5 Common E-Commerce Mistakes

Did you know that a good number of startups failed? Yes, as intimidating as this sound, it is the reality. If you truly want to survive and come out winning in the competitive e-commerce industry, you must avoid the perils that caused half of your fellow startups to fall down.

Sure, looking at the silver lining, mistakes are considered learning opportunities. However, we probably all think that it’s best to avoid them in the first place.

Here are some of the common mistakes your new e-commerce website must avoid making.

1. Untrustworthy design

According to a certain study, it has been found that a site design is the prevalent factor users consider to determine the trustworthiness of a website than any content on the site. Unless you are a professional and experienced web designer, you must not involve yourself in this and try to do it alone.

If design doesn’t key in into your brand, you can use a trusted and tested e-commerce platform with an updated theme. However, if design is a focal point your brand, then you must employ a highly qualified web designer and don’t think of using the quickest and cheapest way just to save time and money.

2. Repetitive product descriptions

Product description redundancy is probably the most common mistake made by new e-commerce websites. If your only reusing the information provided by your product manufacturer, then don’t be too surprised if you don’t get any search engine traffic on your pages. Google will consider these pages as duplicates resulting in a no-show of your pages in first page results.

Remember that product descriptions are your most important asset, hence, should never be ignored.

3. Producing no gain

If your business showing any signs of being profitable, and your costs scale with production, you will lose money if sales spike. Profitability is one of the defining factors of your business’ success, and without it, there’s no point in continuing your operations.

4. Unresponsive design

Nowadays, websites with unresponsive designs are getting harder to find, but there are still those that persist. Your website must be optimized and designed to function well on any device. With the growing number of online spending made from mobile phones, it is even becoming more important to develop a mobile version of your e-commerce site.

Consequently, this only proves that having a widely tested theme with few configurations and customizations is essential to your success, unless, of course, if an innovative design is central to your brand. Run a mobile-friendly test on your theme and also test it with as many devices as you can.

5. The target audience was not determined

E-commerce giant like Amazon has been hoarding consumers from various niches, and so, if you want to beat that, then you have to choose a target audience and earn their trust. Similarly, you must also create a customer profile that contains valuable information such as their interests, subcultures they are part of, their values, the things that your product solves for them, and the virtual places they hang out.