Starting your own online store is perhaps the most popular advice you will get to your enquiry “How to make money on the Internet?” Indeed, ecommerce has completely transformed the way product sales are carried out by providing business owners with a remarkable opportunity to target the Global market at minimal investments, while their online marketplaces can be open for prospective clients 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Nowadays, we are all involved in the ecommerce world either by selling or purchasing various types of goods and services online.
Thousands of online stores appear over the Internet every single day. And as you have probably noticed, they are launched by completely different businesses – from individuals working out from home to large multinational corporations. No matter how big and competitive the market niche is you’re going to take up, you should create your own unique strategy to start and proceed. The truth is, there may be some pitfalls and obstacles on your way and you should be aware of them in order to prevent fatal effects while running your online venture.
Based on my own knowledge and experience in the ecommerce field, I’d like to share my observations on the top five most common eCommerce mistakes online ventures usually fall victims of as well as how to avoid them with your project.
#1 Poor Design and Appearance
The first thing that may turn your prospective clients away from your online store is its poor design and amateurish look and feel. The first impression is very important and rather often online shoppers judge a business and its credibility by its appearance. If your storefront is poorly designed, there is a high chance that your visitors will want to leave your website very soon after they get on it, not to mention about having a little trust in the quality of your products. Remember, your competitors are just a click away.
Advice
If you want to attract your visitors and encourage them to spend their hardly earned money on your products, you should look solid and professional. The entire look and feel of your online store should convince your visitors to buy from you. Take your time or invest in professional assistance to design a unique and sophisticated storefront – this is really worth it. Graphics is one of the first visual elements that differentiate one store from another. With a creative graphical concept and some other web design tricks integrated smartly into your website, you may expect to attract a larger client base.
Note! Be careful with excessive graphics as it may lead to your website slow load time.
#2 The Lack of Information and Visual Content
Starting an online store is pretty much far from stocking your databases with products and integrating web shopping cart and payment options into your project. Unfortunately, many business owners tend to provide very little information and photos of their products, probably because of limited time or for any other reasons. Very often, while shopping online I encounter stores that offer goods with only a couple of words and price under the name of an item and, if there is a bit of luck, a small picture alongside. Believe me, this won’t lead you towards large sale volumes.
What to Do
Let your clients learn everything they may require about any particular item just on the spot when browsing through your online catalog. Provide your products with large and professional photos. Allowing these graphics to be zoomed for a better and detailed product view will work even better.
#3 Confusing Shopping and Checkout Process
The main principle of online shopping that attracts today’s consumers is ease and speed of the process. The more steps you ask your consumers to make to buy something from your store, the bigger chances are that they will leave in a blink of an eye with no desire to complete their purchase. Frankly speaking, if you put more than 5 steps between placing an item into a cart and submitting an order, shopping on your website is full of obstacles. Requiring to sign up for an account to make an order is another serious mistake that will certainly have your visitors leave to look for less demanding web stores.
Solution
Your customers are here at your website to give you money, so don’t make them jump through barriers. Make sure, the whole checkout process is as easy as possible and can be accomplished through a single page. If for any business reason you need your clients to be registered, offer them this option after they complete their orders. You may encourage them to save their account information for a much easier future shopping experience and an excellent opportunity to track their orders. And of course, don’t forget to offer your customers a good choice of payment solutions for an ultimate shopping experience.
#4 Poor Customer Service
You can invest a fortune into your sophisticated and unique storefront design, integrating the latest industry technologies, website promotion and even make your prices dramatically lower in comparison with your competitors, but all these may turn to be a waste of money and time, if your visitors fail to get an adequate support on your website. There are many questions your visitors may want to ask about your products before they make a final decision and believe me, they won’t wait for hours to get assistance.
Advice
A proper and responsive customer service is one of your main competitive advantages. Provide your visitors with several options to contact you, including emails, live chat, online request form, phone numbers, etc., so that they can easily choose a convenient method to get all their inquiries answered on the fly. Create a comprehensive knowledge base and FAQ (frequently asked questions) sections as well.
#5 Mobile Devices Support
Today, more and more people are shopping online through their tablet PCs, iPads, PDAs, smartphones, etc., as they like the idea of doing shopping wherever they are and whenever they want. A very widespread mistake among numerous modern online stores is requiring to download and install a tablet or iPad applications to shop online. In accordance with the recent surveys, the majority of customers find all this stuff with additional applications rather burdensome.
Advice
Developing and customization of specific mobile and iPad applications can be rather costly and time consuming and, in many cases, this may turn to be in vain. Why don’t you just optimize your web store for the ultimate tablet and iPad experience? This is a much more viable alternative.
To sum up, always remember that online shoppers have multiple (hundreds and even thousands) of stores to choose from when they’re going to purchase something online. That’s why, all of your efforts should be focused on convincing your existing and prospective clients that your web store is the only right place they need to make purchases. What is your personal experience? Would you like to suggest your own ecommerce success recipe? Feel free to share your thoughts and ideas in the comments below.