Actionable tips to remove the hidden accessibility barriers currently stopping your customers from completing their purchase. Join the top 6% - watch your sales grow, and your brand reputation shines.
Does it really matter if some people can’t buy from you?
|
Hi again 👋 Someone replied to last week’s email with a fair question (shared with permission). “Does it really matter if some people can’t buy from you?” It’s a reasonable challenge, but I’ve never come across a business that intentionally excludes customers who are actively trying to buy. People don’t complete purchases for lots of reasons, every day. Maybe the price isn’t right, they are comparing options or they get distracted. But when a business has already spent time, effort, and money getting someone onto their site, the last thing they want is the site itself stopping the sale. At that point, this isn’t a missed sale - it’s wasted acquisition spend. The customer hasn’t rejected the business. The business has rejected the customer. In a physical shop, this would be unthinkable. If someone walks up to the door ready to come in, you would not put a barrier in their way, or move everything up to the top shelf and hope they try harder. You would fix the problem immediately. Take this online, and when the same thing happens there's often no complaint, just a lost customer - forever (and often they'll go to your accessible competitor...). That’s why this matters. When someone wants to give you money and can’t, that isn’t bad luck. It’s a product problem. Accessibility is not about doing something extra for a few people. Thoughts? Hit reply and let me know. Talk soon, P.S. Thanks for reading - have a great rest of your day. |
davedavies.dev
Actionable tips to remove the hidden accessibility barriers currently stopping your customers from completing their purchase. Join the top 6% - watch your sales grow, and your brand reputation shines.
Hi Reader 👋 Black Friday & Cyber Monday is on the horizon again, and last year shoppers worldwide spent a record $132 billion over the BFCM weekend - up 6.4% from 2024. That's a LOT of money moving around over a weekend. And it's the time of year that many marketing teams will start adding countdown timers to emails and to products. But have you ever tested that countdown timer with a screen reader? Visually, a timer does a good job, ticking down to midnight, nudging people to make a...
Hi Reader 👋 It's been really interesting reading everyone's responses to the SOEA 2026 report. One thing which surprised many people is this question: Should more traffic mean a more accessible product page? You might expect the busiest stores to be in better shape. After all, they have the most to lose. The State of Ecommerce Accessibility 2026 groups stores by traffic ranking. Here's the share of product pages in each group with at least one critical accessibility issue: Ranked 500,000–1...
Hi Reader 👋 Exciting week - The State of Ecommerce Accessibility 2026 is out. What is the State of Ecommerce Accessibility report? Over the summer I scanned 59,400 Shopify and WooCommerce product pages, one per store, all from stores ranked among the world's top million websites. The headline stat is this: 64% of product pages had at least one critical accessibility issue. Overall, 96% failed at least one automated accessibility check. And if you've been reading my newsletters for a while,...