We make some mistakes and mistakes are the learning process for everyone. We can’t consider that today’s “Multinational Giants” have become successful without making any mistakes. Mistakes are part of success and we should remember them so that we won’t repeat the same mistake.
In this blog, we shall see the most common e-commerce mistakes online store owners make so that you can avoid the same mistake in your business planning.
1. Not having a secure website
A very basic yet very important mistake to avoid is not updating your website to HTTPS with an SSL certificate. Why would anyone consider visiting your website if it is not secure enough? Forget about making any conversion, the click-through rate will be less and even the bounce rate.
Google updated its HTTPS/SSL algorithm in 2014 while considering the security point of view of the users. Even if any user clicks your website the Google Browser will warn the customer that the website is not secured enough to make any action. Because the website is not secured the people will be afraid to make any payment procedure involved because of the lack of trust.
It will lead to a major loss in the business.
2. Not having a strong e-commerce platform
There are so many things to handle on an E-commerce website. From Product Procurement to product listing, better UX, shipment process, payment procedure and options, and many more. Having the right management platform will make it easy to handle the business, but, if chosen wrongly it can turn into a disaster for the business because manually handling all the business processes can be very difficult and time-consuming.
There are various Content Management Systems (CMS) software to be considered that serve as an ideal e-commerce business management platform that includes all the major elements required for the business.
For small to medium e-commerce businesses Woocmmerce and Shopify are ideal, whereas, for businesses with high turnover Big Commerce and Adobe Commerce (formerly known as Magento) are best. Some of the other e-commerce platforms are Wix and Block.Inc, Squarespace, Open Cart, Lightspeed, Go Daddy and many more.
Any e-commerce business owner should first research the different platforms so that they come to know how to use them because each is different and unique in their own way and investigate thoroughly before investing in any platform.
3. Insufficient Market Research
Business can’t be done with the attitude of “I know everything”. market research is a broad concept where you need to study the different trends in the market, the current demand, the supply chain management, the market price, location research, and the current government policies that can strongly impact your business if you ignore them.
In the digital context, market research involves the current algorithm changes of Google, Facebook, and Instagram; Competitors’ research, Social Media Community Guidelines, the current Trends, new marketing strategies, not identifying the Unique Selling Point (USP), etc.
Although, E-commerce is an online store both the offline as well as online factors impact directly or indirectly in business performance.
4. Poor understanding in setting up your targeted audience
Whatever your business model must be the end destination is our customers, identifying the customers depends on your business model. For example, if your business model is B2B your end customers are business owners, if it is B2C your end customers are consumers and if it is B2B2C your customers are both business owners and consumers.
All the marketing plans are based on understanding your Buyers’. If you fail to recognise them though you’re investing in marketing campaigns it won’t be of any use because the targeted range of audience is not set.
The first step is to analyse and know who your targeted audience is and segregate them based on various metrics like age, gender, past purchase history, buyers’ psychology (Buyers’ Persona), etc so that you can even work to reach a “Similar Audience” to attract quality traffic that will increase overall Key Performance Indicator (KPI) like clicks, impression, engagement, and conversion.
If you didn’t set your targeted audience you might face a problem where the impression is high compared to the clicks which ultimately worsens your click-through rate.
5. Visually Unappealing Web Design and UX
The website represents your online business. Just like when a buyer visits an offline store the lavish interiors mark a good impression, in the same manner, a good website design and development encourage your audience to visit back even if it is simple but should be appealing enough that it is mobile responsive as well.
Don’t make it too stuffy and congested or too plain without any information that your buyer will click the back button within a few seconds after opening your website. Leaving some white (clear) areas with decent and calming colour, and proper navigation with appropriate information about each step is advisable.
6. Not maintaining Proper Site Navigation
Just imagine you’re visiting an unknown place without any proper navigation makes you feel lost and frustrated, fed up to leave that place. The same feeling you can expect from your customers they might feel lost, frustrated and fed up to leave the site.
Proper navigation is the one where the customers can see all the website webpages at first sight, proper alignments of categories and subcategories, guiding instruction for payment or signing up procedure and highlighting all the information related to the business improves the user experience that can lead to attaining the business goals.
7. Improper Marketing Planning & Strategies
“A Destination without a Plan & thorough research is as good as Aimless Dream”
Marketing campaigns such as SEO, Email marketing, PPC, Social media, influencer marketing, content marketing and CRO need a proper direction and just can’t be conducted without any goals and roadmap.
Every top funnel marketing, middle funnel and bottom funnel marketing tactic needs proper analysis, understanding planning and execution to make result-oriented strategies.
If we talk about SEO, without proper execution you can’t see the ranks of your website in the organic search result. SEO not only helps to rank websites and attract organic traffic but also helps to improve the website through internal & external linking, meta tags optimisation (title & description), anchor text, broken link removal, link building for creating awareness, etc. Likewise, PPC helps to attract paid traffic from search engines and social media platforms, if not executed properly can incur a greater loss as we are paying for the ads to be displayed.
8. Not conducting A/B testing
A/B testing shows the data-based results to improve the functionality of the website. E-commerce websites should be dynamic where new features need to be added frequently to give a better user experience to improve the average engagement time which will further improve the conversion. Many e-commerce website owners tend to ignore A/B testing or don’t take any further steps for improvement which can harm your business as the people have more choices (your competitors) that provide them with better customer satisfaction.
9. Complicated & Very Few Payment Options
Just imagine if all is working perfectly the buyer is ready to purchase the product but back in the middle of the payment procedure,
It might be the case where your payment procedure is too complicated to proceed which leads to a high incomplete checkout rate or you have very few payment gateways that the buyer finds inconvenient to buy the product.
You must try to make an easy payment procedure and give more payment options like Cash On Delivery (COD), Debit Card, Credit Card, No-Cost EMI, UPI & online wallet.
10. Poor customer care services
Not responsive customer care service or disappointing services that won’t respond to the customer query will print a bad impression that can lead to poor customer satisfaction and negative online reviews.
For quick and common issues you can set up a chatbot to answer the doubts of the customer if the problem is major you can divert the call to customer care services.
Conclusion
Good Business management is a skill and not just a decision made with intuition. Although every business has a cycle of ups and downs ignorance can lead to major losses.
