Launching eCommerce businesses can be daunting, and with an over 80% failure rate, it makes it even harder to create a successful online business that would stand the test of time.
Every new business is unique with its distinctive features. But there are common contributors to the failure and success of e-commerce businesses. Discerning these probable pitfalls can help you evade them, scale the statistics, and have a profitable eCommerce business.
Factors to consider for the success of e-commerce business
Many people think the e-commerce business is overly saturated, making it harder for those coming in to succeed. While this is true, some untapped aspects of e-commerce business exist that business owners are yet to explore.
The following are some of the factors to consider for the success of your e-commerce business:
1. Marketing is key
Marketing your business gives you visibility. Without marketing, no one will buy your products or know what you sell; without adequate marketing, it will be hard to succeed or make sales. You can spend so much time building your business, but the business is bound to fail as long as there is no visibility. Marketing helps build brand awareness and increase sales.
2. Have a niche
Start your e-commerce business by carving out a niche market for your brand. Being a jack of all trades is excellent but confuses your target audience. Instead, let consumers know you for selling a product or solving a problem. Doing so makes your business the go-to when they need that particular product. After carving out a niche for your brand, consider your target audience and the demographic you want to appeal to and start targeting your market visibility via adverts.
3. Optimize your product page
For an e-commerce business to succeed, you must first combat the problem. You need to employ a team of digital experts who are not just technically crafty but are also expert digital marketers. These experts must be well educated on what it takes to make sales online and design your website. And this includes designing a user-friendly website that communicates trust within the first few seconds of a customer’s visit to the website. The first page should offer prominently featured and impressive images of your products and minimize the steps and hurdles to making a purchase. This ensures customers find what they want and pay for it in a few clicks. SEO should not be neglected as this is one of the things that will drive traffic and sales to your website. Use words that customers constantly search for online, not just something that appeals to you. Write a good product description. Be customer focused!
4. Customer Delight
Offering excellent customer service can set the stage for the success of your business. So don’t ignore it. The best businesses simplify their customers’ complexities; the worst businesses avoid them.
One way to succeed in e-commerce is by constantly prioritizing customers’ experiences. Research has shown that 70 percent of customers who had a positive experience buying from a brand will likely recommend it to their family and friends.
A reliable phone solution for small businesses greatly enhances this positive customer experience.
Factors that lead to the failure of e-commerce businesses
Several factors lead to the failure of online businesses, and some of these factors are avoidable if you keep track of your business performance. Some of these factors may be as little as having a site with a poor user interface and experience, while some can be as serious as a breach of trust between a brand and customers.
1. Enormous Competition
There is always a 99 percent chance that you are not the only one offering such services. The Internet has enabled every business to thrive, making the competition more uptight. This is why you should carve a niche market for your brand, as this will likely survive in the face of significant, established competition.
2. Unappealing Website
A less appealing website can affect user experience. Even if you have the best business plan, you cannot always survive on a website that is not designed to meet a client’s expectations.
A modern-day eCommerce site must be functional, secure, have significant search engine optimization, load promptly and accommodate all mobile devices.
In getting this done, employ experts to help formulate an excellent eCommerce platform for your brand.
3. Poor check out
A complex or prolonged checkout function leads promptly to cart desertion. Customers are people with daily life who want ease, and if your website is confusing or shows some sort of complexity, they simply abandon it and move on to a much more user-friendly website. So your best strategy is to make checking out straightforward and seamless.
To design a checkout process that seamlessly closes a deal, you should do the following:
- Use visuals to prompt users and show them the brand’s icons.
- Incorporate Expertrec smart search
- Save your customers time using various payment platforms like PayPal, Amazon, Google pay, etc.
Simple steps like these will improve the checkout method for your customers. As a result, lower shopping cart desertion will rapidly cause a boost in sales which will, in turn, generate profits.
4. Poor Product Photography
Shopping online is not like shopping in a physical store because shoppers can not physically inspect what you sell, which is why prioritizing the use of solid visuals is vital for your brand. An aesthetically pleasing picture will generate sales and usher in the needed traffic for your brand. Hence, poor product photography only creates harm to your e-commerce business.
You can imitate successful e-commerce websites to measure your photography skills or use pictures from these brands as your display pictures. The goal is to offer the same quality products at the end of the day.
5. Low traffic on the website
Having no traffic on your website can quickly kill a startup. Website traffic is the flow of shoppers into and out of your online shop. You need the traffic to make sales and scale up your e-commerce business.
A quick path to get traffic on your site is via pay-per-click advertising. This can be expensive, but it brings a great result: profit and visibility.
You can create content like visuals and post on various social media platforms or on-site product merchandising to generate traffic to your website, but this process is much slower.
6. Lack of Patience
E-commerce businesses take time to thrive. Often, business owners presume that profits will start coming in immediately, but that is not always the case. Growing an online business takes time, and as time goes on, your effort eventually pays off, and you start making profits.
Conclusion
Getting into e-commerce can be challenging, but there is no better time than now to get into it, given that it has evolved. In an ever-evolving world that is looking for seamless ways to shop, the e-commerce business is undoubtedly the future. The prospects for the benefit of e-commerce business hold more amazing things for entrepreneurs and consumers.
