In this present era, eCommerce business is ruling the internet. Starting and running an online business is difficult, especially if it’s your first time. However, just you starting for the first time, it doesn’t mean that you have make first timer mistakes. There are tons of mistakes that online retailer are making every day. But all of them are avoidable with a small careful planning. In this article we’ll look at some most common mistakes new eCommerce business owners make when setting up an eCommerce store and how you can avoid them.
1. Finding the wrong platform
The common mistakes when setting up eCommerce store is choosing the wrong platform. A user friendly, popular platform doesn’t mean that it’s right for you. While choosing the platform you have to focus on your own requirements and your user’s need. You will get more details on choosing the right platform from here.
Here are the list of some open source platform:
- WooCommerce
- Magento
- Dokan
- Shopify
- ZenCart
- Open Cart
- PrestaShop
- XCart
- OSCommerce
- WP eCommerce
- Big Commerce etc.
2. Trying to do everything by yourself
Though eCommerce store is a one person business. But there are so many different tasks to do and all of them you can’t do by yourself at a high standard in a quick timescale. If you want to do all by yourself from design to marketing then you have to spend time. Though all tasks are cost effective but you have to think about how much your time is worth and what impact you could be making to your business if you’re focusing on the stuff that you have.
So, it will be a wise decision during building an eCommerce store, it’s important to find experts to help with the workload and help you reach your goals fast.
3. Improper online marketing plan
Say, you have chosen the right platform to create eCommerce store and you have lot of products for your store to start. But you have no proper plan of marketing in place. According to the marketing statistics by CoSchedule, online business man who document their strategy are 538% more likely to report success than those who don’t. Creating a marketing plan will help you understand what channels to focus on and how to achieve your goals.
There are many ways to get traffic for your online store. There are more than 100 marketing channels and none of them are something you can flick a switch for.
You can use search engine optimization, search engine marketing, Facebook Ads, Instagram marketing etc as marketing channel. But they are require a solid effort and sometimes money.
When building an eCommerce store, prioritize and tackle one channel at a time. This means choose the channels that you believe will work best for your business and taking the time to understand the inner workings of that particular channel. Give the channel enough time and money to prove itself and tracking the results carefully.
4. Inadequate Product Photos
Getting the visuals effect is one of the most important parts of any eCommerce store. Your customer will get more information about the product through its image. Without being able to touch and feel a physical product, customers usually want to be able to get an in-depth look at what they’re buying to make sure it meets their needs and requirements.
So, try to put more number of images for the products in various edges. If the product have different colors, make sure to include pictures of those options as well, or keep option to switch the color of your existing images.
Image quality is an important factor when purchasing online, so make sure you include multiple, high-resolution photos on the product page, show closeups and different angles of the same product and variations.
5. Insufficient product information
Like product image, product description is also an important part. Without thorough and proper descriptions shoppers are more likely to experience purchase anxiety and go elsewhere to look for the information they need to know before making their purchases. Simply giving the stock manufacturer description usually isn’t enough. Try to give detailed information about the product to cover all of the selling points.
6. Complex checkout Procedure
This is the most damaging mistakes an eCommerce store can make. You have to make as easy as possible for your customers to make their purchase quickly once after making the decision. The more steps you put between them placing an item in their cart the more opportunities you give them to leave your site without completing their purchase.
The ideal checkout process is to offer “check-out as guest” option so that people can avoid creating account and some other annoying steps. Anything more than that is only an obstacle to complete the checkout process.
7. Inadequate Site Search Engine
If a customer knows exactly what they’re looking for, many will try to use a search engine instead of sifting through categories and filters. You have to make sure that the search feature on your site works well when setting up eCommerce store.
According to a study customers who use online search to find products are 3 times more likely to make a purchase. So, with extensive number of products you have to enhance your product descriptions with keywords and tags as well for better Search Engine Optimization.
8. Lack of social media presence
Social Media is one of the effective marketing strategy these days. It is difficult to maintain a business without utilizing social media presence. And it is very much applicable to eCommerce business. And most of the store owners makes mistakes when setting up eCommerce store.
You have to choose one or two main social media where you know your audience is and can build a customized audience with a small budget. Facebook, twitter and Pinterest tend to be better for product sales. Try to add social sharing buttons on all of your product pages.
9. Poor customer service
This is often the most overlooked mistakes when setting up eCommerce store and this is something customers take very seriously. If you don’t appear as a trusted and reliable store, you won’t be able to convert your visitors into customers.
Your customers can provide valuable feedback about your products. So, you have to make it easy for customers to get in touch with you if they have a problem or question. Give them the best solution if they have a technical question, a sales question, or they want to return an item. You can offer a help request form help for customers to fill out that will give more confidence than just an email address.
10. Poor shopping cart design
Shopping cart is an incredibly important part of your eCommerce store. You have to allow your users to add multiple products, revise the products quantity or remove an item from their cart and some other option on that products. Give preview option on what shipping charges will be before they start the checkout process. All these options will avoid common mistakes when setting up eCommerce store.
11. Lack of payment option
If you want to run your eCommerce store successfully you have to allow users multiple payment options. You can use a payment service that lets customers pay with all major credit and debit card and also with an electronic check. Adding a PayPal checkout option will increases the choices of you customers to purchase from you.
12. Confusing site navigation
Poor navigation of your eCommerce store can discourage your customer. Your website should have the capacity to navigate images to the product page, see more data about a product and click on the header at the top to take them back to the homepage.
Think thoroughly your categories and navigation elements carefully before you start putting products in your catalog. Make sure that to add few products in every category or else group smaller categories together. Make it easy for customers to look different categories and get to their shopping cart. Otherwise they will just move around your site.
Setting up an eCommerce startup is not easy. But you can make it work for you if you can avoid the above mistakes when setting up eCommerce store that we mentioned.
If you’re making any of these above mistakes, it’s better you to fix them fast so that you can focus on delivering the best products and growing your store.
