Running an e-commerce business offers plenty of rewards and some unique challenges. Here we’ve rounded up five common pitfalls that can bring down even the best e-commerce business.
- Not Enough Detail
You can have all the pictures you want, but if you don’t include plenty of detailed description, your customers will lose confidence. Invest the time and energy in well-written product descriptions, as well as high quality content for the rest of your website. Everything from your About Us page to FAQs should be written to be easy to read and understand. - No Reviews
Give customers a chance to review products directly on your website and you’ll find that not only does their confidence in your company increase, so will your insight into how to market to them. Reviews offer a number of benefits. First, of course, there’s the chance for customer to hype up your product for you. At the same time, you can read through critical reviews to pinpoint areas that may need extra attention. - Letting Inventory Levels Fluctuate
The key to successful and effective small business inventory management is in tracking levels carefully. Since smaller companies often want to keep storage overhead low, they tend to operate with lower stock levels. That’s great in terms of keeping costs down, but can wreak havoc if there’s a sudden surge in demand for a particular product. - Skipping the Google Shopping Option
Google Shopping has changed the way many people look for products online. You don’t necessarily need to use the Google platform for e-commerce, but you should make sure your items are showing up when people click on the Shopping tab within Google. Miss out on that and you’re cutting out a substantial number of potential customers. - No Up-Selling
Some companies avoid up-selling since they feel it’s too “high pressure”. However, the days of having to bombard people with offers are long gone. Now you can simply include a section that features related items along with each product page, making the up-sell subtle without losing its overall efficacy.
