When we dive into the sea of businesses that want to open up a space through the creation of an online store, many mistakes can be committed.
However, despite the complexities or the newbie who can be in the area, does not mean we have to make mistakes, or at least not too many. There is a saying that the wise man does not expect their mistakes to learn, but learning from the mistakes of others.
In this article, we will focus on reviewing the most common mistakes made when undertaking an online store and what to do to avoid them. Note that maybe is not valid for all online businesses, but the more you remove your radar, the more chances you have to start with the right foot.
Choosing a niche too common
When you decide to launch your first business online, you should think very carefully what would you offer. It sounds obvious, but it is not. Now, if you decide to create a shop shirts, baby clothes or event, you will find, just search Google the word, there are millions of sites that offer the same. There is no problem with choosing these spaces so competitive long as you manage to do something that differentiates your product, if not, input you’d encounter a number of problems, such as:
- Difficulty generating growth in search engines. You will be quite difficult to reach the top positions.
- You will have many problems to stand out among many online stores that offer the same as you.
- You will face such a broad segment that you probably see in trouble when competitive pricing in the market.
On the other hand, there is the possibility to choose such a specific segment that despite being unique; consumers do not have your online store a profitable business.
To evaluate any of these two problems, we recommend a study of keywords to understand and justify what they are looking for data users and how you can meet that demand first.
You may also like to read another article on HeyGom: Optimizing Adwords campaigns
In short, you should only place you in one of these 3 possible scenarios:
- Abacas a large market segment, but with a large investment in marketing and operational structure behind. This project has required an astronomical investment to try to achieve a leader in its segment. You need to separate a good team. Something like that.
- Build an ecommerce with an average investmentand a proper marketing plan to the reality of it. In this scenario, the online store and it has a clear focus in terms of target audience and the type of product.
- Start for a very specific market niche. This investment is very low, and are projects aimed at achieving profitability through organic methods: SEO + Social + marketing content networks.
The mentality: “If I build it, they will come to me”
Just at the moment when this thought goes through your head, a red alarm sounds in your business. Create your e-commerce and generate traffic is part of the growth process and takes time. There are no shortcuts; it is a painstaking task that we must go slowly developing.
The construction of the most beautiful site with many products that customers will not arrive. When starting a business, you have to realize that the launch of your shop is just the first step in a major effort is starting at that time. Do not be afraid, there are many things you can do to attract traffic. The case is that you should not make the April fool thinking that because the store is online consumers will come by themselves.
The syndrome of self-satisfaction
Many make the mistake of assuming that because the designer of the website and your staff can browse through the online store without problems, consumers will too. Unfortunately, beauty is in the eye of those who buy online, not on the site designer.
At this point, it is essential to make a good study of usability and web accessibility, the results demonstrating that, users can easily navigate through your site. The actions you can take to avoid this error are:
- Well know how to interpret basic metrics of your website with google analytics. You can start by analyzing the time users’ page, % rebound and page views.
- Implement Google analytics goals.
- Using a specific tool to ask questions and user surveysin real time. This tool is super useful.
Not having a plan Marketing
This point is closely related to the previous two and is part of the solution. If you do not have a marketing plan that serves as a guide to attract customers, you are plowing the sea. For any business, E-Commerce is essential to have a strategy that has been designed and analyzed previously.
You cannot start a profitable store unless you have a digital marketing strategy that brings traffic to your site. No matter if you have found the perfect niche or the perfect product, if nobody can find your shop then you’re in big trouble.
In this sense, it is important to think about the search engine optimization. Throughout the life of your online store, you are likely to get a lot of customers through search engines, so it is essential to set up your website with good SEO guidance to help the organic positioning.
Free channels social media like Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter can provide you access to many visualizations can help you reach more users without the need for a very high investment. It is recommended, especially for nascent ventures, start building strong communities in networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and, where possible, adopt new social networks and move at a slow but steady pace.
You may also like to read another article on HeyGom: Companies and brands have to be as small media and create relevant content
Neglecting the study of competition
One way to succeed in any market is by assessing the extent of competition in order to find out what they are doing well and how you can overcome them.
The way to do: Do a search of items that you sell or services you provide and locate those competitors that do well in your market. Then ask yourself:
- What is the quality and style of your photos?
- What are your purchasing policies?
- How quickly do you ship?
- What comments or testimony is on them?
It is easy to feel discouraged to perform this task, but do not let it affect you. The idea is to find out the weaknesses of your competitors or those strong but feel you can overcome them.
For example: If competition does shipments only twice a week, why not offer daily shipments? It takes 3 weeks to get an article. Then make yours last a week. Reviewing your competitors will keep you focused on achieving your goals and make you a better salesman in the process. Besides, these are the tools that I recommend now to study competition:
- SEMRush : For the study of organic keywords and advertising.
- Buzzsumo: To study the contents.
- Similar web: Traffic study and precedence it.
The aspects mentioned above are just a look at a long list of details that must be aware of when embarking on E-commerce. Do you think I left some important?
