Both companies and customers are well aware that the e-commerce industry is incredibly competitive. While this intense competition benefits consumers by providing them with more choices and ensuring a constant stream of improved products and services catering to their needs, it can spell trouble for aspiring entrepreneurs and newcomers looking to set up shop.
The constant rivalry and the large number of online stores have turned e-commerce into a hostile environment where failure is a lot more common than success. The U.S. alone boasts over 14 million e-commerce sites, and their figure continues to increase rapidly as new businesses enter the market and more brick-and-mortar shops are transitioning to online channels to keep up with customer demand. Unfortunately, 80 to 90% of e-commerce companies won’t make it past the first few months of launch, according to the latest statistics.
With the odds of failure so high, there’s not much room for errors, as every wrong step can be fatal. However, the long list of entrepreneurial failures the e-commerce realm provides shows that some mistakes seem to be deadlier than others.
So, if you want to be one of the few companies that achieve success in e-commerce, you need to know what pitfalls you should avoid. Here’s what experience and history teaches us.
Poor website design
In e-commerce, a website acts like a virtual storefront that allows you to showcase your offering, interact with clients, and convince them to buy from you. If yours doesn’t live up to customers’ expectations, there are plenty of other sites where they can flee, and they won’t hesitate to do so. When your website has high bounce and exit rates and can’t seem to capture visitors’ interest due to poor website design, failure is guaranteed.
There are many issues that can drive customers away from a site, including cluttered layouts, complicated navigation, slow loading times, lack of mobile responsiveness, inconsistent branding, intrusive pop-ups, low-quality content, no call to action (CTAs), no contact information, poor SEO structure. Any of these problems can ruin customer experience and jeopardize your company’s future. So, if you want to avoid this thorny situation and stay in business, you need to pay close attention to these aspects and make sure your website is up to par.
Neglecting logistics
While focusing on setting up a well-performing website and ensuring is crucial, you shouldn’t neglect the activities that go on behind the scenes, in the real-world, either. An e-commerce business cannot thrive without proper management of its physical components, namely the resources and facilities that allow for the smooth flow of goods from source to customers.
Handling logistics is an aspect that many e-commerce companies get terribly wrong due to the high degree of complexity it involves. It’s certainly not easy to juggle and coordinate different departments, assets, and activities to ensure everything comes together smoothly. However, when customers place an order on your site, they expect it to be delivered on time and in perfect condition. If you’re not able to get fulfilment right, and you’re constantly dealing with delayed shipments, damaged products, or lost parcels, your business is destined to fail. This underscores the importance of working with reliable partners and investing in solutions that can optimise the entire logistics process.
Not knowing who you’re selling to
Many online retailers think that a broader customer base will automatically lead to increased revenue, so they try to market their offerings to everyone. In theory, that sounds like a good plan. In practice, however, it’s a recipe for disaster. It’s virtually impossible to create a product that appeals and responds to the needs of all types of consumers, so targeting everyone will most likely lead you nowhere. As popular wisdom teaches us, if you chase after too many rabbits, you’ll end up catching none.
A much smarter and less risky approach is to be more specific when choosing your target audience and address a particular category of consumers. Get to know who your customers are and what they need and expect from you, and mould your marketing strategy in a way that suits them. That should help you attract more buying clients and avoid wasting time and resources in the wrong direction.
Running the business as a one-man show
When you’re running an online business, it’s easy to get in the habit of wearing multiple hats. After all, if your company doesn’t require a physical place to operate, you don’t need to have an army of employees by your side. Except you kind of do. Even if you’re a skilled entrepreneur with plenty of energy, you still won’t be able to push through without assistance since you can’t be everywhere and do everything at once. Trying to will wear you out in time and set you up for mistakes.
That’s why you need to learn how to delegate and hire the right people for the right job. Let copyrighters manage the content on your site, create an IT department to handle tech-related issues, partner up with fulfilment specialists like Monta to ensure your orders are delivered on time, get an accountant to help with finances, and so on. Surrounding yourself with skilled professionals is the only way for your e-commerce business to grow.
Bad customer service
Keep your customers happy, and everything will run smoothly. Simple, right? Well, not really, because customers these days expect the moon and the stars from you, and it’s not always easy to satisfy their ever-growing demands. No matter how hard you try to keep everything under control, mistakes will happen, customers will get angry, you’ll have to deal with poor reviews and their ripple effect, and so on.
However, an excellent customer service can help you glide over these issues easier and minimize damages considerably. Without a trained customer support team, many of the problems that e-commerce businesses often deal with can turn into something bigger and erode your company in the long run.
Achieving success in e-commerce requires determination and discipline, as well as the ability to learn from mistakes (yours and others’). So, keep your eyes and ears open and thread carefully as you’re making your way into this challenging industry.
Image credit: Business Stock photos by Vecteezy
