Starting or building up an e-commerce business is an excellent idea for the ones who are looking to market products to customers without wasting a considerable sum of money. The Covid19 pandemic has considerably changed customers’ shopping behavior, and in fact, online shopping has gained immense popularity over the years.
As a result, building a robust online presence has become essential for all businesses these days. E-commerce can indeed offer a wide range of opportunities for businesses to grow. However, you will need to steer away from common eCommerce mistakes if you want to enjoy success. Mistakes can be delivery issues like amazon missing packages for end customers that creates hassle at both ends. This hinders the growth of your ecommerce business.
Building a successful eCommerce store is not challenging, but you will surely hit obstacles, which might threaten the success and progress of your store. To avoid mistakes, you can hire eCommerce mentors who can lessen the chances of making mistakes. A mentor can highlight loopholes in eCommerce strategy and guide you according to it.
This is why businesses must learn about the common mistakes they should avoid while building an eCommerce website or store for their business.
Ignoring the Best Security Practices
Do you know that one of the significant issues faced by eCommerce websites and stores is cyberattacks? The internet is not a safe place, which means that you should never trust anyone online, and it includes both your friends and employees.
In their 2020 DBIR Report, Verizon stated that approximately 30 percent of data breaches involve internal actors. Several businesses find it hard to admit that their employees may compromise their data. Still, it can happen, which is why you should be vigilant.
The first and most crucial thing website admins need to do is ensure that they have the best eCommerce security practices in place.
If there are no adequate security measures, your website or online store will be an easy target for cybercriminals and hackers.
Several businesses often make the grave mistake of using HTTP instead of HTTPS on their website. HTTPS transfer protocols contain SSL certificates, described as cryptographic protocols, ensuring safe and secure data transfer.
If you are running your website on HTTP instead of HTTPS, then you must buy the right kind of SSL certificate and upgrade your site to HTTPS as soon as possible. Data will be transmitted in an indecipherable format when you have an SSL certificate on your website.
We suggest going for a wildcard SSL certificate as it will help you secure an unlimited number of first-level subdomains such as payments, blogs, product collection pages under the chosen main domain at no extra cost.
If budget is a constraint, you can invest in a cheap wildcard SSL certificate that works as well as the more expensive ones.
Not Conducting Enough Market Research
As mentioned earlier, building, and running an eCommerce website or store is not an easy process, and in fact, it can take a considerable amount of time and effort.
If you want to ensure the success of your eCommerce website or store, then you should start by conducting proper market research.
If you can spend some time on market research, it will enable you to find your competitors, target audience, and more. So, before you start working on anything else, conduct thorough market research, as it will help you get valuable insights.
Complicated Checkout Process
Some eCommerce websites and stores feature a stunning design, and they do have excellent products. However, they still fail to generate sales or improve online conversions because the checkout process is complicated and confusing.
A confusing checkout process is one of the primary reasons that results in the loss of potential eCommerce sales. Ecommerce business managers have a misconception that all shopping carts are the same, but that’s not the case. So, you should try to simplify the checkout process if you want to get more sales.
It might come as a surprise to several people when they hear that even several large or popular eCommerce websites contain complicated and confusing checkout processes.
Potential customers are often asked to fill out a long-form, which can be intimidating and irritating for some customers. So, the trick is to make a few adjustments to the checkout page on your website, as it will surely reward you in the long run.
Neglecting Mobile Internet Users
Most online shoppers expect eCommerce websites and online stores to be mobile-friendly because it will enable them to shop wherever and whenever they want. Moreover, there has been a considerable increase in the number of mobile internet users in recent years.
So, if your website or online store is not mobile-friendly, you are at a higher risk of losing customers. Another interesting thing to remember is that Google has been prioritizing sites that are mobile-friendly over other websites. This means that your website will struggle to acquire a higher rank on the search engine results page of Google if it is not mobile-friendly.
Choosing the Wrong Ecommerce Platform
Ecommerce businesses that select the right eCommerce platform will surely be able to succeed. On the other hand, choosing the wrong eCommerce platform for your business can put your business at serious risk. In other words, the eCommerce platform that you select can either break or make your business.
It is essential to understand that eCommerce platforms play an integral role in determining how you sell products to customers and how you showcase them on your website or online store. The right platform will even help you scale your businesses with time.
The last thing you want to do is opt for an eCommerce platform, which will compromise your business’s success. For example, companies that select the wrong eCommerce platform might have to deal with low traffic, poor design, low conversion rates, and security issues. All these factors might result in reduced revenues.
So, before selecting a specific eCommerce platform for your business, it is best to do proper research. This will help you determine whether the eCommerce platform is ideal for your business or not.
Also, Read This: 8 Tips for Setting Up Your Ecommerce Home Page for Success
Wrapping Up
Making one of the above-listed mistakes when building and running an eCommerce website can be costly. Therefore, it is essential to avoid common mistakes made by other entrepreneurs, as it will help you succeed in your eCommerce journey.
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