Avoiding costly newbie mistakes requires an aspiring online merchant to learn from the mistakes of those who have gone before him. If one is patient and humble enough to accept the teaching that comes from the experience of others who “did it and done that” – he would exempt himself from much loses and pain as he traverse the complex ecommerce economy.
Every successful ecommerce business started in a niche. You may want to blow in and make it all big like Amazon but guess what. Even Amazon started in a niche.
There are a gazillion of resources and information out there that are available to anybody. One just have to google it up easy. You want information on gardening, tons upon tons of information is available for you. Want to find resource for gadget supplier, google it up and you’ll find more than enough information and resource you could ever handle.
You do not have to reinvent the wheel
If you are a newbie to ecommerce world, you don’t have to “re-invent the wheel”. My suggestion is to learn from the lessons of others. Costly newbie mistakes can be avoided when finding your ecommerce niche.
I have researched for you the top newbie ecommerce merchants mistakes you can avoid paying the cost. These newbie mistakes are so prevalent that it rakes in more loses every year from ordinary and meaningful people. The purpose of this post is so that you can avoid making the same mistake over again. Of course all is not going to dandy – their will be bumps along the road – but if you can minimize the loses, you will be on your way to finding your niche in this ever expanding ecommerce world.
These are Extremely Costly Newbie ecommerce mistakes To Avoid in 2020
#1. Unfriendly Customer Services.
This is a lot trickier than it sounds. The old sentiment, “The customer is always right” was invented during a time when the customer was probably a little more respectful of employees than they are today. Now it isn’t uncommon for a customer to make ridiculous demands and mistreat customer support representatives, even to the point of verbal abuse. That’s why your customers need some boundaries to discourage and prevent this kind of abuse.
Take for example a youtube video of a store manager stabbed by an unruly customer.. This is an extreme example but yes, stuff like this happens, even in online stores.
Negative word-of-mouth can get your ecommerce plummet quickly
Unruly customers should be no reason to be unfriendly. This does mean that you should not stop providing excellent service and support; additionally, we all know that it is essential for building positive relationships with customers and for generating good word-of-mouth for your business. And the effect of that word-of-mouth can go south pretty quickly for your business if you are not careful.
Avoid costly newbie mistakes like this by defining your boundaries. Defining your boundaries allow you to measure and apply appropriate actions when customers crosses that line.
#2: Jumping on multiple opportunities to start ecommerce business
Many people, usually newbies who are so excited about their online business, jump at multiple simultaneous opportunities and lose the ability to properly allocate ample time and resources for the business to thrive.
A good rule of thumb is to focus on your niche.
Doing multiple things at once or selling multiple channel at once is a recipe for disaster. You can only do so much. If you spread yourself thinly, you are going to lose your energy, and your are going to lose time to take care of all those stuffs.
I was on this forum, and one of the questions asked was, how many website should I build to start my online business? At first reading, i thought the question was ridiculous! Why would you open multiple stores to start an online business? It turns out that he had a lot of stuff to sell, and he needed to have multiple websites to sell for each niche. But what I was surprised more is how the people on the forum keep egging the poster to go ahead and take the risk. To me, that was just plain idiocy. I told them, “who is going to take care of your store? How many people does he have?” And the guy said, he was a one-man band!
So i said, “How are going to divide yourself?” “Ecommerce is a full time business, you can’t just published your ecommerce website and leave it unattended for weeks while you are busy checking out on your other stores!”
I suggested that the first step to start a really good ecommerce business is to find a need that you can fill. Every successful ecommerce business started in a niche. You may want to blow in and make it all big like Amazon but guess what. Even Amazon started in a niche.
NOTE: Avoid spreading yourself thin. Never jump on multiple opportunities or sell multiple channel when starting an online business. Focus on a single niche and find a strong footing in the ecommerce web in year 2020.
#3 Putting too many barriers that makes it hard for customers to use your ecommerce system.
We have always maintained that ease of use and fast page load speed is crucial to every ecommerce system. This is the number one reason we prefer thirtybees as our ecommerce system of perference. As a startup, this platform is perfect for your need. It is easy to use and maintain. Thirtybees is fast loading and search engine will love your website. It is responsive and displays really good in all screen display sizes. And it is lite on your server.
An ecommerce platform should be easy and simple to use. If you place too many barriers in front of a potential shopper and/or do not provide service on the platform of their choice ie desktop, mobile, tablet etc then you can be losing out on some major business.
Another powerful characteristics of a really good ecommerce system is accessibility of your information pages and category pages. Users must be able to tell where they are on your website when navigating. Implement breadcrumb and breadcrumb structured data so that search engines can read your website properly. Breadcrumbs are snippets of your website that tells users their location in relation to the homepage.
Additional resource breadcrumb structured data for prestashop-thirtybees
Another cool stuff that needs attention as far as ecommerce ease of use and accessibility is the navigation menu structure and product layered navigation which allows your users to search for you product easily on the product page.
Remember, ease of use and accessibility of your products and information is crucial in today’s ecommerce website. Remove all hindrances and barriers that can make matters difficult for your users.
Another good reason to go for an easy to use ecommerce system is the ease of checkout process. Studies have shown that a lot of abandoned carts happens at the checkout process. A one-page checkout process lowers that percentage considerably. This tells us that a good user experience is paramount in modern ecommerce websites.
#4: Faulty Pricing Strategy that aims for higher ROI rather than repeat customers.
Price is the single most important purchasing factor for 60% of shoppers! In todays’ ecommerce economy, buyers can easily compare prices, and they are mostly likely to buy similar product that have lower prices. I know, because that is how I do my online shopping. And I know, it’s how people I know do theirs. If your pricing strategy is wrong you will have a very hard time moving your products. There are a lot of intricacies here, you must deeply understand your target market and also understand the psychological aspect of pricing.
Faulty pricing strategy may be the main culprit responsible for lower than expected or subpar conversion rates for most online stores.
If we fully understand that return for their money is what drives people to buy, isn’t it obvious that the best strategy is to lower the price and go for more sales rather than go for higher return per product? I have seen this a lot on many stores, they keep the price that high and allow their products to collect dust in the stands.
One or two good things we can use to fix faulty pricing strategy is to make prices with decimals.. so instead of pricing $25, you can use $24.55.
Another mistakes newbies do is to make the font of the price bigger than the rest of the text.. check out the image below:
price font
Psychologically, the one at the bottom stood out and looks expensive. But too many still uses this pricing strategy without knowing the effect it does to potential customers. It’s a costly newbie mistake that is often overlooked.
NOTE: A great pricing strategy is create product bundles. Product bundles are perceived as a better value deal by customers. And it makes it easier for you to move more merchandise. More importantly it offer a cheaper shipping cost for your customers than them buying individual items. Product bundles are cost effective for you to offer free shipping.
Avoid this costly newbie mistakes! Check your pricing strategy and go for repeat customers and customer loyalty programs instead of going for higher ROI per item. Loyalty programs can double your ecommerce sales if done correctly. It encourages people to come back to repeat order again and again.
#5: Pushing your product too aggressively with advertisements and social media sharing.
Let’s face it. People hates intrusive ads, period! Advertising is only getting more pervasive, obnoxious, and intrusive. That’s not my personal opinion (though I absolutely agree); that’s the internet speaking.
It happens most of the time in social media. You login in and the first thing you know, you are flooded with chat messages full of advertisements and spams. It’s crazy. I get it that people want to make a sale. But by being spammy sets your marketing back hundreds of days. As a general rule, especially in social media, it is a place to meet people.
intrussive-ads
Be stingy with sharing your product and contents, especially on chat groups. Don’t push your product too hard on people. You could be affecting your sales negatively.
Another thing that I really hate is auto playing video ads. It exasperate me a lot while watching youtube video and the like. I can hardly watch anything without having to close an ad and most of the time accidentally clicking on one of them. And you have no way of filtering them out.
83% of people agree with the statement “Not all ads are bad, but I want to filter out the really obnoxious ones.”
Source
A good rule is just to be a good human being. Don’t push your product too hard. Allow people space to know you first and your product second. Avoid this costly newbie mistakes.
sell’ less and ‘engage’ more
In conclusion
Learning the best practices from other’s trials and missteps is an excellent way to avoid costly newbie mistakes. We learn and grow from those who came before us – be it 5 months, years or decades. As one of my mentors always said, “the best form of learning is imitation”. You do not have to to go through the same mistakes yourself. If you can avoid these costly ecommerce pitfalls as you begin your journey into the ecommerce landscape, you will be on your way to a really gratifying ecommerce business.
Try implementing these lessons incrementally and at a pace you can handle.
Dont push your product too hard on people.
Review your pricing strategy
Make your website accessible and easy to use
focus on a single niche to begin with
Ramp up your customer support.
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