12 E-Commerce Mistakes to consider in 2019

12 E-Commerce Mistakes to consider in 2019

Building an online business can be difficult, especially if it’s your first time. However, just

because it’s your first time doesn’t mean you need to make first-timer mistakes. There’s a

famous quote that says “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from

the mistakes of others.”

In this post, we will look at twelve of the most common mistakes new e-commerce business

owners make and how you can avoid them.

In no particular order, here they are:

1. "If You Build It They Will Come" Mentality

They Won't. Assembling your business (and visitors) requires some time, energy and effort.

In accordance with Internet Live Stats, the World Wide Web has approximately 1,202,012,086

sites at this very minute and based on WorldWideWeb Size, you will find 4.44 billion

web-pages. Have a little time to consider that. When you launch your own site, you'll be site

number 1,202,012,087. How are people going to find you?

Building the most beautiful site and filling it with great products won’t make customers come.

When you begin a company, you must understand that starting your store Is just the initial

step in a great trip to building your business. There are nevertheless many actions that come

after launch. 

2. No Logo

A logo is usually the first thing a visitor sees and among the very first impressions of your
internet store. Most if not all E-commerce alternatives will display your store title in a typical
text if you don't upload a logo yourself, but this is not fine enough.

So why do so many people launch stores with no logos?

Usually, it is because most people still feel this so as to get a logo made, they have to find a
designer and invest hundreds (or thousands) of dollars. The simple fact is though, this isn't
correct. Far from it. There are so many logo maker available now for developing a free or
very inexpensive logo  that there is no reason your store should use a default text logo. 

3. No Social Proof and Forcing Social Proof

We all know that social proof can help with conversions. It’s not for lack of trying that many

new merchants are not succeeding at this though. Mostly, the social proof is being

implemented in a wrong way.

Let’s take a look at several ways you can implement social proof wrong and why it is more

harmful.

a) Reviews. What Reviews?

We often consider that reviewing our online store is a great thing and can be helpful in

conversions. While reviews can surely result into increased conversions, but if implemented at not the right time, they can also cause harm.

When you're first starting out, you want to consider holding off on adding a product review section until you have some clients that you can request reviews from. This is especially important when you've got a larger catalog of merchandise. 

Looking at a shop or a product page that has a reviews app with no testimonials may be cause for concern. Why are there no reviews? Has anyone bought this product earlier? This acts in the specific opposite of proof causing customers to wonder if they should buy from you. 

b) Prominently Featuring Social Accounts with No Followers:

Much like the testimonials, many online shoppers use social media as a trust indicator when buying from a store for the very first time.  You can be on every single social network but in case you have no followers and involvement, it may end up doing more harm than good.

So what Is the solution?  Rather than prominently displaying all of the wonderful social networks you are part of, begin with one and work on building up a nice following.  As you begin to construct it, you can add and exhibit new social networks. This may also provide you with a bit of focus and make it possible for you to better explore the potential advantages of every station rather than scattering yourself and attempts.

4. Absence of having a proper About Us OR Contact Us Page

Many proprietors end up underestimating the sales potential of the About-Us page they have
on their website. Having a glance at your own analytics will result into finding that your
About page is either the second most visited page or in the top three. That means this page
is important to visitors.

Though being one of the most crucial pages for visitors, lots of new online traders tend to
invest less effort on this page. Don’t do that mistake.

These are the biggest mistakes people tend to make on their About Us and Contact Us pages:

a) No Story – Who exactly are you?  How did your store come to be? What's the story of your
goods?  How are they created? You don't need to make an elaborate story, however,
a couple paragraphs that store visitors can
relate to are hugely valuable.

b) No Location Details- It's true, you are an internet shop, but it does not mean people do
not search for a speech.  Many people still wish to understand where you are located and
where your goods sent from. For most people, it is only a problem of trust, for many others,
they wish to understand if they will need to think about duties and customs if your goods ship
from the other nation. 

c) Using A Generic Email Address- Yes, Gmail is great but that's not going to cut it for your
business. Newly merchants are guilty of using a common, regular non-unique email ID.
What does that say to customers? Take your own time to set up a unique and good domain
name (youbrandname.com) and set up an email address to let your customers know you're in
it for the long journey.

5. Not Actually Thinking About Overall SEO Strategy

Probably the most common problem with new online stores is not properly following SEO
tactics or rather not doing it at all. It's not rocket science but it's not easy either. Coupled
with the fact that SEO can take a while to show any signs of success and it ends up being a
complete afterthought (if even a thought at all) for most new online businesses. 

The thing is, SEO is quite necessary and can be one of your most powerful tools as it can
continue to bring in targeted traffic to your site, day after day after day. Unlike Social Platforms
like Facebook.com and Google AdWords Platform which restricts providing traffic the
moment, you stop paying to them. 

Can you list the top 10 keywords you’re trying to target in the long term right now?
If you can’t, it’s time to actually think about your SEO and keyword strategy.

6. NOT ADDING TRUST FACTORS

The success of an e-commerce business basically relies on trust. You can increase
your e-commerce website's relying factor by applying:

• SSL certificate
• Terms of use
• Privacy policy
• Refund/exchange policy

Moreover, ensuring your website visitors that their personal information will be kept safe and
will not be accessible to anyone unauthorised. And to build your trust factor even more
with a professional website, you may want to keep in mind these design tips:

•   Keep design simple yet effective
•   Provide a clear product category and easy navigation
•   Align you CTA with your content
•   Add section for product reviews

7. Not Paying Much Attention to Re-targeting

E-commerce visitors generally don’t buy on their very 1st visit. According to AdRoll, “On an
average, 98% of all E-commerce potential customers leave without converting into sales.”
Therefore in this kind of scenario, re-targeting these customers is extremely important for an
E-commerce business and an amazingly outstanding way for shopping cart recovery. 
It aids in bringing those prospective customers back that once have left your site without
completing a transaction, by showing them the goods in their abandoned shopping cart
along with other similar goods again and again. Retailers do this through a number of ways,
including simplifying the offer for a limited time frame to improve their conversions. 

Also, re-targeting is an efficient option to bring back the potential customers who have
earlier done shopping from your website. Eg, if a customer purchased clothes from your
website in the past, you can reattract them showing similar products of their interest.

8. Not Giving Each Marketing Channel a Fair Shot

One of the most frequent mistakes entrepreneurs and veterans make isn't devoting
sufficient time, energy and cash to every advertising channel. In addition to being among
the most frequent mistakes, this can be the biggest error to your store. There are several
techniques for getting traffic. There are hundreds of marketing stations, but none are
something. Whether it's search engine optimization, search engine optimization,
Facebook Advertising, Instagram advertising or influence outreach, they require a
very good work and sometimes cash.  Spending $50 on Facebook ads and not getting any
earnings doesn't mean that the channel doesn't work and you ought to give it up.
It could just take more money to get the ideal audience that will respond best or alter
the advertisement design and copy to a thing which talks to your audience better.
It really takes a little time and patience to figure each channel out. 

When building an online business, prioritizing and tackling one channel at a time.
This means strategically choosing the platforms that you have belief will work extremely best
for your business development and taking out the time to analyse the internal workings of
that particular platform, strategically planning your assault, and giving the station enough
time as well as monetary value to prove itself and tracking the reports & outputs carefully.

9. Failing to Properly Utilize Quality Images

You ought to know by now that the visuals which you use are incredibly significant if you
happen to sell items that are mostly determined by looks.

A case study right from Visual Website Optimizer described how an increase in e-commerce
image size might lead you to improved conversions by a notable amount:

Variation 2 with all the big images and merchandise description plotted on mouse-over was
the winner.  It led to a straight 9.46% increase in earnings (96% chances to overcome first).
In another evaluation first, an online store Managed to enhance conversions via site search
by 100% when they comprised images in the search bar, which seemed like this: 

There is also the matter of image quality. While this study mentions, one of the best ways
to market a physical good is to receive it in somebody's hands.  Since you cannot do this
online, the best choice is to get them to imagine it in their hands. High-quality images help
with this. 

Kith NYC consistently has excellent images for the goods they market.  When you're selling
a $500 set of men's boot, then the visual better capture any imaginations:

As It's possible to picture, "action" shots often do the job nicely for fashion items and
some other item that is utilizing aesthetics as a major selling point. Consider the comments
that we left on Reddit When Someone posted about a Victorinox watch which was being
sold on Amazon:

That’s a great picture. It is so much more mesmerizing than it looks in that particular Amazon
listing. I wouldn't give it the time of day just going to the Amazon webpage but your picture…

Bear in mind that your pictures will be a significant part of transferring your products to
several businesses, so if you're selling homegrown stuff or perhaps drop-shipping, invest in
quality photos.

10. The Site Doesn't Look Trustworthy

There is one thing you want to realize when competing against the big boys of e-commerce:
their brand recognition means that they don't have to prove that they are trustworthy.
Simply because you're trustworthy doesn't mean clients will consider you. 

Your site has to reflect your willingness, ability and track record for delivering on your
promises. As Derek Halpern first revealed, an interesting study performed on the
trustworthiness of health sites found that the design of this website played more of
a role than the actual content of the site.  So how do you make your website appear more
reliable? You'll need to take a customer-oriented strategy, many companies provide
social proof in a fashion that seems like torso rapping, instead of thinking about the
psychology behind why a possible customer could worry about buying through an
internet store they've never used it earlier.  Instead, Really consider what worries
a customer might have when buying From an unknown store, and structure your own
social proof to tackle Those issues. Here are a few of my favorite components to use: 

a) Customer Testimonials

The perfect testimonial is typically found through a potential or well-known customer.
In other words, the source of the testimonial frequently matters just as much as what
was stated, so put your best foot forward by picking out the praise you received that
will be most reassuring to prospective clients. 

b) Notable Press

Prospects Respect notable books in your industry (Forbes for business, GQ for style, etc.),
and if you've been featured here, then It's very much worth noting.  A recognizable press
mention will probably go a long way in Letting customers know that you are for real.
Check out just how Pebble Watch features their press mentions with logos right at the top of
Their homepage.

c) Interesting Info About the Company

How do client guarantee that you'll be even a few months following their purchase? 
One of the best ways to prove that you plan to be around for the long haul would be
to share some fascinating information about what your organization does.  At Help Scout,
they share how many emails we processed last month:

d) An Up to Date Design

You aren't required to hire a world class designer to launch your bootstrapped e-commerce
business, but just know that people do judge books by their cover, and will judge your
business by your site's design. Avoiding trending element, but at the very moment also
make sure your site looks up to date and neatly designed.

11) Not making sure your site is secure.

"Studies show that around 25 percent of users have actually stopped an online purchase
due to website security concerns," says Flavio Martins, vice president of Operations, DigiCert,
an SSL digital certificate authority. Yet "too many e-commerce sites, particularly smaller ones,
fall short of having clear trust signs which users can trust and know that their data is secure
and protected by HTTPS," he states. " A digital certificate offers authenticity of your website
and an encrypted connection to protect sensitive info and you'll be able to get one quickly
and in the budget. " Additionally, it "conveys to customers that your website is trusted and
the information is secure. " 

Similarly, "Need security from third party Suppliers," he says. “Many e-commerce sellers
outsource Web hosting, IT support and Internet security tasks to consultants.  But too often
merchants don't demand strong security from their outside service providers, he notes.
“Some substantial hacks have come directly from stolen third-party log-ins or through
third-party support.  " Thus "when choosing a service provider, companies must demand
strong security best practices, rather verified through industry certifications and always be
ensuring that their support suppliers protected their own information with https.  " 

12) No way to filter features while sorting on price.

Most E-commerce stores let visitors sort their listings by price. This helps them narrow
down the listings to only those products that fit their budget range. The single mistake
which is made by many stores is that combination of filters like price sorting with other
filters like reviews as well as attributes of the particular item.

 In doing that, store stops the ability for customers to make a meaningful purchase.
These customers have a glance on the cheap products with an offer on it, or they view
products filtered by certain attributes that might not be comfortable with their pockets.
Since the cheapest products may not always come with the best of features, this could
potentially hurt conversion.

This may be fixed by allowing customers to filter listings based on specific product attributes
like size, color, etc. and then letting these filtered listings be sorted by price. This way, the
customer can get the product of their choice within budget.

Conclusion

Building an e-commerce website is difficult to work, however, no matter how much effort you
put in, the small details as summarized in this informative article may endanger your efforts
and hard work. Make sure that you regularly take some opportunity to take an objective
look at your shop, your advertising, and marketing channels and your aims to be certain
you're on the ideal path and you will be well on your path to more visitors and sales for
your online store. 

Author Bio:
Ronak Meghani is a serial entrepreneur and who has worked with small-medium-large
companies. He is having an 8+ Years of expertise and closely working with eCommerce
ventures since 2009. Ronak Meghani, the Co-Founder of Magneto IT Solutions, a full
eCommerce Development Services in the USA, UK, UAE and India. He's enthusiastic about
fitness, start-ups, entrepreneurship, and all things marketing.