10 Common eCommerce Mistakes to Avoid
Starting an eCommerce business seems very easy from the outside. Anyone can sell products to their prospective customers all over the world. You literally don’t need any college degree or qualification to sell products online.
But as you enter into the eCommerce business, you’ll realize it is not as easy as it sounds. There are a lot of mistakes that sellers make every day, which not only cost them a lot but also affect their sales. This is why we want to highlight ten common eCommerce mistakes that infringe on customers’ experience.
Poor Web Interface
Customers probably bounce to other stores if your website interface is ambiguous. Your potential prospect uses multiple accessories to conclude whether to buy a product or skip it. As a smart eCommerce seller, you must engage customers with a comprehensive and robust user experience. Your eCommerce website must be optimized for smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. Your mobile applications must have high-quality pictures, graphics, and simple navigation (can integrate navigational chatbots).
Wrong Product Pricing
“Pricing is actually pretty simple…Customers will not pay literally a penny more than the true value of the product.” – Ron Johnson (former CEO, JCPenny)
Product pricing is directly proportional to your target customers. Therefore, before pricing your eCommerce product, conduct adequate research on customers’ spending power, their cost of living, to what extent your product solves their problem, and how much necessity is in the market. After finding these answers, you’ll know your product’s worth.
Most sellers make a common eCommerce mistake i.e. price their products according to competitors’ prices. It is ideal to some extent, but what if customers are unhappy with competitors’ products and willing to pay more for a product that solves their problem?
Reckless Logistics
Think like your customers and ask yourself what they want– a quality product at a reasonable price, come to them with secure and fast delivery.
New eCommerce businesses put logistics as their secondary priority, but it is a golden opportunity for them to retain and acquire new customers. 7 out of 10 customers consider safe and fast delivery a top factor in trusting a business. If logistics is challenging for you, hire a logistics aggregator like NimbusPost, which helps you choose cost-efficient carriers and provides other solutions to optimize logistics.
Choosing The Wrong Platform
New eCommerce businesses make the wrong decision of choosing the wrong eCommerce platforms for starting their business. Many eCommerce platforms charge small subscription fees but have hidden charges and do not have many options to upgrade, which eCommerce businesses come to know later.
Factors to remember while choosing the right platform for your eCommerce business.
- Ease of use
- Product management system
- Multiple payment gateway options
- Cost of Ownership
- Security
Fragmented Marketing Strategies
Marketing is the heart and soul of every business. If you fail to market your business values and purpose, no matter how good your product is, sooner or later, it will fail. In eCommerce, businesses focus on marketing, but their strategies are conventional or more profit-focused. So instead, your marketing goal should be to engage customers and tell them how your product will do good in customers’ lives.
Product Page Issues
AI-generated content, product descriptions, low-resolution images and videos, and un-optimized website pages. All these issues may create a bad customer experience and cause a low search engine ranking.
Online commerce is about visuals because customers cannot physically experience your product. Customers will resist buying and visiting your store if you show low-quality images and videos and produce baffling descriptions.
Ignoring Content Marketing and SEO
Content marketing is a strategy to attract and engage customers through content (articles, blogs, videos, and podcasts). It is good you do paid marketing, but content marketing and SEO are evergreen strategies to attract organic traffic in the long run.
The only difference is that paid marketing gets you instant eyeballs. However, content marketing is organic and takes time, but the traffic is passive.
Not Adapting Trends
In the digital world, it is said that “strategies that worked last year may not work today”. The online business world is erratic every time new trends evolve among customers, and eCommerce sellers must adopt these changes and draw strategies in consequence.
Social Commerce and Mobile Commerce
Social commerce and mobile commerce are the two essential subsets of eCommerce which every seller should foresee to acquire target customers. Mobile-commerce marketing is a great asset because customers prefer to purchase from smartphones rather than other devices. Making your eCommerce store mobile-friendly is more intuitive for customers to shop, and assisting them with mobile applications for live support and personalized recommendation will increase customer lifetime value.
On the other hand, since social media platforms play a significant role in our lives, it is a smart move to engage customers through these platforms and attract new fans.
The Overlong Payment Process and Check-out System
The check-out system has too many complications, and customers often resist making payments. We live in an era where customers want instant gratification and do not like to be stuck in an overlong process. Most eCommerce businesses have four or five-step payment processes where ideally, two or three steps are acceptable. More than that might be an annoyance.
Another criticism from customers is that they don’t get preferred payment options. This can drive customers away because nobody wants to open a second account to buy from you.
Why does most eCommerce fail?
You will succeed in the eCommerce business if you understand the difference between “having an eCommerce store” and “having an eCommerce store that treats customers as the king”. Conversely, failing to understand the differences will make you struggle in your entrepreneurial journey. The catch here is you might be making common eCommerce mistakes in serving your customers (can be any reason), which results in the downfall of your online store.
The online marketplace is saturated, and there is neck-to-neck competition in the online retail industry. Look around your category, there must be two or three competitors serving the same customers. Due to this, people are spoiled by too many choices. If they experience inconvenience in using your website, customers will go elsewhere, leaving negative reviews and inducing other prospects not to buy from your store.
Conclusion
Adjusting a complex eCommerce solution to your liking is not easy. You may encounter many other problems during your journey, but the source of every solution is only one: your passion for making customers’ lives better. So be proactive, analyze problems and find solutions. Remember—it’s a complex beast you’re tackling!
Meanwhile, solving logistics issues is easy if you sign up for NimbusPost. There is no reason not to because we provide a comprehensive logistic solution.