Getting started with an e-commerce business may seem like an attractive proposition and various challenges. With the digital marketplace getting increasingly crowded with each passing year, there’s unprecedented pressure on online retailers to optimize the different elements of their online store.
In an industry where there’s such cut-throat competition amongst the existing players, even the slightest error can prove detrimental to your e-commerce business. What’s even worse is that these issues can crop up at any point in the customer experience. So, it becomes even more challenging to figure out what is wrong with your approach and how you can rectify it.
But you need not worry. We are here with the seven e-commerce mistakes you should avoid in 2022 to get your e-commerce business to the heights you always wanted it to reach. So, here we go.
1. Similar Product Descriptions
If you rely on your suppliers for product descriptions, you could be making a huge mistake. Suppliers often give detailed descriptions to all their retailers. Search engines get confused with identical product descriptions, which hurts your website’s ranking.
If product descriptions on your site match your competitors’ descriptions and they enjoy a better ranking than you, outperforming them will almost be like a Herculean challenge. Therefore, you need to make sure that the content on your e-commerce platform adds value to your readers.
2. Duplication of Title Pages
Any duplication of product, content, services, and prototypes qualify as some of the biggest e-commerce mistakes. Make sure that all your pages have a unique page title. This is because page titles let both your customers and the search engines know what your site is about. If there is a lot of similarity between multiple page titles, search engines have difficulty recognizing which page to suggest. In that case, they select neither.
3. Poor Quality of Images on the Site
If you haven’t invested much time or resources in uploading quality images on your e-commerce platform, you can bid goodbye to your e-commerce business in a few years. No kidding, pixelated product images on your site can negatively impact your business.
Any successful e-commerce business owner would tell you how critical HD images with excellent clarity are to the success of any e-commerce website. Therefore, you should consider investing in a professional photographer as they will have an adequate understanding of the product lighting, editing, and background.
4. Non-Responsive Webpage Design
Most of your existing and potential customers use multiple gadgets to access your platform. This makes it imperative for you to keep in mind and develop a responsive web design that can make your e-commerce store accessible on all electronic devices.
A 2017 Statista report revealed that mobile commerce sales made up 34.5% of the total e-commerce sales in 2017. While e-commerce sales through mobile devices are constantly rising, an increasing number of people will now be using their smartphones to access your site. A non-responsive design will lead to a loss of customers for you and get you penalized by Google.
5. Slow Loading Page
If your website takes more than 2 seconds to load a page, you waste your customers’ time. Remember, your customers are always on the lookout for better options. So, if there’s a delay in loading your webpage, they might be driven to your competitors’ site.
Different factors like cache components, hosting server, internet speed, etc. Of all these factors, web hosting is the most crucial factor. If you don’t get it designed keeping the page speed in mind, you will spend a lot of time fixing it. Also, Google ranks your site based on the loading speed.
6. Not Having A Diverse Marketing Plan
Regardless of how exceptional your online presence is on any platform, using a single marketing platform will limit the reach of your audience. To establish a footprint in a bigger group of customers, you must expand your marketing efforts. You must clearly understand your customers’ needs, demands, and concerns.
Once you have identified your target audience, you must leverage different marketing platforms to reach out to your customers.
7. Lack of Customer Reviews
Regardless of how excellent your marketing is, customers always tend to trust feedback from real shoppers instead of random promotional content that comes their way. Customer reviews are a form of social proof that tells your customers to trust you to deliver a positive experience.
Major e-commerce platforms heavily rely on customer feedback to instill a sense of confidence in their customers. Similarly, you should also ask your customers to leave honest feedback on your products or services. By showcasing review scores directly below your product titles, you can give your potential and existing customers social proof about the quality of your products.
Bottom Line
Running an e-commerce store isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. But devising and executing the proper strategies will help you emerge as an e-commerce leader in your niche. And these seven e-commerce mistakes listed above pose the biggest hindrance to that. So, as long as you avoid these seven mistakes, your e-commerce business will prosper.
For more insights into how you can grow your e-commerce mistakes by scaling the different challenges, take Wigzo’s free trial today.
