E-commerce is an exciting way to sell products and services online, but there are many pitfalls; these pitfalls can slow down your growth or even kill your business.

If you’ve been struggling to grow your online store, you’re not alone. In fact, many small businesses have failed and shut down because they made these common mistakes. This article will show you how to avoid them so you can grow your business faster and not lose business.

There are many reasons why people buy online. Recently, COVID-19 was one of the reasons that saw a huge jump in online sales. In fact, online shopping still continues to rise even after things are normal.

The retailers who struggled to meet the increasing demand ended up with unsatisfied customers; these disgruntled customers left negative reviews all over the web. Thus controlling client sentiments is challenging yet imperative for a organisation to be successful.

#1- Not Having Robust Customer Support System

In the face of strong competition, merchants adopt paid promotions to remain in the minds of their prospects. Any leakage of traffic or bad conversion strategies in their marketing funnel will ultimately result in a low ROI.

Retailers often spend money on advertising in an effort to drive traffic to their websites. But when customers struggle to get the information or support they require before they buy, it hurt sales.

This usually occurs when the right information is not provided at the right place. A visible FAQ section, actual cost including any additional charges etc helps addresses majority of the concerns of prospective customers.

There are so many different ways to run an online business, but one thing remains constant: customer satisfaction. You need to measure customer satisfaction to see what’s going wrong with your business. Without measuring customer satisfaction, you’ll never know whether your customers are happy with your product or service.

When consumers feel satisfied and valued, it is easy to make a transaction or a sale. If you aren’t providing timely support to build trust with customers, then you’re leaving money on the table. It will only hurt your profits.

#2- Avoid Product Overlap & Poor Information

When a consumer visits the store, their buying experience either makes a sale or kills it. A successful on-site conversion strategy will significantly increase the chances of converting prospects into customers.

One of the biggest blunder majority of merchants make is confusing their prospects. With a poor display strategy, majority of E-commerce stores display products that are nearly identical to one another; this product overlap ends up confusing the customers.

Product overlap is the availability of identical items with incremental features; businesses frequently introduce new products by slightly modifying existing product designs before their competitors do; this happens where time-to-market is essential for winning market share and accelerate revenue growth.

That said, providing too many alternatives for prospects to choose from simply confuses them, reducing sales significantly. Additionally, a poorly designed product detail page adds to the merchant’s woes by driving away sales.

So, unless you’re making it easy for customers to buy the right product or find right information, you’re losing out on potential revenue.

Most of the retail sites don’ t provide enough information. Visitors need to know why they should buy from you before they will take any action.

Personal Experience

One of our executive team members has firsthand experience of bad support and poor content. After clicking a Facebook ad, our staff visited a retailer store. Finding items identical to the one in the ad but with little differences, he became confused and lost interest.

He left the store because of fear that he could buy the wrong product; poor product description made things worse. That said, when items start to compete with one another, sales are killed off.

The online firm offered WhatsApp support, but they only answered after six hours, by that time staff had lost interest. Our staff had approached them for advice on which product to purchase. He was even more taken off by their one-line response.

#3- Not Having A Good Website Design

Who wants to buy a product that doesn’t look good? Not me! Let’s try again with another question. Who wants to buy a product in a crushed box making it look worthless? Again, the response is a resounding “NO ONE”!

It is a universal truth that everyone like things that are aesthetically pleasing. This is also true for websites. A poorly designed website won’t attract quality customers unless you sell a one-of-a-kind product that is not available anywhere else.

The infographic below explains why a good looking website is vital not just for generating credibility but also for increasing confidence in customers. Apart from that, there is a direct link between good design and business success since it converts more customers.

So you can imagine the impact a bad design may have on your company’s income. If a prospect visits your online store and is not inspired to browse and purchase, they will exit.

It is recommended and is a smart idea to collaborate with designers, marketers, and conversion strategists in the design of your website. This will help in developing a design with high conversion ratio.

In a poll, almost half said they would pay more for a product or service with outstanding design; almost 59% expressed they would be more loyal to a brand with good design.

According to industry experts, the “design is a highly effective conversion tool”. Yet, the majority of websites out there are poorly designed and are not optimised for conversion.

#4- Not Tracking Conversions

As a shop owner, how would you feel if people came into your shop but left without buying? To avoid this you have to closely study customer’s behaviour and how they interacted with your sales team.

After analysing the customer interaction in the CCTV footage you implement certain changes to increase sales; objective is that the customers at least buys something and goes back happily.

Let’s imagine that the same scenario for your online store where customers are abandoning their cart. In case of online store, you have various tools to track the performance of your store. Retailers can easily track the browsing behaviours and click patterns of their visitors online.

A recent study found that only one out of five consumers who visit a retailer’s website actually makes a purchase. So, if you’re not tracking conversions, you won’t know how well your website or your store is performing.

Although wandering eyes and trailing individuals are undesirable, it is advantageous to track your customers’ clicks and browsing behaviors. There are tools available, including heat maps, to track visitors on your website and adjust it accordingly.

For increasing conversion, you should know how much traffic comes from organic search versus paid search ads. Else you’ll never know whether you need to optimize your store for organic search or pay per click (PPC) campaign.

#5- Not Using Social Media Marketing

If you think that social media marketing is only for big businesses with deep pockets, then you are wrong. There are plenty of ways to use it to promote your small business. In fact, according to HubSpot, “Small businesses that use social media marketing see an average return on investment (ROI) of $11 per dollar spent.”

Social media has become one of the primary ways consumers research products and services. If you aren’t actively participating in social media to build trust with customers, then you’re leaving money on the table.

If you’re not making it easy for customers to find you online, then you’re losing out on potential revenue. Additionally, make sure your website is optimized for search engines as over 90% of sales starts with a search.

Additionally use social media effectively. Social Media has become one of the main ways people research products and services. By not being active on social media, you‘re missing out on a big opportunity to connect with potential buyers.

Conclusion

When you’re running an online store, there are many things that can go wrong. But if you know what they are, you can fix them before they happen.

If you fix below mistakes, as a retailer, you can get more customers & increase your revenue.

• Don’t Have A Clear Vision
• Don’t Know How To Get Traffic
• Don’t Understand Conversion Rate Optimization
• Don’t Have Good Customer Service
• Don’t Have Social Media Marketing
• Don’t Have Analytics & Tracking tools
• Don’t Have Effective Search Engine Optimization

Set clear goals for your online business else you’ll never be able to measure whether or not you’ve achieved them. This will help you stay focused and avoid wasting money on things that aren’t going to work.

Furthermore, to increase sales, merchants must understand what drives customers to purchase from them. You need to make sure you’re providing value for money to those who visit your store.

PS: Not Having an Online Store?
If you haven’t started selling online yet, now is the perfect time to do so. We can help launch your E-Commerce business where you can easily list out your products and let customers buy them. If you want our team to help, get in touch with us.