Charles Duncombe, a British entrepreneur running travel, mobile phones and clothing websites, says spelling mistakes can have a huge impact on online sales, sometimes reducing them by as much as 50%.
And although the conclusion is based on empirical evidence, it does make a lot of sense.
In a world with millions of sites trying to sell you stuff, people need to find ways to discern between the poor ones and the high quality ones. There are many quality indicators, from site design to brand association to product range, but those are usually the aspects businesses are most focused on improving – so in most cases they’re done well. What online business don’t always pay attention to, though, is spelling, and as someone who buys a lot of things online I can say that noticing a spelling mistake destroys part of a website’s/brand’s credibility for me. It puts me in a state of mind where I think “if they’re careless with their spelling, how can I trust them that the product specs are accurate or that they won’t just mess up the delivery address.” That’s not a thought you want your potential customers to have.
“I know that industry bemoaning the education system is nothing new but it is becoming more and more of a problem with more companies going online. This is because when you sell or communicate on the internet, 99% of the time it is done by the written word.”
He says he measured the revenue per visitor to the tightsplease.co.uk website and found that the revenue was twice as high after an error was corrected.
“If you project this across the whole of internet retail, then millions of pounds worth of business is probably being lost each week due to simple spelling mistakes.”
So if you own an online business, go check the spelling on your site right now! God knows how many sales you’ve lost because of some misspelled word.
(source)
