ECommerce

10 Big Mistakes To Avoid While Running An Online Store

Setting up an online store is not an easy task. It is challenging for beginners to grow and scale up their business with intense competition. For starting an online business, all you need is products and a platform. 

Some of the common mistakes that experts or beginners make need to avoid to grow business exponentially. Making such simple mistakes can send customers in the opposite direction, straight back to your competitors. 

An eCommerce platform is a software using which businesses can offer various products or services, sell their product via Social media with Instagram Feed and Facebook Shop, and customers can easily purchase the product from the comfort of their home. 

There are high chances of making mistakes while creating an online store, and one can easily avoid it if handled carefully. Otherwise, it can adversely affect your conversion rates and may even lose potential traffic. 

It is essential to prepare yourself for success by avoiding common mistakes other entrepreneurs usually make on their eCommerce journey. Sometimes, making mistakes would be fine, but it is crucial to improve them by identifying the problem and correcting it quickly.

So, let’s dive into those mistakes you could be making and discuss how you could eliminate them. Here are some things to avoid to win more customers, earn more sales, and quickly boost your online store’s growth. 

The 10 mistakes that may impact your online store’s performance

Being a beginner or an eCommerce professional, making these mistakes may not get the desired results and significantly affect your online store. To expand your business, try avoiding these mistakes. Here is a list of some common errors that need to be taken care of: 

1. Confusing navigation

Navigation is a map to your website. It provides the customers with a clear idea of what they have to offer and how they can get it. It can reduce the chances of conversions. The lack of straightforward navigation might leave the visitors lost and confused.

Enhanced customer experience is necessary and often comes from simple mobile application navigation. Sometimes, it may even happen that users find it challenging to navigate, so they might conclude that you do not have the information people require.

A simple solution is to install a straightforward menu with main categories and subcategories to help users navigate through the shop efficiently. You also need to implement a simple layout design. 

Therefore, providing a clear navigation facility on your online store can help users find the right products easily without much friction and may improve conversions.

2. Unprofessional design

If you are running an online store, you cannot overlook the power of visuals. People always love eye-catching things, and your eCommerce store is no exception. So, if your design looks imperfect, you won’t generate many sales, although you might be selling the best products at reasonable prices. 

In the case of eCommerce, we can say that user experience is everything. The website design significantly affects the conversion rates and search engine rankings. 

Designing an eCommerce store is a bit complicated task as you will always want it to have a modern look and feel of your website and the best user experience. Website development costs vary, but it is advisable to hire a certified web designer to design your online store best for your future growth.

Hence, maintain a straightforward buying process with an appealing design. If it’s not pleasing for the customers, you will likely lose them. 

3. Poor site-search functionality

If you want your customers to interact with your products quickly, you need to make it easy to search your site as most of them search through their mobile phones or any other devices. Here, some options are either hidden or more complex to navigate through. 

You need to ensure that the platform is easy to understand and simple enough. Good site functionality would indeed differentiate between a pleasing and disappointing user experience. 

It would eventually help increase conversion, enhance customer satisfaction and help customers easily find the products they want to purchase. 

For example, it may even happen that customers might be looking for certain products, but they don’t show up in your search results. In such cases, the customers might leave and visit the competitors’ sites. 

You can show the related items as the customers might be interested in them. So, you need to take care and get your search function working well that drives more sales.

4. Lack of branding

It is not necessary to define a whole story to be written out on your website but advisable to have a clear idea about what your brand stands for. 

One should have a clear idea about the mission, vision, and why you sell these products? Who is your target audience? 

Your brand logo, colors, and images on your website need to reflect your brand story. Providing a consistent brand identity is advisory to offer a seamless brand experience across social media channels. 

Branding helps build trust and authenticity. A brand should be strong enough to communicate its values, and there’s no way around it. 

5. No reviews

Those were the days when you visited a particular store as your friend, relative, or neighbor suggested to you when there was no internet. People would trust the opinion of others based on their experience or either by word-of-mouth referrals

These days things have changed entirely into an online version. People have more trust in reviews, ratings, and testimonials. They have become adequately essential and would significantly impact the sale. 

Reviews will help establish trust in your brand and easily convince the customers about its quality and benefits. You can get reviews on social media channels, websites, or Google. 

It is desirable to collect reviews on different social media platforms as people might have different perceptions and opt for different social media channels. 

6. Unnecessary pop-ups

Most people say pop-ups usually have a bad reputation as they are distracting, annoying, and useless. If used correctly and intelligently, it can increase the subscribers’ list and also help boost conversion rates.

People don’t like pop-ups as they interrupt what they are doing. They also even skip the pop-ups without reading them. Pop-up can help show potential customers additional discounts, offers, etc., offered by an online store. 

Sometimes, pop-ups have even proved to be valuable enough if used rightly. They are a great way to grab users’ attention and facilitate promoting a sale, product upsell, cross-sell, and build social connections.

7. Ignoring the competition

The eCommerce market is highly competitive, and one cannot ignore it. There might be many competitors in the market offering the same business as you are. 

You can analyze, focus on what they’re doing, how they’re doing, and determine how successful their efforts are. 

It is crucial to carry out the competitive analysis regularly. By analyzing the competition at first and throughout your business lifecycle, you may have numerous opportunities that might help you grow and improve your business. 

One can watch all the social media channels, what they’re putting, their ways of engaging with the customers, and their approaches.

8. Neglecting a solid marketing strategy

The only solution to effectively run an eCommerce store is to create a solid marketing strategy. It is equally mandatory to know about your products and have adequate information. 

If the store owners don’t know they exist, there are very few chances that they might attract people to make a purchase. It is highly advantageous to invest your time and money in SEO, social media, paid advertising, and content creation

By doing so, it will help attract more customers, increase sales, and can also boost conversions. To bring organic traffic to your website, you need to develop a detailed marketing plan for your online store.

So, without developing a proper eCommerce strategy, there are high chances of missing out on numerous revenue opportunities for your business. 

Design a plan in such a manner that provides excellent value and attracts customers back to your online store.

9. Not having a social media presence

A study by Statista projects social networking sites will reach 3.96 billion users in 2022. These days, it is mandatory to have a social media presence to grow your business exponentially. 

Various social media channels like Facebook and Instagram have incorporated several beneficial features for businesses and consumers. 

With the advancement in technology, you are losing many business and growth opportunities if you are not promoting your business and engaging customers through social media channels.  

Social media ads can also play a crucial role in engaging your customer through Social Media Channels. If you are looking to create a social media ad, you must check out Visme’s ad maker for social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.

10. A lengthy checkout process

A poor and lengthy checkout process is a big mistake to avoid. The customer has already purchased the product but may leave the site before purchasing or abandoning the cart due to complex checkout. 

There is nothing worse than losing a deal at the last minute due to a lengthy checkout process. 

Asking too many details in the form or carrying out several steps can be one of the reasons that might cause a bad checkout experience. Instead, try using a tax compliance software that’s optimized for e-commerce checkout conversion.

Summing up

If you want your eCommerce store to succeed, it is preferable to follow these tips. Decrease cart abandonment changes, increase conversions and boost eCommerce growth. Attract current customers and establish relationships with new customers through social and organic search. 

These mistakes can primarily affect your revenue but can be managed efficiently by improving the user experience and engaging with your target audience. 

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