It’s true that coming up with a startup of your own has gotten a lot easier than it was a decade ago. However, it’s still a very hard thing to come up with something profitable and sustainable. In the past few years we have seen several ecommerce startup find their roots but most of them fail to sustain operation beyond some months. According to some reports, more than 90% of new internet based startups shut down in the first 2 months.
The common reasons for most small business and startup failure include:
- Failing to gauge the statistical probabilities.
- Failing to realize failure and leaping right into it.
- Being talked into ventures without experience or prior preparation.
- Fail to gauge the market and the existing completion.
All of these don’t mean that success isn’t a possibility. Success comes hard but is always reasoned by calculated moves on part of the ecommerce business. Let’s take a basic walk-through across the common mistakes that every ecommerce business should avoid.
Mistake – 1: Choosing the Wrong Platform
For ecommerce startups especially, the choice of platform could make the difference between its success and failure. Well, you always have several alternatives to choose from including Shopify, Etsy, Magento, WooCommerce and more. Making the right decision here involves selecting the platform that matches your back end needs. Further, the platform you choose should offer credible load speed, a professional looking template and the ability to customize the design of pages to include your special call to actions.
Finally, you also need to make sure that the platform you choose offers functionalities like mobile optimization, SEO, analytics, etc.
Mistake – 2: Running Without Strategy
Starting up a business without any strategy for its successful run is like being a madman on a road that leads to nowhere. There are plenty of ecommerce businesses across the internet, offering a range of services to customers worldwide. You need to think of something that makes your platform unique and provides some impetus for shift. Also, your business strategy should not revolve around a single product. Apple just doesn’t make money from iPhones!
Mistake – 3: Not Adding Trust Factor
Any new entrant to an industry is seen with apprehension. It is necessary that you showcase your competitiveness, experiences and advantages to the potential customers. To help build trust, you will need to work overtime across a variety of platforms to reach out and make your statement. Trust factor would also include a credible site design, affiliations and trusted SSL certificates by reputed certificate authorities.
Also Read: These 8 Online Business Review Websites Can Boost Your eCommerce Business
Mistake – 4: No Proper About or Contact Page
Another silly but devastating mistake on part of new ecommerce businesses is not offering credible contact information. To be able to trust you, customers should have a thorough idea on who you are, where the company is based at, the addresses and numbers that they can each through and more. It is necessary that you present detailed information about your location, representatives and the ways people can reach out. Including Google Maps and integrating your social media profiles in the about and contact pages also help a lot when people are trying to know your brand. This is another way you build trust and credibility.
Mistake – 5: Not Measuring Performance
Even if you had the perfect start to your ecommerce business with a great website, unique product line and provocative marketing, it is necessary that you seek to gauge the performance of the same. Using tools like Google Analytics, you can get information about how many people have been reached through your advertisement, how many were converted into customers, which part of the demographic is still out-of-reach and other information. Depending on the product line, you will need to come up with regular performance stats related to your sales, marketing, buyer age group, and other demographics. All of this will only help you better your sales and marketing strategies in the future. Also, you get to know where you went wrong and the precise reasons for it.
Being able to host a successful ecommerce business is certainly a very profitable venture in current times. The growth of technology has put a smart phone in the pockets of everyone. People are buying more through online platforms that from brick and mortar stores. Research well and make your presence felt.
[Note: This article is contributed by guest author Allan Koglmeier from AllanKoglmeier.com, the author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of DigiFloor.]
