E-commerce is a business where we buy or sell products online. E-commerce is dominating the market of the business. There are many famous platforms where we can buy stuffs like Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, and Alibaba. Nowadays every person is showing their interest in the field of e-commerce business. E-commerce business provides a bunch of opportunities to the business owners. Electronic commerce or e-commerce contain different technologies such as Electronic funds transfer, Internet marketing, Online transaction processing, Inventory management systems, Supply chain management, Electronic data interchange (EDI) and many more technologies are there that creates a single e-commerce platform.
For any e-commerce business, you first need to create a website from where you can sell products to the customers. You can sell your products online in the famous e-commerce websites like eBay, Amazon, and Flipkart by creating an account as a seller. But sometimes people do mistakes in creating the e-commerce business for their company.
Today we are here to focus on the top 10 mistakes made by e-commerce businesses.
Wrong platform
Before setting any online business it is must to have a right platform where we can set up our e-commerce business. Many people do mistakes in selecting the platform for their business. There are some websites that offer e-commerce platform for a free trial period. Before buying any premium plan for your e-commerce website, try some free websites that offer free trial subscription. There are some e-commerce platforms which I recommend:
- BigCommerce
- Magento
- Shopify
- WooCommerce
- Demandware
- Volusion
- 3dcart
Running Business without a strategy
Without a strategy, we couldn’t run a healthy business. It’s like running a business without planning. It is important to execute each and every operation of the business with strategy. Let’s list out some strategies which are mandatory before starting any e-commerce business.
It is important to know about the market and customers.
It is important to manage the products or services by planning the smooth working of supply management.
Always target the mobile users first because currently approx. 97% of people use mobile phones to order products from an e-commerce website.
It is important to mention terms and policies of your company in front of customers or buyers.
Customer feedbacks are very important to run a successful business so ask customers for feedback. It doesn’t matter the feedback is negative or positive. You can improve the services better by customer reviews.
Trust factors on the website
There are many e-commerce websites who don’t own any trust certifications on their websites that’s why people often don’t buy stuff from those sites. It is important to add some trust factors to your site.
olicy/rules of using sites. E-commerce can also offer Refund and exchange policy/rules on relevant products.
You can add following trust indicators on the website to ensure site is authenticated and provides secure connection:
Trust marks like SSL secure site seal or TRUSTe Enterprise Privacy Certification
Enable green padlock icon, HTTPS in the beginning of site URL and show Show Organization/Company name in green text in the browser address bar.
To activate trust indicators as stated above, It is required to use Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificate to avoid phishing attacks or data interception. You can obtain EV SSL certificate at cheapest price from here – https://www.cheapsslshop.com/ev-ssl-certificates.
Mobile users
Many business persons ignore the mobile users. They make websites according to the personal computers. They don’t think that 98% of people buy stuffs from their mobile phones using e-commerce app like Myntra and Amazon. I don’t think that without mobile audience your business will sustain in the market. So always make mobile-friendly e-commerce website and also make your company’s shopping app.
Missing contact information
There are so many websites that don’t consist of any contact information; they only have one contact form on their sites. So it’s important to add all the necessary contact details to your e-commerce site like your company’s contact number, email address, customer care number and company’s address with a Google map.
Popups
Always use popups in your e-commerce website but remember one think use popups but in moderation level, it should be used in an obtrusive manner. According to experts, 98% of people don’t buy products when they reach your site for the first time and approx. 55% of people leave your e-commerce after 15 seconds. So you only have 15 seconds to gain more customers through your popups. By popup, you can collect information about your visitors and provide them offers directly on the emails of your visitors.
Product reviews and Customer Service
It is mandatory to add product review section on your e-commerce website. People always look for the product’s reviews and ratings before buying any product. A study says that 60% of customers go through the product reviews and ratings. It is important to look at the reviews and ratings because it tells about the quality and durability of the product.
Customers come first in every business, customer service is the key to success. There are many business owners who are very famous but their customer services are very bad. It is important to hire some customer representatives who will be able to reply customers on any query related to the product, it can be related to the refund, FAQs related to the services and products and any other questions.
Free shipping
Nowadays approximately every e-commerce platform is providing free shipping services. With free shipping services, we can attract more and more customers to our website. According to some news, there are approximately 70% of people who complete their orders because of the free shipping services. E-commerce companies use delivery service companies like Blue Dart, ShipRocket, eCOM Express, DHL, FedEx and First flight.
Lack of Digital Marketing
If you don’t do marketing then soon you have to close your business. In e-commerce business, it is important to do digital marketing. It is the more powerful way to get more visitors and customers to your e-commerce website. You can do digital marketing on so many platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Yelp, Youtube, Pinterest, and Twitter. If you want to expand your business then you can also do affiliate marketing for your e-commerce in which you can display your products on other’s websites. By this, you can gain more followers and customers.
Not analyzing your website
It is important to check the performance of your e-commerce business. Without analytics, you couldn’t be able to grow your business and network. As an owner it is important to look at some analytics like revenue, number of sales and total number of visitors. If you are the owner then it is must to connect you website with Google Analytics to check the performance of your e-commerce website.
