6 Major Issues Faced By New E-commerce Stores & How To Resolve Them
Every business has benefits and unexpected issues too that we don’t know in beginning. But still, when we think to start an e-commerce store & grow our business, we need to take care of those issues.
Thinking about starting an e-commerce website or plan to take your retail business on an online platform? You know, every business has benefits and unexpected issues that we don’t know in beginning. But still, when we think to start an e-commerce store & grow our business we need to take care of those issues.
To grow an online business successfully we must be aware of those issues. And how we can deal with them? Because for a successful business we need extra effort, money, tricks, and ideas. If you want to success your online store then important thing is only ‘’your client or your customer’’. If you have happy customer means you are a successful e-commerce entrepreneur.
Let’s talk about the challenges that you can face when you start your online store and also discuss how we can resolve or deal with them:
1. Is your website structure and design attractive?
Have you ever listened: Never judge a book by its cover’’. This happens in the general life. For an e-commerce store, a user only takes 0.5 seconds to judge the website. Do you know 75% of users judge any company by their website design? And your first impression is your website design that affects any customer 94%.
A clean user interface and website structure
These are the major issues which are faced by every new e-commerce entrepreneur when he/she started their business online. If your website design is not attractive, your website structure is not user-friendly then you may lose your business. Because a customer wants a user-friendly interface always. If you don’t provide them then they will not come back to your website again. Give positive impression to every customer and make them yours for last long years.
How to resolve this problem:
To resolve this issue you need to analyze your business market before making an online store. Track your entire competitors’ website online. When you analyze their website, try to know about your customers’ behavior what they like on your website.
Offer them a user-friendly interface for high-quality product display, easy navigation, an attractive and business based design of your website. Before starting your online store, make a strategy about your website design and apply on your website.
2. Low quality and thin content of website:
Content… Content… Content…. Do you know content is the only thing which describes your product and services in front of your customers? And if you have low quality and thin content means it’s not able to clear the information about your service. If you don’t give your customer complete information or right information about your product and services, then you can lose your business as well as customers.
How to deal with it:
1.) Give the complete description of your product and services.
2.) Never provide information only in the written format you can represent your information in an attention gaining way like with videos, PPT etc.
3.) You can display videos about your content.
4.) And the most important always be up to date your content. If you have the same information for more than two months then it will also give bad impact in user’s mind. So it is important that you update your content regularly.
3. Security Issue because it is also a trust factor:
When you launch a new e-commerce store, this is also a big challenge for data security. As we know, the Internet is a hub of all knowledge and information, so it is also a way for thieves or hackers to steal the information of any website and use it for their personal purpose. And when talk about data security; you can divide it in two ways:
1) Your website data security
2) How will customer be satisfied that if he/she purchases from you then his/her information will be totally safe? Because here is the matter of trust.
How to deal with this problem:
For this, you have to secure your data on your own server. Your developers know very well how to secure it.
Manage your own server, never use common FTP. Because FTP is prone to theft. If any developer copies or transfers files with an open Wi-Fi network, then he can lose his password and his all work is waste. Always use the protective internet connection to transfer data.
Now you have a challenge of customer trust. Is their information safe with you? So there is a solution that use SSL to your e-commerce website. Use https with your website URL because ‘S’ stands for security. When user registers on your website, ask them some security question and when all information is submitted then send a pre-determined mail with a verification link.
When user forgets the password then ask him security question. Avoid redirects from your website pages. Give several options to your customers for payment.
You need to give the easy option like PayPal in which users don’t need to fill information on debit card.
4. Shipping Issues:
This is another challenge that you can face when you launch your new e-commerce website. This is normal to ship the products when you run an e-commerce website. Have you ever thought about a situation in which you shipped an order to the destination address and product could damaged in between the way? A customer never receives damaged product. When your shipping process is bad then a good customer experience will not matter because your shipping process will totally destroy it.
How to deal with this issue:
Find the best shipping company if you ship your product. Check and make sure that you are doing business with a good company. Research about safe and different packaging process, if you ship your product yourself without hiring a shipping company. When a product is reached to customer, always take their feedback about your services.
5. You are new and nobody knows your presence:
You are new on the web with your e-commerce business and you also want to grow. But if nobody knows your presence then how you can grow? If you are visible then customer visits your site.
How to resolve this issue:
You need to tell the whole Internet visitors that you are present online. To do this, you need a proper marketing strategy that we call SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
To gain visibility on internet SEO, is only option and for that, you need quality links and contents. Do all on-page and off-page SEO activities to make your online base strong. Keyword research is the main factor of SEO, so try to understand the customer mind. If any customer searches your product or services then what are the words that come to their mind to search for you. And exactly those words you can use as your keyword in SEO process.
To get traffic on an e-commerce store, you can use paid advertising first. It is the best solution when you want instant traffic on your website. Paid advertising gives you the instant results. The organic result is long time beneficial as compare to the paid result. But if you are in startup mode and you need to reach more and more people online in short time period, then paid advertising is helpful.
Use social media because social media platforms are those which give you huge audience to listen to you, give business to you and help to gain trust about your brand. If your social media business presence is strong then you get automatically 30% success in your business. So be active on all social media channels and promote yourself with your best services offers.
6. Cost Issue:
To run an online store, every entrepreneur faces product cost challenges. Because you are new in the online market. You have no customers, no sales, and no base. And there are some big companies that already sell same products already with strong customer traffic. So why the customer will visit your site and buy from you?
How to deal with this issue:
You can’t sell at low rates to attract customer but you need customers then how is it possible? Here you need your product service specification. Because you are not a duplicate copy of other online marketers. You have something unique and new to your customers. And that is the thing which helps you to gain customers on your e-commerce store.
Think like a customer that what comes to their mind when he/she is ready to purchase a product. And represent your product like as customer wants to see. In the beginning, you need to give free trial services, discount offers, coupons, and cash back offer on products when they purchase from you. That will surely help you to gain customers.
Wrapping Up:
Starting a successful online store is not so easy. You have to face many challenges to run and grow your business. Because every 60 seconds Google receives 4 million queries and if you are not capable to stand out from them, then there is no benefit of your business. Stay strong at the time of challenges and always keep yourself updated with online e-commerce statistics and updates. If you want to reach on top then you need to tackle all these issues and get audience and sale. If you also have something to share, please share.
