Do you own an eCommerce website?
Whether you own it, or you're planning to start one, this article is tailor-made for all the eCommerce enthusiasts!
It may seem easy to build an eCommerce website but, is it really that easy? Apart from choosing the best hosting provider India, you also need to pick the right platform, set-up payment getaways among others.
What if I tell you that building an eCommerce website is as difficult as difficult can get?
It sure is achievable, but it's not as easy as you believe.
People make the most common and minuscule mistakes while launching an eCommerce website. Reason being, they do not know they are mistakes until they suffer a major loss because of those mistakes.
What eCommerce Mistakes To Avoid Before Launching a Website?
The online eCommerce marketplace is huge, and the competition is quite fierce. If you want to make in-roads into a particular niche, then you need to do in-depth research before embarking on an eCommerce venture. Likewise, when creating an online store, you need to steer clear from common eCommerce mistakes that could affect its future growth. Just like our how to start a blog checklist, here is a list of eCommerce launching mistakes to avoid that could help you save a lot of time, effort, and money in the long run.
Make sure that you read this infographic and the article to get the most out of it. Let's dive in and understand the 19 most common mistakes eCommerce website owners make.
Free Download: 19 Mistakes To Avoid Before Launching An Ecommerce Website
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Quick Overview Of What Is Covered In The Article Below:
Below is the extended version of the above infographic which tells you how to avoid these mistakes, and even tells you how to rectify them if you've made them! So, dive in!
Mistake #1: Long, Confusing Domain Name
Many times people do not realize that their domain name is very long. Long domain names are difficult to remember and spell.
For instance; if it weren’t for Google, none of the HIMYM fans could ever spell Robin Scherbatsky! But, because of the Google prompts all we had to do was select the name.
Sure, the same will apply to your website. But, tell me honestly, do you believe that your website will rank on the first page of Google, for all your keywords, at all times? It's probably not possible.
For that, you need to do a lot of SEO and have to be one of the best eCommerce websites.
It's not possible for everyone to rank on the first page of Google, and thus, you need to get a domain name that is easy to remember and recall whenever required.
Now, if you already have a domain name which is long and can be easily forgotten, then what you can do is – create a story around your domain name. This story will help your customers to remember your domain name and if the story catches the attention of the public, then be ready to go viral.
For domain and hosting, check out eCommerce hosting in India.
Mistake #2: No Logo
A logo is the first thing a visitor sees and one of the first impressions of your online website. You may think that since you own an eCommerce website, you won’t need to focus on the logo. The products are most important to you.
This is not true!
Sure, products are important, but they are available on other websites too. You need a unique identity for your website, which will be your logo.
A logo helps you to be more memorable, it explains your company name to the customer, but most essentially, it distinguishes you from your competitors. A logo shows that you have invested in your business and that you will not vanish away anytime in the near future.
Don’t have a logo for your eCommerce website?
Add it now, it’s never too late to add a logo and enhance the identity of your eCommerce website.
Don’t have the finance to make a logo as yet?
Try this website – Free Logo Maker, to make a free and customized logo!
Mistake #3: Lack Of Research
Research is the first and most essential step of starting up any venture. Be it online or offline, research is vital. Many young entrepreneurs ignore this fact and in the excitement start a venture without any research.
But, you may be wondering; What is this research? What am I supposed to research about?
Before launching your eCommerce venture, you need to research in depth about the eCommerce market. You need to understand the minute details that can help your business rise, or pull your business down. You need to devise plans to avoid drawbacks. You need to be prepared to shine, no matter how hard it rains!
Started your business without any research?
Since your boat has already sailed, you may as well start rowing! This means you can research now even when your business has already been launched.
Researching will help you increase the sales on your eCommerce site and also help you find new marketing strategies!
Mistake #4: Absence Of A Business Plan
Deciding to start an eCommerce business is a big decision. It not just requires a good budget, but it also requires a well-devised strategy and planning.
For smooth sailing business, a proper business plan should be formed well in advance, before building the online store.
This business plan may include things like the marketing plan, the goals and aims of the venture, the products which your venture is willing to sell, so on and so forth.
When this business plan is well devised, you can sit behind the steering wheel and drive through the developed road ahead.
Now, if you do not have a business plan in place and your eCommerce website is already live, then you can take into consideration your profits and loss, and then devise a business plan for the future of your business!
Mistake #5: No Proper About Us Page
A lot of people underestimate the content of their About Us page. Yes, you're not alone. You may not know, but your About Us page has the potential to sell!
Don't believe me?
Go take a look at your analytics report, you will find that your About Us page is either the second most visited page or among the top 3 pages!
Yes, that's how important the About Us page is!
Here's what you can include in your about us page-
- Add your story, your journey, in a creative and appealing format
- If you have a retail store / office, add the address
- Add the contact in the about us page too!
- Add the generic email address, which you are using all over your website
So, does your website's about us page meet these guidelines?
No? Well, then now is the time to revamp the about us page!
Mistake #6: Not Focusing On The SEO Strategy
This is probably the most common problem of all the eCommerce websites! They do not focus on the off-page and on-page SEO strategy as much as they should.
E-commerce owners think that since their website does not deal with content marketing, they do not need SEO. Sadly, this is not true.
There is a lot more to SEO than content marketing. And, smartness is in hiring an SEO expert to optimize your eCommerce website.
To ensure that your eCommerce website ranks well on the search engine pages, you need to have a good SEO plan in place before your eCommerce website goes live.
What can you do if your eCommerce website is already live??
To begin with, take a look at this common SEO mistakes checklist to see if you are committing any of these mistakes on your website. Then, look for a good SEO team who can get your entire website SEO optimized without any hassle. And lastly, keep your website’s SEO in check, always!
Mistake #7: Limited Budget / Insufficient Budget
Building an eCommerce website isn’t a piece of cake. You will need investment, a lot of it.
Many people fail to understand that finance is the backbone of any venture, however, small or large it may be. Thinking about starting a business without any capital is not a wise thought, to begin with.
You need money for things such as, building your website, making a logo, and most importantly you need money to advertise your website.
Sure, you can push your website to rank high on search engine pages through SEO, but that takes time and effort. Advertising is the only way to bring your website into the limelight as soon as it's launched. As we all know, advertising needs money and a lot of it!
If you’ve started a venture without adequate funds, and need some now, you can look out for investors. Since your business is already running, there will be a lot of them interested in investing in your business.
Mistake #8: Focusing On Too Many Things
To run a business is not easy, it’s hard and complex. To run a successful business is even more complex.
You cannot run a business and focus on other things as well. Well, literally you can, but the success rate will go down the drain! It’s like a heart surgeon performing multiple surgeries at the same time. That would be a disaster!
This same logic holds true for a business.
When running a business your entire attention should be on how to effectively run a business and on how to grow your business further.
E-commerce businesses are even more crucial, as you need to make sure that there are enough sales to make a profit.
Mistake #9 : Not Serving Customer Interest
An eCommerce website owner should never ever overlook one thing-
Customer's interest!
Whether you have an eCommerce website or a retail outlet, you need to realize that customer is king. You need to make your website in the favour of your customer and nobody else.
Everything you put on your website, including your products, should be what your customers want and need.
If you do not satisfy your customer, somebody else will!
Thus, your primary focus should be to serve your customers wants and their needs. Everything on your website should add value to the lives of your customers.
You need to think about customer service before your first order and not afterwards.
Though, if you have already started your eCommerce business, all you need to do now is start focusing on your customers and their interests.
Mistake #10: Dealing Verbally With Clients
Verbal contracts are a big NO! It’s great when two old pals come together to start an online store, but when it comes to business, everything should be on the paper.
Even while you’re dealing with your clients you need to make sure that everything is professionally dealt with. The deal should be legally drafted and signed by both parties before starting any kind of work.
Sure, trusting each other is important, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
if you don’t want your eCommerce business to shut down due to discrepancies in any verbal contracts, you need to have the paperwork sorted well in advance.
Don’t have the paperwork done yet? Do it now, it’s in the welfare of both you and your business!
Mistake #11: Running A Contest Without A Plan
Running a contest is another way of marketing the products, and it’s quite effective!
Running a contest is easy. With your product as a prize, you can market it as well as gain a lot of social media followers. More the number of followers, more the sales.
Since you have an eCommerce website, you need to understand that your social media likes are based on how engaging / promising your website is
You can make your eCommerce website promising enough by providing a variety of unique products with good quality. If you fail to entertain your followers, then they will simply unfollow you and the entire idea of running a contest will be done for.
So, before running any marketing strategy, make sure that you have enough data to entertain your followers.
Mistake #12: Not Taking Content Marketing Seriously
Content marketing works, and if it wouldn’t work you wouldn’t be here. Putting enough efforts into the content marketing will ensure that you get organic traffic on your eCommerce website.
You may be wondering; Why organic traffic so important?
Well, organic traffic means that the customers have reached your website through a search engine page and not through paid advertising. The fact that your eCommerce website ranks high on search engines tells your customers that your eCommerce website is genuine. So, even before you serve your customers, you’ve gone a step ahead.
Content marketing also helps a lot in the SEO bit. The more relevant content you have, the higher you rank on Google.
If you haven’t yet focused on content marketing for your website, you can start now. You can start with a blog on your eCommerce website and start marketing it to get the organic result.
Mistake #13: Ignoring Influence Marketing
You probably have no idea how fast influence marketing is growing as a marketing strategy. Here's what you need to know about influence marketing.
Influence marketing is hiring a person, a brand, or a company with many followers, to market your product/service.
Now, you may be wondering how does this work?
Well, it works like this;
A brand hires a popular blogger with a lot of followers. This blogger uses the brand's product and starts promoting the product on her social media profile. She may compliment the product, ask the followers to try it, or give it as a giveaway. Whichever way, the blogger makes sure that the brand's product gets the necessary limelight through her blog. When the blogger's followers see her using a particular product, they may go ahead and try it. This is purely out of loyalty the blogger has earned from her followers.
Sounds complicated? It's not. All you as a brand have to do is, contact the blogger and take things forward!
Afraid that your eCommerce website might be too old to use influence marketing? Well, don't be. Even the oldest brands today are using influence marketing on a large scale. You should go for it!
Mistake #14: Sticking To Traditional Marketing
Marketing strategies keep on growing and updating, and with that traditional strategies hit the back bench.
As an eCommerce website, you must adapt the upcoming trends in marketing like using Quora for SEO and leave behind the traditional marketing techniques.
Of course, if you think most of your audience comes to traditional marketing, then you should continue advertising through traditional marketing strategies.
In fact, you can very well use both the traditional as well as the new marketing strategies simultaneously.
The point here is to go wherever your target audience goes!
Mistake #15: Not Thinking Through The Shipping Costs
Running an eCommerce website means you will have to have a strong product delivery network. Before launching an eCommerce website, you must get this delivery network sorted. You need to ask the delivery guy questions like;
- What will be the charges for delivering the products?
- How long will it take to deliver a product?
- Is speed delivery available?
- What are the charges for speed delivery?
- What all areas will be covered under their service?
Once all of this is sorted, you can then get a clear idea of how much would the shipping expenses cost you. This will help you charge the customers appropriately.
Mistake #16: Not Making Your Website Responsive In Design
There are two reasons why your eCommerce website needs to be responsive.
One – Most of your target audience browse more through mobile phones than desktops. In fact, most of the world’s population browse more through mobile phones than desktops.
And two – Recently, Google started penalizing all the websites, whether eCommerce or not, if they weren’t responsive.
Thus, if your eCommerce website is not responsive, it won’t be displayed on Google’s mobile search result. Imagine, the amount of business you would lose because of it. That’s exactly why you need a responsive design in place.
Now, if you do not have a responsive design, you can go to your existing web designer, and ask him to turn your website into a responsive one. Of course, there will be some obstacles, but talking to your web designer will surely solve your problems.
Mistake #17: Loading Speed
A slow loading website is a big turn off!
You hate it. I hate it. Your customers hate it too.
E-commerce websites can be quite heavy with files to load, as there are a lot of modules and features to display.
Your website should load within 3 seconds max. Moreover, research says that if a visitor doesn’t see any text on your website within 1 second. It's very likely that they will leave your website.
Being an eCommerce website, if your visitors leave before your website loads, you're losing an opportunity to impress them with your products.
That's a huge opportunity lost!
So, to avoid that, you need to optimize your website to speed up the loading time of your eCommerce website.
Mistake #18: Not Enough Product Information
This is one crucial mistake eCommerce owners make.
When you list a product, you need to make sure that there is enough information for your potential customer to ponder over.
A customer before purchasing the product wants to know every detail possible about the product. Even if you have an exchange policy, product information is a must.
If you were to sell clothing items, then apart from price, you should add a small description like:
- What material is used to make the product
- Availability of colors and sizes
- When can you wear this product and more.
If you do not have such information about your product on your eCommerce website, then this is right time to add it.
Mistake #19: Choosing The Wrong E-commerce Platform
The biggest mistake people make is not realizing that eCommerce platforms too affect the SEO of a website. You may not know, but different eCommerce platforms have different SEO ratings.
I’m not saying you have to select the one with the highest SEO rating, but you need to consider the ones with the top ratings and choose the one which well matches your needs.
All you’ve to do now is to choose wisely!
Similarly, you need to select the right hosting for your eCommerce website. Bluehost can help you with that. (Read this Bluehost review to know how)
You can call up the Bluehost customer service at any time and look for a hosting that matches your need well. Once you have a hosting plan in place, you can come back to /bluehost-coupons/, select the appropriate coupon and purchase the hosting at a discounted price!
Conclusion:
Now, that you know what are the most common mistakes eCommerce business owners make, you’re in a better position to overcome them.
Potential eCommerce business owners can very well avoid these mistakes, and existing eCommerce business owners can rectify them.
Once you get over these mistakes, you’re ready to go and rule the eCommerce market!
Do you know any other mistakes pertaining to running an eCommerce website? Let me know in the comments below!
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