Avoid These Common Ecommerce Mistakes for Success

Starting any new adventure is filled with a mixture of excitement and fear. Starting an ecommerce store is not any different. On one hand, the prospect of calling a business your own excites you. You finally get to meet customers or sell something that you love so much or have spent years creating. On the other hand, you know for a fact that you cannot keep up with this excitement if you have no sales. No sales means two things.

You are barely getting visitors to your website
Your visitors are not happy when they land on your website.

This is happening because you are probably making some mistakes on your store. And that’s the fear – the fear of making sure everything goes right.

Just like everything else in life, there are bound to be some mistakes. You can read all the books ever written on ecommerce but these mistakes will happen because every store is different. These mistakes are okay and will go away with time. However, there are some elements every store has and so the right ways have are tried and tested. Now, you definitely cannot make these mistakes.

Let’s take a look at them.

A Generic About Us page

I bet you did not expect that, right? Why pay attention to your “About Us” page when there are more important things to focus on? Over the years, there has been proof that people like to buy from people not businesses or stores. In short, the more personality your store has, the more people are drawn to your it. Tell your story. Don’t stress too much about it. Flow naturally and let your potential customers know about your past, present and future; why you got into this business to start with, where you are now and where you want to get to in the future. Think you don’t have a story? Share a compelling message with your audience in the voice of your company. Give yourself a personality.

Check out an interesting About Us page by Infinity Headbands

Don’t you just feel like buying from the shop?

Too many apps

In your desire to make no mistake, you fall into the terrible mistake of adding too many apps to your store. There is one thing customers hate when they are shopping : distractions! Take a walk into a brick-and-mortar store. Right when you step in, a salesperson asks if you will like to chat. Five seconds later, another tells you about a discount available for new shoppers. The next five seconds after, it’s about gift wrapping for free. Oh my! You have not even gotten the chance to take a look at what’s on the shelves. Any time you want to add another app to your store, remember how frustrated I just made you feel. Be extra sure if you need to have any additional app and if it needs to pop up on your site. Sometimes, it is great to leave your “salespeople” in the aisle and have customers walk over to them at the right time.

Inconsistent voice and theme

If you have gotten your “About Us” page right and you know who exactly your customers are, it is hard to get this wrong. However, this hardly happens so you end up talking in no one’s language in an attempt to talk to everyone. Remember, each customer needs to have a personal connection with your store. A consistent voice and theme is what makes this possible. Think critically about the colors, theme, language and voice that will catch the attention of your customer. Maintain this throughout the website.

Check out [I am Emoji] From their URL, to their logo to every other component of their website, you realize they stay true to who they are.

Selling Everything

If someone wants to buy anything online, they have several options you cannot compete with – Amazon, Ebay, etc. Have a goal to be the place people will think about when they want something specific. Thinking of selling furniture in general? Why don’t you sell Lion King themed furniture and bedding? It appeals to a specific niche that you can tailor ads for. Guess what? They have friends and family who also like what they like and will spread the word. When you have customers do your marketing, you win faster.

So choose a niche! (Side Note: The Lion King is my all-time favorite Disney movie so I will definitely be your first customer if you do choose this niche :))

Boring set-up and too little information

Online shopping can never match the experience of shopping in a physical store. However, you can bring your customer as close to that experience of “touching” and “feeling” the product before making a purchase. To start with, your site must be easy to navigate. There should be a natural flow from the home page to the product page to adding to the cart, shopping some more and finally checking out. If you have no products on the home page and the link to your products is not visible, your customer will begin to get frustrated. When your customer adds a product to cart but has no way of looking at other products apart from going back to the home page, the customer will have little reason to stay around. The worst of it all is bad checkout. Do not make it difficult for your customer to give you money. Finally, have a comprehensive product description. Include all essential details that the customer needs to have before buying your product.

Nothing good comes easy. Invest time, effort and the resources needed to get a good ecommerce store up. It is the beginning of getting good sales and higher revenue.

Have you set up a store recently? What was hardest to achieve to make your store attractive? Share in the comments below.