the way.

Anyway, sales dropped off for the several hours we worked to resolve the issues. Not a major loss, but if you have any images not displaying correctly throughout your store, you are going to see a loss in sales.

The key to avoiding and fixing these types of errors is to constantly test and get other users to test your catalog and checkout processes.