Amazon is undoubtedly the stakeholder of E-commerce business worldwide. It holds up to more than 40% of the overall online sales. E-commerce startups can get ideas and inspirations from how amazon works in E-commerce.
The key to winning in a highly competitive eCommerce industry is to avoid pitfalls to prevent your business from crashing and burning along the way.
To help you out, below are 15 essentials to avoid in an E-commerce business and help you to make your site grow and generate profitable revenues.
1. Reinventing the Wheel
Don’t waste your resources on developing tailored solutions to issues unless the approach has an evident impact on your ability to offer a USP or your branding. You can use existing E-Commerce platforms as most customers look for a familiar shopping experience with well-known recognition elements, such as simple search elements and an easy check out process. Let someone specialized handle the design so you can more focus on your product and service quality.
2. Untrustworthy Design
According to the researchers at North Umbria University, users find website design more trustworthy than a site’s content. With this being the case, unless you are highly specialized, you should leave the design of your site to a professional. Use a state of the art and modernized theme to differentiate your branding. Invest in top talent as per the need to maximize your branding without cutting corners.
3. Redundant Product Descriptions
Don’t duplicate the product description from your product manufacturer, because Google will consider it as plagiarism, which will affect your site’s overall SEO. It is common for businesses to not make an effort when it comes to their product descriptions, and it is where most E-Commerce owners make a big blunder.
You want to give your customers a reason to buy your product with a targeted summary of your products. You should also focus keywords in your descriptions so that they will rank higher in search engine results. If you have an enormous inventory, then follow the Pareto principle to focus on the most promising and highest selling products.
4. Prioritizing Growth Over Profit
Generating a decent amount of profit is more essential than growing at the beginning for every business. Hence, you should prioritize it over the goal of growing initially. Think in terms of scaling things up afterward. If you have a profitable business in the beginning, then it will benefit you to invest more to scale up the production and expansion of the line of dealings.
5. No Responsive Design
More than half of online buyers use mobile devices to shop online. Hence, invest in making your website design responsive to make it easy to use for your potential prospects. It will enhance your liability and profits. You can use many online available free themes with minor customizations that are central to your niche. Test your site with Google-friendly mobile tests before launching.
6. No Target Audience
“Customers need a reason to shop from you.” Says; Mark Spencer, Customer Service Representative, King Essay. Hence, if you want to beat the E-Commerce giants, you have to target a specific group of customers and lead them to get into your pool and then expand it. Make an ideal customer profile and target their interests, subcultures, values, pain points and socio-economic findings then place your products accordingly. It is the only authentic way to establish a solid mix of data and intuitions to real-world sales conversions. The more focused and specific you will be, the better you will be able to connect with your prospect.
7. Technical SEO Errors
E-commerce sites are most prone to SEO errors. The most common issues to look after are;
- Error 404 that are links to a page that doesn’t exists
- Duplication of pages that are URL variables
- Redirected pages (301 or 302)
- Poor navigation of interlinking
Get a sound knowledge of technical SEO to get your site well managed with SEO or get professional help to prevent your bucks going into the bucket.
8. Complicated Shopping Carts
Try to eliminate as many steps as possible from your cart and check out process. Also, don’t force your customers to set an account to place an order. If a customer wants to but something from you, then instead of being an obstacle, be a way out. Keep your buttons prominent and remove all unnecessary fields. Lastly, don’t surprise your buyer with a surprised shipping fee or taxes.
9. No Logo – No E-commerce Business
A logo is the only element that every business owner doesn’t want to skip on. A logo is the face of any business and brand. In most cases, it is also visual recognition to your customers. It should be unique enough to be memorable to your customers. Hence don’t skip on the chance to create a memorable brand impression with a logo. Your logo is worth investing in. Therefore, try to design it by yourself with many online free and reasonable tools or get the help of a professional designer to help you out. There is no excuse to skip on your logo at all.
10. Empty ‘About Us’ Page
An “About Us” page is the first step to place a unique selling proposition across your line of prospects, so take time and write it out well. Your websites “About Us” page should not demonstrate what or who you are. It should define what you have for your customers. Make it understandable enough to make your customers understand the branding benefits for them. Also, it should address their issues in a brief context.
11. Not Addressing a Hole in the Market
It is the most common issue for E-commerce brands that they fail to differentiate themselves in the competitive market using USPs. Having uniqueness is all about having a focused niche to work in and on. An ideal E-commerce business model should address the gaps in-market leads. Hence, focus on addressing customer’s pain points by providing satisfactory solutions to bridge the gaps.
12. Poor Customer Service
A study conducted by Harvard Business Review concludes that customer service interactions prevent customer loss four times more effectively than to create a customer’s loyalty. The key to satisfying a customer is to WOW them with your exceptional services. Ideally, a customer’s issue should be resolved with a single call. It can be done more easily now as modern customer service trends are more multi-channel and certainly not limit to any hurdles and promote meeting gold standards.
13. Complex Navigation
Prevent your site from navigation complexity to make your customers easy to buy from you. Make every clickable button large enough to work on small screens and provide high-level accessible categories form the main menu. Make clean and brief product information pages and a well-defined “BUY” button with every product. Make categories easy to navigate on a single click and don’t forget to include a search button on the top of every page. This will make it easy for customers and benefit your sales as well.
14. Unenlightening Product Photos
Place clear and HD product pictures for visual comparison. Try to make them as real as the actual product. Make them appealing and well suited with descriptions. Place a zoom in and out option as well.
15. Insufficient Social Proof
Lastly, don’t forget to take advantage of the power of social media for your E-commerce site. Recommendations and reviews on social media platforms are essential to make your website accessible among leads. Get the most of the word of mouth marketing.
Final Thoughts
If you want to be among the boat of survivors in E-commerce, learn from your mistakes and convert them into opportunities and possibilities. This will help you to thrive out of every way. All the best!
Featured image credit: Unsplash.com
Stella Lincoln is a qualified marketing consultant. She has worked with many multinational organisations in management and marketing departments. She is also a member of International Marketing Strategic Forum. Currently, Stella is working as Product Manager at Academist Help.
