Common Mistakes of Large Ecommerce Shops and How to Fix Them

Online sales are quickly taking over in the world of retail and marketing, giving companies the ability to reach global audiences and add new elements to their core businesses.

Yet, while ecommerce businesses may be grabbing headlines in our post-COVID world, racking up growing profits, and expanding into new markets, ecommerce does not sell itself. Many large ecommerce shops make crucial mistakes that cost them revenue and may even tank their business. The good news, however, is that you can learn from their mistakes.

Want to avoid making many of these common ecommerce mistakes? You can get ahead by partnering with a top ecommerce SEO agency like Digital Authority Partners, whose marketing professionals can help create digital experiences that help you blow through growth targets and get more qualified leads.

Want to learn more about the Digital Authority Partners approach to SEO? Watch this video!

10 Common Mistakes That Large Ecommerce Businesses Make

Let’s look at common mistakes – and how you can avoid them.

     1. Making It Too Complicated to Make a Purchase

Ever wanted to just choose your size and click buy, but you were forced instead to navigate through four or more pages of options? You just want to make the purchase, but often you have to first opt-out of receiving marketing emails, before finding out that you have to register and create a username and password.

Everyone has experienced this or perhaps even worse at some point. If your checkout process is too long or too complicated, or if the purchaser is led to a page that looks like it belongs to a different website, you will lose the most important customer there is – a customer who is ready to buy.

One-page checkouts are quickly becoming the norm, and a variety of tools are available that simplify the checkout process, cut the extraneous fat, and reduce cart abandonment. If your cart abandonment is too high or your checkout process is spread over multiple pages, this is a critical fix.

     2. Not Securing Your Website

Online security is foremost on shoppers’ minds today, and people are more concerned about their security than ever. High-profile, headline-grabbing security breaches are driving this point home.

This means your website must have proper fraud protection software and SSL security certificates. Finding a platform that offers high-quality protection both for your business and for your customers is crucial. In addition to having a secure site, make sure you display your certificates and safety logos so shoppers can have confidence that they are protected.

     3. Not Reminding People That They Abandoned Their Cart

Shoppers who put an item in their cart and then leave it to rot are the bane of ecommerce businesses. This represents a crucial segment for any business – these are people who viewed products, made a choice, and then went to the brink of hitting buy, only to back down and leave.

Why do shoppers abandon their carts during checkout? Top reasons include:

• Extra costs that appear in the final checkout stages, like taxes and shipping
• The requirement that a shopper create an account
• Long or complicated checkout processes
• Inability to see the order calculation while entering shipping or credit card information
• Lack of trust in the website or its security
• Unsatisfactory or unclear return policies
• Insufficient number of payment methods
• Other problems, such as website crash or declined credit card

Follow-up on abandoned carts is a crucial and easy step that businesses can take to reduce cart abandonment. A simple follow-up email can remind people they have an unfinished purchase – and throwing in a discount coupon does not hurt, either.

     4. Poor Branding

Today, shoppers are rarely just buying widgets. Instead, they are looking for experience, and they are on the hunt to create connections that they see as meaningful. Branding plays a large role in this – it tells the story of a company and why people should spend their money there.

Poor branding can derail marketing plans. If customers don’t know what a company stands for, why they should buy from it, what they get from partnering or see inconsistent messaging on different platforms, that could be a huge turnoff.

Branding takes work, but a successful branding campaign is not particularly complex. Ensure you have a unique and descriptive website domain address, engage in SEO marketing, maintain a social media presence, and be consistent in all of your messaging.

     5. Poor Shipping Options

Ever been ready to purchase only to find out that your package won’t arrive in time? Or have you been charged for express delivery when standard parcel service would have done?

Successful ecommerce sites need to have a variety of shipping options that anticipate consumer needs. Some shoppers will want overnight or expedited service, but many will want a free shipping option – not having one could cost you in future sales.

     6. Not Collecting Customer Data

Ignoring customer data, such as spending patterns and demographics, is a huge mistake and can prevent you from gaining valuable intelligence about your customers. Collecting data such as email addresses can help you create an email list that can be used to inform customers about sales, new products, and big events.

     7. Poor Use of Online Marketing Tools

Your products won’t sell themselves, and while your website may be good, you need additional ways of getting the word out about your products and services. Online marketing is abundant and relatively inexpensive, with platforms like Instagram and Facebook allowing merchants to target highly specific, self-selected customer groups. Online marketing allows you to communicate directly with your customer base.

     8. Poor Customer Service

Poor customer service will kill any business, ecommerce, or storefront. Examples include denying refunds, not responding to questions, and not helping when customers need it. 

Poor customer service is an easy fix. Make sure your customer service agents are friendly, well trained, and empowered to act in ways that will attract customers, not repel them.

     9. Not Having Images

Shopping is a visual activity, and that goes for online operations as well. Selling a product that has just one or a handful of images, or bad photographs will raise alarms among customers.

This is another easy fix. Have a wealth of high-quality photos of all of your products. On other pages, include photos of your staff, your facility, your production line, your packaging, and more. 

     10. Having no SEO strategy

No matter how great your products are and how good-looking your website is, getting found largely comes down to how you appear on search engines. Being listed on Google’s first page boosts your chances of business success. Anything lower than that and you are relatively anonymous.

Having an SEO strategy takes time and professional help from an ecommerce SEO agency. Such an agency can tweak your site and introduce keywords while also including meta tags, proper section headings, and optimized content that will get you found.

To learn more about the problems that ecommerce businesses face and how they can be confronted and solved, contact Digital Authority Partners today.