Excited about your e-commerce business?
So, you have decided to design and launch your e-commerce business portal. You are so worried about the things that could go wrong, which will put your website so far behind your competitors. Sounds familiar? Worry not and just do a little bit of research to stay ahead of your competition. Browse through the below-mentioned factors and you will be prepared well to handle any difficulties with your e-commerce website. Ideal e-commerce businesses follow a general routine with their own unique innovation and elegance.
You might wonder, what could be the common mistakes that happen in an e-commerce business? Knowing them would definitely help you to bypass or rectify them and move on. Isn’t it?
Are you spending too much time on trivial matters?
Although every bit of content including a clear-cut logo is essential to establish your identity, it would be time-consuming to spend hours designing your logo (looking for perfection) or any other trivial things. Instead, if you could focus on perfectly arranging the main content of the website, such as product descriptions for example, with clarity, it would do a world of good for your e-commerce website.
As observed, time allocation is very important while designing and creating an e-commerce website. According to experts, the ideal way to allocate time will be around 8 to 10% for the technical side (site building, finding its name, and configuring WordPress) and about 82 to 90% for the business aspects (Concept & purpose, branding, writing the apt content as well as metadata and SEO features) of the online portal.
Oh, you want to do the website design all alone?
It might be commendable to deal with all aspects of website design along with the launching of the e-commerce portal alone, by taking your own sweet time. It should be noted that the aspects you are dealing with include concept, analytics, strategy, SEO campaigns, website administration, community management, social media, maintenance, and e-mail marketing to name a few. It is not wise and practical to work on all of these aspects alone. This could be time-consuming and tedious as well as prone to errors. Don’t you think?
You might be willing to try doing this alone thinking, “Oh, it’s my site. I have a lot of time to work with”; but, this is a huge risk because it can hamper the chances of your site’s survival. So, it is always better to delegate various works to experts in those fields according to your financial situation. The experts will know what to do in crunch situations and how to set-up the best e-commerce website the way you want.
Mistakes that you are prone to while developing an e-commerce website
No Proper market research
If you dive into a competitive market without looking, you are bound to get drowned or burned. A common mistake noticed is that most online retailers (you) just design and create an e-commerce business without proper market research. That should stop ASAP, for you to improve.
It is essential to research your competition before you go on designing the products you want to sell. There should be a unique connection to the stuff you sell online, which can relate to customers. Ideally, the customers should come knocking at your door with minimum marketing. A connection among the concept of your products will attract people and they might refer other potential customers to your site; an ideal scenario. Isn’t it?
Are you on the right platform?
build your budget online store in very simple in the new era. In the excitement of choosing a good platform for designing your e-commerce site, you might choose a platform that might not be profitable to you. It is always good to research a little about the ideal platform for selling your products.
It is essential for you to research your right audiences before you venture out of your e-commerce business. This will help you a lot in the long run, in building up your online portal customer by customer.
Here are most of the powerful platform that are used by most of the successful retailers. Magento, Shopify, Volusion, bigcommerce, Netsuite, ProStores, X cart, Yahoo stores, OpenCart, Zen Cart, Pinnacle, Nexternal, Woocommerce, Shopysuite, etc
Under-pricing your products
If you think under-pricing your products can get a lot of customers, it might not work out the way you want. If the customers find out about this (they always will!), they might have a thought that your products are undervalued as well (low in quality).
For these obvious reasons, it is essential not to under-price your products. Do research and value as well as price your products accordingly. The right value will attract more customers than otherwise.
Wrong branding strategy
Branding of your e-commerce business is a huge part of developing and customizing your products. A small array of products might not work out for the overall health of your business. Also, if you do not have a logo or any unique symbol, which represents your values, it will result in you lacking any kind of identity in the shopping world. Design a simple and effective logo that can help customers identify you with.
Products with no proper images
When you display your products, it is essential to accompany that with a proper description as well as vivid and vibrant or simple and identifiable images. This helps the customers to know more about your products and compare them with what they want from your site. Once these things are in sync, the customers will definitely get products from your website.
Hounding potential clients and customers with e-mails? A big no-no!
Maybe you are too excited about your e-commerce business. In regards to this, you start sending e-mails frequently to your potential clients and customers. Have you ever thought how inconvenient it will be for people to deal with a lot of e-mails?
It is wise to cut down the mails you send to the people. Once you sent an e-mail and keep reminding them once in two weeks, it will be beneficial for you and the potential clients & customers as well. Sounds impressive? Thought so!
No proper SEO strategy
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a must for any website to pop-up in the top half of Google searches or keyword searches in any search-engines. A proper digital marketing process should be applied to employing the right SEO strategies that can help with your e-commerce business online portal.
Apart from these strategies, SEO helps in identifying what content to post and publish, to attract potential customers and clients. One idea is to include descriptions or plain-text captions for all images as well as graphic content. This can effectively boost your e-commerce business website.
Overusing of Pop-Ups
Advertisements that pop-up every now and then while browsing a website can be annoying. Don’t you think? It would be wise to decrease the frequency of pop-ups to allow your potential customers for happy browsing.
No proper optimization for Mobile Devices
In this era of people doing all their transactions via mobile phones, if your website is not optimized for these hand-held devices, it would incur a big loss for you. So, it becomes essential for you to properly optimize your e-commerce website for mobile devices.
This can improve the number of people that come to your site a lot of potential customers use mobile phones as mentioned before.
No “clinical testing”!
As per market research, it would be essential to do research on your products by testing them on potential customers. Proper testing can result in great feedback, which will help you in customizing as well as personalizing your products and website.
No Proper Call-To-Action (CTA)
Any e-commerce website should have an effective Call-To-Action or CTA statement that can attract potential clients and customers. With no proper CTA, people will get confused, even if your site has amazing content. That said, a subtle CTA would be enough for it to be effective and successful.
Difficult Check-out Process
If a customer buys something from your store and gets directed to the payment page, it would become tiring if people find your check-out process to be lengthy and tiring.
Hiding exchange and return policies
If you subtly hide your exchange and return policies, it can cause inconvenience and irritation to your customers. As you are an e-commerce business, you should have such options that can help-out customers. This allows you to be transparent with people and customers will gain trust, which can boost your business.
Do you have only one shipping process? Another big no-no
E-commerce outlets with one shipping method can cause trouble for everyone. This can cause the orders to be late. Pretty awful, isn’t it?
Always have multiple shipping processes that can deliver your products to customers at the right time.
Are you failing to follow up? Hey, just go for it!
For improving interactions with your customers, it is an effective tactic to keep in touch with them or follow them via social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter. If you leave a customer as soon as they exit your online portal, then there is a chance of you losing that person forever.
It is essential to have an excellent rapport with your customers. This will benefit you in the long run by aiding. Your business will be improved via the connections you make; an excellent way to build a bridge!
Poor Social-Media Presence
Have a good social media presence for ease of interacting with customers. With making use of good customer reviews and feedback, you can develop a rapport and trust for yourself in the online world. So, a poor social media presence is a big no-no.
So, Now You Know!
The information given here is “absolute gold”. Utilizing the positives from this information can boost your e-commerce business. This will help in growing your online presence and your online portal will be a big hit among general people as well as potential customers and clients.
