Ecommerce has become the preferred choice of selling by both retailers and wholesalers. According to statistics, retail Ecommerce sales amounted to $4.9 trillion worldwide in 2021. It is estimated that the figure is expected to grow by 50 percent or about $7.4 trillion by 2025. With the pandemic, online shopping has become the accepted norm for purchasing items. For this reason, it is now important for Ecommerce businesses to step up and take their product offerings to the next level.
The success of your Ecommerce business lies in ensuring a smooth flow of transactions within your Ecommerce business. From the ordering to the completion of the purchase, everything has to be perfect. Unfortunately, most online retailers still make Ecommerce mistakes that can keep customers from doing business with them. As an Ecommerce retailer, you need to be aware of the most common mistakes you need to avoid to ensure customer loyalty.
10 Common Mistakes In Eommerce
- Choosing The Wrong Platform
- Your Store Is Not Mobile-Friendly
- Not Identifying Your Target Audience
- Insufficient Product Description
- Confusing Checkout Process
- Poor Usability
- Lack of Online Presence
- No Contact Details
- Ignoring SEO
- No Appealing Shipping Options
Let us discuss this in detail.
10 Common Mistakes in Ecommerce
You may have the best product and website in the Ecommerce industry, but it is useless if your online store does not bring in customers and generate sales. To prime your Ecommerce store for success, check out these common Ecommerce mistakes you need to avoid.
1. Choosing The Wrong Platform
Whether you are just an Ecommerce startup or already established in the industry, nothing can beat having the right Ecommerce platform. It can truly make or break your business. Your platform will showcase your products and will be useful in attracting customers to your store. The last thing you want to do is choose a platform that will prevent your business from scaling.
Choosing the wrong platform can lead to a wide range of issues like loss of income, lower conversion rate, reduced traffic, security issues, poor design, and others. On the other hand, using the right platform will allow the smooth management of your Ecommerce business. Your Ecommerce platform will give you access to all your sales, pick up and process customer orders, manage stocks, and list your products across various channels.
Just because an Ecommerce platform has a lot of users does not mean that is right for you as well. When choosing a platform, learn the ins and outs of the platform. Remember the platform will assist you in managing your Ecommerce business. Choosing the wrong platform can be costly as it means more investment in time, money, and energy as you would either update the platform or migrate into a new platform altogether.
2. Your Store Is Not Mobile-Friendly
In today’s digital age, most customers now use their mobile devices to shop online.
Data from Statista reveals that mobile devices now account for 54.4% of global website traffic in the fourth quarter of 2021. Today, it is now more likely that your customers will now interact with your Ecommerce store from a mobile phone or tablet. So if your online store isn’t mobile friendly, your customers will not have second thoughts buying from your competitor.
Here’s another valid reason why you should be ensuring that your Ecommerce site is mobile-friendly. Google search results prioritize sites that are mobile-friendly. So if your website isn’t optimized for mobile users, then your website could be pushed down the lower pages of search engine results. Having a mobile-friendly Ecommerce site allows for convenience and easier customer browsing.
How do you optimize your Ecommerce website to become mobile friendly? 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in less than 2 seconds. To enhance the user experience on their mobile devices, ensure that your Ecommerce website loads quickly. Also, ensure that your content is relevant and easily readable.
3. Not Identifying Your Target Audience
Determining your target audience will help you personalize your customer experience. No matter how excellent your product is or how great the benefits are, no one will buy your product if you are targeting the wrong audience. In establishing your target audience, check the following information:
- Understand their interests
- Analyze their behavior
- Demographic information like age, gender, income
- Purchasing decision
- Preferred platforms
To ensure maximum sales, you need to know where your customers hang out. Not all platforms will be ideal for your products so choose them well. Do an online research of similar products being sold online, take note of where they are being sold and check if your target customers are there.
The success of your Ecommerce store will depend on how you connect with your audience. Do market research and identify your target audience. Market research will help give you a solid idea of what your audience is looking for and the type of language they speak. You just need to be consistent and unwavering with your messaging.
4. Insufficient Product Description
Product images are not enough if they do not come with appropriate descriptions. You want to make sure that your product description is compelling enough and should include features and benefits to help boost the sales of your product. For your product description to be effective, consider the following:
- Product description must be clear, concise, and divided into segments
- It should focus on the right audience
- It should include the benefits that the buyer will have after using it
- Optimize your product descriptions for the search engines for higher rankings
- Answer the what, why, and how with your product descriptions
As bad as insufficient description is using stock product description. By using the manufacturer’s description, you make it hard for your business to stand out from the competition, especially in search engines. Your product description should be compelling and must elicit strong emotions so people can connect with your brand and product.
Make sure that the product description includes how the product works, the materials, warranty, or nutritional information in case of food items, and other relevant information. Having complete product descriptions will avoid unreasonable customer expectations. Remember your customers are unable to touch or try out your products so having sufficient product descriptions will help convince them to make a purchase.
5. Confusing Checkout Process
The checkout process allows online retailers to close the deal and for the customers to complete their purchase. Unfortunately, this is also where many Ecommerce businesses experience cart abandonment with their customers. This may be attributed to having a complicated checkout process. According to a study by the Baymard Institute, the average cart abandonment rate is 69.82%.
Having the best products and a fantastic site design will not mean anything if the customer can’t make it through the checkout process. This could eventually lead to a loss of potential sales. A complicated checkout process will prevent customers from paying immediately. If your checkout process is complicated, then you need to make a few adjustments to your checkout page.
Make your checkout process quicker and simpler. As much as possible, keep the payment process to just one page, and don’t redirect your customers to a lot of pages. Allow social login or guest check-out. Don’t make them create an account as it will take time and could frustrate the customer. Finally, offer different payment options to speed up their payment process.
6. Poor Usability
Ensuring a great user experience is the role of every online retailer. Your Ecommerce website should be a collaboration between functionality and design. The bottom line is to keep it simple. Avoid using fancy designs, too many images, and confusing navigation. Your customers are looking for products they can buy. If they can’t find a way to your products page, then they won’t buy from you.
One way to boost customer user experience is to improve your page loading speed. As much as possible, don’t load a large amount of data as it will affect the loading speed of your Ecommerce website. Don’t focus on beautifying your Ecommerce website to the point of setting aside website navigation. This may cause your potential customers to leave your website without seeing your products.
Putting hard-to-find information, missing buttons, and using too many font types and colors can lead to a frustrating experience. Make sure that your visitors can easily find the information they are looking for, and remove too many redirects. Optimize your website to ensure smooth navigation and an enjoyable user experience.
7. Lack of Online Presence
It used to be that having just a website was enough to attract potential customers. However, in today’s digital age, not having an online presence can be a huge mistake. Your brand needs to be accessible on various platforms, including social media. Being present on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms allows you to connect with customers and promote engagement.
According to the Global Web Index, 54% of customers use social media to research products. So if your brand isn’t on social media, customers will not find you. Facebook and Instagram can help generate more leads, perhaps more than what you expect. Sharing great content with your audience can help boost your marketing efforts. Customers who find your content engaging are likely to pass it on to their friends.
In order to attract potential customers, you need to make your presence felt on social media. You need to place ads on social media platforms and collaborate with influencers and YouTubers. If you don’t have an in-house social media team, you can consider outsourcing with a digital marketing agency to help you establish an online presence.
8. No Contact Details
Okay, you have caught the attention of potential customers and they are ready to do business with you. But there is one problem: you did not indicate your contact details on your website or social media channels. If not, you may have placed it on a tab somewhere. Maybe customers still need to click on “Contact Us” before they can find your contact number.
Not putting your contact details on your homepage where it can easily be seen is a huge mistake. Your contact information is not only for customers planning to make a purchase but also for customers who are looking for resolutions about your products or how to use them. In addition, your contact details indicate that your customers can trust you. It gives them assurance that you are not a fake website that will only be extorting money from you.
Make sure that your contact information is active 24/7. On your “About Us” or “Contact Us” pages, make sure that all your contact information like email address, phone number, or physical address is easily visible there. You can also include your customer support number for those customers with concerns.
9. Ignoring SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is what makes your store visible online. When people enter keywords related to your product in search engines like Google, your brand needs to appear in the search results. Your objective is to make your website appear on the first page of the search results or else you will be losing out to the competition.
All text you put on your store offers an opportunity to use the right keywords and improve your SEO. However, SEO is not just about content as it involves other factors like off-page SEO, on-page SEO, link building, and others. Your content should be on point for your target audience, optimized for your search engine traffic, and should entice users to buy your products.
Search engine optimization is a highly technical process that you cannot tackle yourself. For this reason, you would want to work with an SEO agency to help you create copies that sell and utilize high-quality keywords for your niche. An SEO-optimized online store will help drive potential customers to your store.
10. No Appealing Shipping Options
One of the biggest obstacles in the checkout process is the shipping method. 68% of US online shoppers will not make an online purchase if the ecommerce store does not offer free shipping. You may think that using just one shipping method is enough for you. Most likely, you will choose a method that is most suitable for you. But what about your customers?
Giving customers an additional shipping method will help reduce cart abandonment. If customers cannot find the shipping method they prefer, they will most likely give their business to your competitor who offers their preferred shipping method. It will help you ensure your order fulfillment. You may not need the services of every carrier but it is best to give your customers other shipping options.
At the same time, using multiple shipping options will help ensure continuous order fulfillment. If your chosen delivery service is inactive, you can still fulfill orders by switching to another one. Moreover, customers have their preferences when it comes to the shipping of their orders. While others can wait for a couple of days for their orders, others prefer same-day delivery. 41% of consumers are willing to pay a charge for same-day delivery.
Online shopping offers convenience to potential customers. However, committing these 10 Ecommerce mistakes could lead to disappointments on the part of your customer. To ensure customer loyalty to your brand, do your best to avoid these mistakes.
Eommerce Solutions with airisX
Being successful in the Ecommerce space is more than just listing some products and hoping the sales arrive. airisX Ecommerce Solutions brings together a comprehensive suite of services to cover all aspects of operating and growing an Ecommerce business. This allows our clients to achieve more with less resources to transform their business for the future.
airisX has a complete range of individual and complete solutions for Ecommerce sellers – our bread and butter. Born out of necessity to help Ecommerce sellers scale their businesses and lower their costs, we solve your pain points by bringing all your Ecommerce staffing needs under one roof.
Contact us at contact@airisx.com and we will get back to you with a customized solution tailored to your needs.