What prevents e-commerce success?

Digital retail has, of course, been around for some time, but it’s really taken off in the past few years, with the coronavirus pandemic playing a key role.

With more and more people comfortable with the idea of shopping online, it seems like it’ll be here to stay, too. So there’s a lot of potential when it comes to building a profitable e-commerce business.

But it’s also important to acknowledge that there’s a lot of risk involved, too. Most digital stores are not successful. The good news for people thinking about starting one themselves is that the reasons for their failure are pretty well known.

In this blog, we’ll run through the key factors that cause e-commerce stores to have issues. Make sure you’re not guilty of any of them.

A lack of focus

A store can’t sell everything. Well, unless it’s called Amazon, that is. In this day and age, the only way to compete with the big stores is to have focus.

Consumers have to know that they’re buying the best of the best, that what the store is selling has been curated. Rather than trying to please all people all of the time, aim to please some of the people some of the time.

Aside from making your business more appealing to consumers, this will also make your work more straightforward and easier to manage.

Hard to find

You may have some of the best goods on the internet, but if you’re hard to find, then not enough people will be visiting your website. And small visitor numbers means low sales; it’s as simple as that.

So as well as investing in your website and products, be sure to invest in your marketing. While your social media presence will be important, the crucial detail will be your Google ranking. If it’s too low, then people will struggle to find you.

You can bump yourself up the results page by working with a company that specialises in SEO. They’ll have the expertise and experience to ensure that your website is put in the face of people who are looking for stores just like yours.

Complicated checkout processes

It’s difficult to get people to visit your website and find something that they want to buy. If you reach that stage, then it’s important not to mess things up. Yet, that’s something that many businesses do time and time again.

If you have a complicated checkout process, then you’ll be giving your visitors a reason to leave your site without completing their purchase. You were so close to a sale.

There are plenty of things you can do to remove this likelihood, including removing any surprise charges, making many payment options available, and reducing the number of steps that they have to take. 

Trust issues 

One of the reasons why e-commerce shopping has risen so much is because more and more people have faith in the system. Studies have shown that once a person buys one thing online, they usually continue doing so.

That’s because they have faith that their item will turn up. However, while consumers may generally be trusting of online shopping, they don’t have blind faith.

If your website gives them a reason to doubt your authenticity, then they’ll likely take their business elsewhere.

You can remove this doubt by making sure you have security certificates, contact information, and high-quality images and copywriting on your site. 

Only targeting new customers 

You’ll hope to bring as many new customers onboard as possible.

However, if you’re only targeting new customers, then you’ll be missing out on a demographic of people who would likely bring you more success than the newcomers.

They’re your existing customers. It costs a fraction of the cost to market to existing customers, but even if it were to cost the same, it would still make sense - after all, you already know that they’re interested in what you have to offer. 

Pricing issues 

You shouldn’t make up your prices on a whim. Too low, and you’ll struggle to make a profit. Too high, and no one will buy from you. This is one of the trickier elements of your business to figure out.

Rather than doing your own calculations, it’s worthwhile looking at what others charge and using that as a baseline.

No patience 

Finally, there’s the matter of patience. You can’t build a successful e-commerce business - or, indeed, any business - in a day. You’ll need to take a few rough and slow months before you find success.