Let’s be honest, online shopping is quite convenient. Everything is now just a click away.
You can browse hundreds of products, compare prices, and place an order in minutes, all from the comfort of your couch.
But while the digital shelves may look perfect, the experience isn’t always smooth for every shopper.
Have you ever waited endlessly for a package that never arrived on time? Or maybe you received a product that looked nothing like the photos?
From confusing return policies to payment glitches and poor customer support, online shopping comes with its own set of frustrations. As the eCommerce landscape evolves, so do consumer and online shopping issues.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the common problems faced by customers in online shopping, examine what are the problems faced by customers, and provide online shopping solutions to help retailers build trust and deliver better shopping experiences.
For Magento 2 store owners, we’ve also included relevant MageAnts extensions to help you solve these online shopping issues effectively.
12 Common Challenges of Online Shopping Faced by Consumers
Online shopping has grown exponentially in recent years, with over 2.77 billion consumers expected to make online purchases in 2025, with ecommerce sales are projected to exceed $6.86 trillion.
1. Additional Hidden Costs
One of the most frequent issues that consumers encounter when they shop online is an extra expense.
The majority of the time, people wind up spending more money than they intended. This is because extra fees, such as shipping, packing, tax, etc., have been added to the transaction.
Additional fees that are only shown at checkout have the potential to undermine customer confidence and lead to abandonment. In simpler terms, there are instances where the buyer does not get what they anticipated from their purchase.
Additional hidden costs can make the difference between a winning deal and a losing one.
Solution: Maintain transparent pricing throughout the customer journey, including taxes and shipping costs.
Merchants can simply display all the additional costs like handling fees, shipping, tax, etc, into the total price and try not to have any hidden or additional charges at the time of checkout.
Recommended Extension: Merchants can also add the Magento 2 Extra Fee Extension to their Magento store to display all the extra and hidden charges for additional services like rush orders, gift wrap, packing charges, handling fees, etc., on orders.
2. Complex, or Frustrating Checkout Process
One of the main causes of cart abandonment is a drawn out and challenging checkout process. Even serious shoppers may be turned off by requiring them to register, complete an excessive number of fields, or navigate through several pages.
This is especially problematic on mobile, when typing and switching between pages can be inconvenient. Customers desire payment alternatives that are quick, easy, and straightforward.
Solution: Streamline the checkout process with fewer steps, guest checkout, auto fill options, and one step checkout can significantly improve conversion rates.
Recommended Extension: The MageAnts Guest to Customer for Magento 2 extension enables the guest checkout and automatically converts guests who place an order into registered customers. This helps in reducing checkout time and also improves customers’ shopping experience
3. Inaccurate Product Representation
Customers often receive products that look different from what was shown online, leading to disappointment and doubt.
Solution: Implement user generated content like reviews and real life images, and regularly update product listings.
Recommended Extensions:
Magento 2 Product Labels: Highlight key attributes like "Best Seller" or "New" to build clarity.
Magento 2 Advanced Product Reviews: Display detailed product reviews by customers, rating ratios that visually represent ratings through graphs & charts.
4. Concerns Over Security
As the incidence of cyber fraud rises, concerns regarding online shopping frequently arise from the apprehension of disclosing personal and financial information.
Should a website seem unprofessional, lack security certifications, or fail to implement HTTPS, users might be reluctant to provide personal or payment details.
The fear of scams or data breaches causes numerous individuals to forgo completing their purchases prior to the checkout process.
Solution: To solve these concerns, firms could employ SSL encryption, secure payment gateways, trust badges, and customer reviews to create confidence.
Recommended: While this is more about best practices than extensions, MageAnts’ code and extensions are Magento certified and built following best security protocols, ensuring your store remains secure and trustworthy.
5. Lack of Real Time Support
Not being able to contact a support person when issues arise is a major online shopping issue. Shoppers expect quick resolutions when something goes wrong.
An absence of quick customer support, whether through live chat, email, or phone, can cause disappointment and result in negative reviews or lost sales. Delays in resolving order issues or answering queries can damage customer relationships.
Solution: Use live chat support, detailed FAQ sections, helpdesk integration, clear contact options, and AI based chatbots to offer real time assistance.
6. Limited Personalization
Generic user experiences don’t appeal to customers expecting tailored recommendations and product suggestions.
Today’s online shoppers expect a tailored experience. When customers see unrelated products or promotions, they feel ignored.
A lack of personalized recommendations based on browsing or purchasing history might result in decreased engagement and lost upselling opportunities.
Solution: Personalization can be enhanced using smart product suggestions, recently viewed items, user specific promotions, browsing behavior, and past purchases.
Recommended Extension: The MageAnts Magento 2 Frequently Bought Together extension allows you to showcase related products often bought together, increasing average order value and customer satisfaction through relevant recommendations.
7. Return & Exchange Issues
Consumers face several problems while shopping online, including return & exchange issues. Most of the customers experience return, exchange, or refund issues while shopping online because many retailers don’t offer refunds, exchanges, or return policies.
Reasons why customers ask for a return order or ask for a refund, or exchange include a damaged product, dissatisfaction with the product(s) purchased, incorrect size delivered or ordered, etc.
Solution: Merchants can add clear and flexible returns & exchange policies to their website that help customers get their money back or replace products that do not meet their expectations. You can implement the Magento 2 RMA extension that simplifies and manages product returns, exchanges, and refund processes.
8. Missing Product Details
Customers who purchase items online usually miss out on important details about the product they are buying.
This is due to a lack of transparency on the part of the vendors. This can lead to disappointment among buyers and, ultimately, negative reviews about products and your brand.
Merchants can simply lose their customers if they don’t provide proper product details like product features, product benefits, descriptions, any manuals, videos, and images. Don’t let unclear information cause potential buyers to leave your website before making a purchase.
Solution: Therefore, having proper & sufficient product details on the website is essential. Try to provide detailed product descriptions, clear product images, pricing details, proper size guide (if any), etc.
For users of Magento, the MageAnts Product Attachments Magento 2 extension enables the addition of extra downloadable content such as size charts, user manuals, documents, videos, or additional product information to enhance transparency.
This helps customers in making well informed choices, thereby decreasing the chances of returns and boosting overall satisfaction.
9. Complicated Website Navigation and Poor UX
Most users will abandon an online store that is difficult to navigate.
Confusion caused by menus, cluttered layouts, slow load times, and even forgotten filters can be extremely frustrating. Shoppers, especially on mobile, want quick and effortless access.
How to solve it: Enhancing the user experience through clean designs, organized categories, and more advanced filtering options can greatly aid in accomplishing these goals.
Make it simpler for search, browse, and handy filters to help users find what they need without clutter.
Helpful tool for Magento users: With AJAX enabled and SEO friendly URLs, MageAnts Layered Navigation for Magento 2 boosts product filtering.
Users can narrow their queries to size, price, color, brand, etc, which allows them to shop faster and more comfortably.
10. Insufficient Real Time Product Inventory
One of the challenges online shoppers face is the often encountered scenario where items added to the shopping cart are not available by the time the customer proceeds to checkout.
This is not only a waste of the customer's time, but a great deal of frustration usually results in exiting the site. This may lead to an eventual switch to competing sites.
Solution: To avoid this issue, businesses should integrate stock availability on their product pages. Alerts for low stock notifications with limited quantities available or back-in-stock alerts should be shown to better manage customer expectations.
Recommended Extension: Through MageAnts Out of Stock Notification for Magento 2, customers can be notified of any item out of stock to subscribe to get notified of restocking. This engages customers and encourages return visits when the product is available to maximize sales opportunities.
11. Delivery Issues
One more considerable concern in online shopping is late or inaccurate deliveries.
Out of order deliveries (in terms of time, size, color, or product) cause a great deal of inconvenience to the customer.
After payment, customers expect full visibility and dependability concerning the service provided.
Approach: Order tracking and timely notifications via email or SMS can curb these challenges, making it imperative to provide tracking at each step and constant notifications.
Recommended Addition: MageAnts Order Tracking for Magento 2 extension allows merchants to notify of order status updates.
12. Lack of Multilingual or Multi Currency Capabilities
If your website does not support customers' choice of languages or currencies, they may find it difficult to use it.
Confusion during checkout results from this, and purchases may be avoided entirely.
Solution: To improve global reach, enhance your store's accessibility with built in multilingual and multi currency options from Magento.
In addition, use geolocation as well as currency switching plugins for an even better tailored experience.
Effective Solutions to Online Shopping Issues
Tackling the common problems faced by customers requires a strategic approach. Here are some practical online shopping solutions that merchants can implement:
a. Invest in High Quality Content
Product images, videos, and detailed descriptions bridge the gap between digital and physical shopping experiences. It builds confidence in buying decisions.
b. Prioritize Mobile Optimization
With mobile commerce on the rise, your store must be responsive and fast loading on smartphones and tablets.
c. Enable Secure and Versatile Payment Options
Offer trusted payment gateways and other payment options that match customer preferences in different regions.
d. Build a Transparent Logistics Strategy
Ensure your logistics providers offer reliable tracking systems. Communicate delays proactively.
e. Create a Comprehensive Help Section
Answer online shopping questions and answers proactively with detailed FAQ pages, tutorial videos, and live chat tools.
Further Reading: How to Configure and Integrate Magento 2 WhatsApp Chat
f. Implement Customer Centric Policies
Easy returns, timely refunds, and proactive support are key to long term customer loyalty and brand reputation.
Suggestions for Online Shopping Platforms
To tackle the problems with online shopping, merchants should regularly evaluate their platform for usability, performance, and customer satisfaction.
Here are some final suggestions for online shopping platforms using Magento:
- Use analytics tools to track cart abandonment and improve weak points.
- Personalize shopping experiences with AI powered engines.
- Offer loyalty programs to reduce customer churn.
- Regularly update your product catalog with trending and in demand items.
- Optimize performance speed to enhance load times and reduce bounce rates.
By integrating the right extensions and customer first policies, Magento store owners can eliminate friction points and offer a smooth, delightful online experience.
Conclusion
While online shopping continues to grow rapidly, the customer experience still has some pain points, from unclear product information and complex checkouts to delivery delays and poor support.
From transparency issues to return hassles, the problems faced by consumers can impact trust, retention, and overall sales.
By understanding these online shopping issues and implementing tailored solutions using smart tools like extensions, businesses can improve customer satisfaction and drive conversions.
This way, you can transform your online store into a seamless, user friendly, and trustworthy shopping destination. Magento store owners have a powerful advantage here.
With the help of performance driven solutions like MageAnts extensions, whether it’s simplifying checkout, enabling real time stock alerts, or enhancing navigation, you can fine tune every aspect of your store to meet (and exceed) customer expectations.
Ready to turn your store’s weak points into winning features?
Explore MageAnts’ Magento 2 extensions and start building a shopping experience your customers will love and remember.
