A successful e-commerce website can prove to be a stepping stone for your business. An online store significantly reduces some of the overall costs of running a “brick and mortar” establishment. Overhead such as employee salaries, insurance, licensing fees, and rent will be greatly reduced. Moreover, an online store allows you to stay connected to your customers round the clock, which allows transaction to be made at any time of the day. Finally, with international shipping being reasonably priced, it is common to receive orders from anywhere around the globe. People can now order products from the source and often eliminate the middleman.
However, where you find numerous advantages there are always a few challenges. To start with, a large majority of sellers do not realize the amount of time and effort that is required to start and maintain an e-commerce website. A website template and layout, the installation of a shopping cart, content generation, site optimization and e-mail marketing strategies are just a few things that you need to give birth to an online business. If not planned strategically from the get-go, you may run into a few kinks later on in your business development.
The best way to address such challenges is to be aware of them first in order to tackle them head on— with the right attitude.
Here are a few of the major challenges that are faced by merchants and what they can do to avoid them:
Unreliable Website
It does not matter how sophisticated your website looks and whether you hired a professional to design your web store or you just doodled it on a piece of paper—customers may not trust your website security right away. This may be the case particularly if you are selling high-priced items with sizeable shipping costs.
To gain your customers trust, always make sure that you add your point of contact information in your site. If possible, you can also add photographs of yourself and the people who help you in business and website maintenance. You can include genuine customer testimonials to build your customers trust. It is a good idea to be sure your social media is visible and there is an active dialogue between you and your readers. Don’t forget to outline your return policies clearly as well as which payment service system available.
Threat of Security Breach
No matter how big or small your business is you can never be safe from a security breach. It can be a nightmare for both you and your customers. This can compromise your customers’ personal information. It can even be as bad as payments being transferred to an unknown account.
Put simply, the best way to protect yourself and your customers is to change your password regularly, customize the database location of the shopping cart frequently, check the report of e-commerce breaches often and figure out the key vulnerabilities of your FTP server/web. You may even want to hire a third party expert to be your watchdog.
Stand out in the Clutter
Customers who shop online are presented with a great selection of online boutiques to choose from. In fact, the selection is nearly endless. This is a shopper’s heaven, but it also means that they are bombarded with information.
The best way to break through the clutter is to be unique. Recent trends such as pop-ups, group-on coupons and flash sales are a snazzy way to get attention. Catchy content that tells the story of who you are and why you do what you do will grab those clients who are wondering, why they should buy from you. Hiring a good content writer can do wonders and save you loads of time.
VIDEO! Don’t forget video—fun, colorful video never fails to impress.
Intelligent Use of Social Media
Love it or hate it, social media is an efficient way to get the word out. However, one bad review, tweet or comment from an unhappy customer can tarnish your image like nothing else.
In such a scenario, the best approach is to use social media to have an ongoing dialogue with your clients. Something goes wrong? Tell them how you fixed it. A bad review? Have 10 great ones to minimize the effects of the one not-so-flattering comment. Merchants who make intelligent use of social media sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook can make a huge difference to the reputation of their company as well as help their customer base understand the decisions they make as a company.
Mobile Commerce
Due to the influx of smartphones and tablets, customers are using these devices spend, spend, spend. If you fail to cater to them by not having a website that is compatible with mobile devices and online payment services then you might lose many potential customers.
Be sure to develop a utility app where you can display the products on a tablet or a smartphone.
Take on these challenges one by one and take steps to overcome them. Get your resources in order well in advance and even hire extra consultants if need be.
Hindsight is 20/20!
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