Oh, Crop! Killer E-commerce Mistakes You Need to Conquer

Published on: 10 August 2017 Last Updated on: 29 May 2021

One of the most lucrative and fast-growing industries is the e-commerce industry. It has risen in popularity over the years due to the convenience and accessibility it provides for the consumers, and even for the sellers themselves.

A lot of people have been trying to start their businesses from home, yet they don’t know where to start, and they have no idea about the wide variety of industries they can invest in or the right tools they should use.

Aside from knowing what to do with your new venture, you also need to know the common mistakes and blunders you can commit. Lapses, no matter how small, can be highly detrimental to your business. But as worrying as it all sounds, don’t worry.

You can learn how to spot, avoid, and remedy these mistakes with this simple guide. Without further ado, here are five mistakes you need to avoid to keep your e-commerce business bug-free and in full swing.

Mistake #1: Forgetting Your Market

One of the biggest and most common mistakes online entrepreneurs make is forgetting what their market looks like or who their target audience is. Aside from spending most of your time and effort in honing the perfect product, without actually creating a need for your customers, you also have to know your customer demographic.

Wouldn’t it be ideal to have customers before creating a product, rather than having a product beforehand and then looking for clients? All of your efforts will be rendered fruitless. Know how to target your audience or your buyer persona. A buyer persona is a representation of your customer’s demographics, such as age, gender, profession, and social status.

To paint you a clearer picture, if you’re a designer in the print industry, you need to know your target audience before you begin selling. You won’t sell cheap business cards to upper-class professionals looking to spruce up their portfolios just as you wouldn’t sell overly-priced prints for low-quality products.

Mistake #2: Lack of Social Media Presence

The regular person owns at least five social media accounts. And on average, we spend about an hour and 40 minutes browsing these sites. Can you believe that the number of online shoppers in the United States alone will reach 224 million in 2019! Numbers aside, the stats are telling us to leverage social media in getting our brand out there.

Say hi to social media. Brands are using social media marketing for some highly useful and practical reasons. Some even devise different loyalty program for their avid followers on social media channels. Some of these are because it provides:

Low-cost solution. Social media platforms are an excellent way to get bang for your buck advertising and brand exposure.
Customization. From Facebook Insights to Google Analytics, you can customize your pages to your heart’s content and receive detailed reports on your customers’ demographics and browsing behaviors.
Excellent customer service platform. According to a recent study by Venturebeat, 51 percent of the respondents say businesses need to be available around the clock. If e-commerce brands are now adopting customer service chatbots with 24/7 messaging services, so should you.

If you’re still not convinced, you can think of your social media accounts as your company’s very own affordable business cards, showcasing your brand and the services you offer virtually.

Mistake #3: Neglecting Mobile Optimization

Mobile is everywhere, and the world is accessing the internet through their smartphones. With 80 percent of internet users owning a smartphone, failing to recognize the need for mobile optimization, could mean losing half of your potential e-commerce market. Poor user experience can negatively impact your conversion rates.

If you shift your focus on creating the ideal mobile user experience for your customers, you can increase your brand reputation and customer retention, and avoid losing 61 percent of your clients due to the poor website experience.

As an internet-based entrepreneur, use whatever tools you have at your disposal to provide an optimized user browsing and shopping experience. Bank on your best assets and give yourself an advantage over your industry rivals.

Mistake #4: Faulty Shipping Flexibility

When you first decided to run an e-commerce business, I’m guessing you did for the flexibility it gave you in doing your daily tasks. You didn’t have to meet people face to face, and you could make your timetable to suit your needs. You can now do all of your work at home, and nobody would have to see you in sweatpants.

The same principle goes for your consumers. All customers like to have options, especially when it comes to shipping. According to research, only 1 in 4 online shoppers complete a purchase? 44 percent of cart abandonment cases are due to high shipping costs, and a whopping 93 percent of online shoppers say they’ll buy more if they got free shipping.

Free shipping can increase sales and improve customer loyalty. According to a study from E-tailing, 73 percent of purchasers consider unconditional free shipping as a decisive factor in shopping online. But like all other business aspects, weigh the pros and cons of your business before making a decision.

Mistake #5: Failing to Measure Performance

If you want to succeed in the competitive world of e-commerce, you need to know how to gauge and evaluate your performance. Take note of your business habits, particularly regarding expenses and marketing. Use your business plan as a roadmap to help you steer your way throughout your business venture.

Check your statistics regularly. Update your ledger and see if your business is thriving or failing. Look at your consumer insights and keep up with the masses’ latest trends. Be as specific as you can with your data. Don’t inflate your figures and understand the areas you lack to improve them further.

By monitoring your performance, you are helping your business achieve greater heights compared to passive management. And the good news is, there’s always room for improvement, be it for you or your business.

Takeaway

As John Sagel said, “What we do know now is that the ‘E’ in e-commerce doesn’t stand for ‘easy.’ Opening an e-commerce business can be overwhelming and nerve-wracking, but it can also be a highly worthwhile and profitable venture.

There is no guarantee of overnight success. However, you can set yourself up for the best chance at succeeding. To do so, grasp the basics, learn from seasoned entrepreneurs, and watch out for their mistakes to avoid committing them yourself.

Lucia Patterson

Lucia Patterson is the woman behind TheLegalGuides, a blog solely focused on legal guides, tips, and advice. Lucia loves essay writing and blogs at EssayWritingGuides from her college days.

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Marketing Strategies to Help You Get Endorsements

Getting endorsers for your event is a great way to increase earnings, but event sponsorship provides you with more than just money. In your marketing strategies, you may sell your event to a wider audience and draw into your promoter's connections to attract event-goers you might otherwise overlook if you have the proper sponsors on board. The endorsement also provides a significant return on investment for event sponsors. Inform potential partners that this is a great opportunity to increase their exposure and generate new leads. By designing distinct sponsorship packages, you may even provide each sponsor one-of-a-kind opportunities. Continue reading to learn four marketing strategies for ensuring that your endorsers get the most out of your collaboration. 1. Sponsorships should be Highlighted in Advertising Material Sponsors should be acknowledged in all of your advertising material, both electronic and print. Contemplate including your donors in your event banner on Eventbrite or in social media graphics. Using a free and simple online editor, you can create a bespoke event banner with intriguing graphics, logos from your sponsorships, and event details. Let’s say your sponsors are flexible packaging manufacturers in the UK, you need to ensure that you include them in every advertising item of your event. Creating a good awareness for them will not only help them boost their sales through your readership but also offer you an opportunity to meet more sponsors through their referrals. Because your endorser's monetary contribution assists you in planning and executing your event, you should express your appreciation as the creator. Whenever you make your endorsers more visible, you're reaffirming the value of your collaboration, which aids in the development of a creator-sponsor connection that could go beyond your present event. So, as you make advertising banners for the event, be sure to include your sponsors in the advert. It’s a simple way to show gratitude. In addition, for your backdrop screen, you should also showcase your sponsors as well. 2. Use Digital Platforms to Cross-Promotion Marketing your endorsed event has never been simpler gratitude to social media and everyone benefits. Cross-promotion on media platforms helps you to promote both the event and the products or services of your endorsers at the same time. This could happen prior to, during, or even after your event. Spend some time talking with your sponsor about how you can create a meaningful and reciprocally beneficial social media campaign. To get your marketing strategies to be fruitful just right off the bat, make sure you're making the most of social media so you can stand out in a swarm of posts. To broaden the reach of your event, make sure your postings are posted on both your and your endorser's pages. Select a hashtag for the event that you and your endorsers can use across all of your social media platforms. To generate awareness, hold a tournament or give away a couple of tickets to the event in advance. 3. At the Event, Make a Point of Mentioning Your Endorsers Your event's sponsorship mustn't have to be a behind-the-scenes participant. You can also use their logo, products, and services to enhance your event. During their digital events, Sephora does an excellent job of presenting brand sponsors. Attendees may learn how to improve their skincare routine or create a glam beauty appearance by tuning in to Sephora's webinars, but they can also learn about items from the event's endorsers. Another way to promote sponsorship is to provide gift bags or sponsor items. If your endorsers have free samples to give away, put them in a goodie bag and give them out or mail them to attendees. Set up a booth at in-person events where attendees may get branded things from your endorsers. You might also think of virtual gifts, such as discount codes from endorsers. 4. Connect the Sponsorship with a Well-Known Name in the Industry Examine how you can connect sponsorships and highlighted speakers by holding an event featuring an expert or well-known figure in the field. If you involve your sponsors early in the planning process, they may be able to assist you in finding a high-quality presenter. They most likely already have connections with industry experts or influencers that can bring value to your event while also promoting your business. 5. Have an After Event Meeting With the Sponsors Now that you have had your event and it has succeeded as planned, you need to set up another meeting with your sponsors. This meeting should be done in a week or so after the event(preferably) so that you can give a status report for your event. You also need to inform the sponsors how their products performed, in response to the free samples that were offered to the customers. Give them both the positive and the negative reviews so that they can improve on any areas of weaknesses. You can use a poll system to gather this information for them. 6. Give an After-Event Gratitude Vote Now, as implementing perfect marketing strategies, this is an important section of the whole endorsement. While it is well known to your sponsors that you are grateful, you need to post to your readership how the event was and thank your sponsors for their contribution. The Bottom Line Finally, ensuring that the rewards of being an endorser for an event are evident is the most essential part of maintaining endorsers happy. With the implementation of proper marketing strategies, you'll be much more capable of finding endorsers willing to work with you and more individuals interested in your next event if you do it this way. Best of luck! Read Also: 5 Steps to Building an Influencer Marketing Campaign How To Execute An Effective Video Marketing Campaign Signs Your Traditional Marketing Campaign is Working Why Your Business Should Care About Social Responsibility

Top Ways Video Marketing Will Help Your Business Grow

Unless you have been living under a rock or a remote island, you will know that video marketing is an important part of every modern business. So you shouldn’t be shocked by the fact that video marketing has become a rage in the market. It is expected that online users will cross the 2 billion mark in the next few months. You will be surprised to know that youtube hosts 1 billion unique visitors every month. This means the popularity of video marketing is not hidden from anyone in the world. With several social networks having launched the video ads, the responses have compelled other business owners to join the bandwagon. It is expected that more than 75% of internet traffic will be filled with videos in the next year. As a modern business owner, if you haven't adhered to the idea of relying on video marketing, you’re not modern and certainly not going in the right direction. Here, we will guide you through a few ways; video marketing can expand your business audience: 1. Present Your Product Make a concise video to let your audience know about the product or service you have to offer. Just like there is a difference between reading a science chapter and attending it in the class, the audience develops a better understanding of the product when they have somebody tells them about it. Make sure to educate them about the benefits of your product or service. If you make a good quality video with information about the audience’s interest, you will quickly witness an increase in the number of visitors. We suggest you use a teleprompter which will make your video more professional. Furthermore, as they continue to flock to your website, the majority of them might convert into customers quickly. 2. Offer Instructions In today’s time, customers love to sift through the video tutorial because it guides them about using the product in detail. For example, If you debut with “How to use this shampoo” or ‘How to unbox this phone,” customers will quickly get inclined towards viewing it. This way, you will not only win the customer’s trust but will also satisfy them quickly. Not to forget, customer loyalty is a very important factor in today’s time, so you must strive for it. 3. Explain Why You Stand Out Let's take a simple example to elaborate on this concept. If your company is about to launch a new shampoo, you should know that there are hundreds of shampoo options out there already. To impress the customers, you will have to tell them about how your offering is different from the other. Unless you don’t have something valuable to offer, customers will not put trust in your brand. Visit Soflostudio.com to get a professionally developed video for your video tutorial. Only a top-notch video shooting firm will sift you through the right way to promote your product. 4. Equipping the Video with Special Content is a Good Idea A modern customer is not only concerned about the core product but also expects the company to value them. So do you have anything else valuable for the new clients? Adding plenty of informational articles on the main website is not going to have a strong impact as much as a video message will. For instance, if you want the customers to know about what goes on behind the scenes in the manufacturing of your product, you can shoot a 3-minute video and give them short glimpses. 5. Explain Your Story Instead of filling the landing page of your website with an abundance of content, it is best to let the customers know about it through a video message. In fact, most people ignore the “About Us” section because it is too dull. Record a video with the chairman of the company, and don’t forget to include glimpses of the journeys of veteran employees in the company. Explaining the founding story of the company will have a strong impact on the minds of the customers. 6. Explain the Vision and Mission of the Company Every stakeholder of the business is interested in knowing about the short term and long term goals of the business. This is because stakeholders have to stay in touch with the company for a certain time. Only if they are in coherence with the goals of your firm will then they decide to stick to it. This is why explaining the vision and mission of the company through a short video can make a difference to the reputation of your company. 7. Video Marketing is the Need of the Hour In simple words, video marketing is not an option but the need of the hour. As soon as a new product or service is launched in the market, customers flock to youtube, and the social media pages of the business to find video messages. If you don’t rely on video marketing, your competitors will stand out to the customers. Secondly, you need to realize that video marketing is cheap and can save on the costs of traditional advertising. Read Also: 10 Reasons Why Audio Streaming and Video Marketing is So Important Movavi Video Suite Review: A Comprehensive Tool to Create Videos

Key Components for Your Marketing Stack

It's clear to see that marketing is one of the most important aspects of any business. You can have the best products and services on the planet, but if you don't market them effectively and get people interested and aware of what you have to offer, your business won't be able to grow, develop, and fulfill its true potential. This is where marketing comes in, and in today's technological world, marketing is more evolved and in-depth than ever before. The average company has many components making up its 'marketing stack' - a term used to refer to the group of technological tools and innovations used by companies in their marketing campaigns and activities. Stacks can vary from one business to the next, and the exact tools you use will depend on your company's own needs and aims, but, in general, there are certain components that are absolutely key in order to create, distribute, and evaluate your marketing strategies. This guide will look at some of those essential items. Email Marketing: In the past, marketing efforts were mostly conducted via print ads or on TV for the bigger brands, but in today's world, the digital space is where you'll bring in a lot of your leads and customers, with email marketing being one of the most effective forms of them all. They're affordable, accessible, and highly effective for boosting sales and building brand awareness, and there are various email marketing tools you can choose to strengthen this aspect of your stack. Many email marketing tools are focused on automation and integration. They're able to automatically send out personal, timely messages to your customers and potential leads, saving you a lot of time in the process, as well as integrating with other leading apps and services, allowing you to sync data seamlessly across platforms and track the effectiveness of your campaigns. In short, they can help you build, send, and monitor your email marketing efforts much more easily. Social Media Marketing: Along with email marketing, social media marketing is one of the most effective and efficient methods available to modern-day brands. There are countless users on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and you can grow your brand on a global scale by conducting the very best social media marketing campaigns. Again, various tools can assist with this, designed to save you time and make your campaigns stronger. There are certain tools that can help you distribute marketing content easily across social media platforms, for example, as well as other services that can assist you with managing and launching campaigns in the first place. Some platforms offer seamless integration with the major platforms like Twitter and Facebook, letting you create and manage content and then track how well your posts and pages perform. Customer Relationship Management: Customer relationship management, often shortened to CRM, is another major aspect of marketing in today's world. It's all about controlling and managing the way you interact with customers throughout their journey, and CRM software is able to handle most of this management behind the scenes, reducing the risks of human error or bias and giving you the information and tools you need to engage with customers in the most efficient ways. CRM tools for marketing can help with everything from lead generation and management to marketing automation, analysis of sales data, keeping track of contact and company profiles, email tracking, event tracking, sales management, and so much more. This kind of software can seem a little complex at first, but once you get to grips with it, the advantages are almost limitless. Analytics and Evaluation: A big part of marketing that can sometimes be overlooked is the process of analyzing and evaluating the success, or lack thereof, of your campaigns and looking for ways to make improvements. Businesses that want to grow and evolve should never simply settle with the status quo; you always need to be looking for ways to take your marketing game further, and analytics tools can help with this. Analytics tools often appear as features of some of the other tools mentioned above on the list; for example, an email marketing platform might come with an analytics section to show you the engagement levels of your campaigns. However, dedicated analytics tools go a lot further than this and offer much more widespread application, letting you track conversions, leads, customer experiences, and more across your site, social media accounts, and other campaigns too. Final Word: These are just some of the major components that should be included in your marketing stack in order to improve the effectiveness and potential of your campaigns. Explore your options today and build a stack you can rely on. Read Also: How to Integrate Email Marketing With SEO Best 5 Instagram Marketing Tools You Should Be Using Exploring The Different Types Of Digital Marketing Strategies Crucial Role of Content Marketing in Local Business Online Marketing : Selling Your Product And Services

Oh, Crop! Killer E-commerce Mistakes You Need to Conquer

Mistake #1: Forgetting Your Market

Mistake #2: Lack of Social Media Presence

Mistake #3: Neglecting Mobile Optimization

Mistake #4: Faulty Shipping Flexibility

Mistake #5: Failing to Measure Performance

Takeaway

How to Get What You Want at Work By Strategic Negotiation

Transacting Safely In Craiglist

Tags

Lucia Patterson

Lucia Patterson is the woman behind TheLegalGuides, a blog solely focused on legal guides, tips, and advice. Lucia loves essay writing and blogs at EssayWritingGuides from her college days.

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Related

Marketing Strategies to Help You Get Endorsements

Top Ways Video Marketing Will Help Your Business Grow

Key Components for Your Marketing Stack

Oh, Crop! Killer E-commerce Mistakes You Need to Conquer

Mistake #1: Forgetting Your Market

Mistake #2: Lack of Social Media Presence

Mistake #3: Neglecting Mobile Optimization

Mistake #4: Faulty Shipping Flexibility

Mistake #5: Failing to Measure Performance

Takeaway

Share this Article

How to Get What You Want at Work By Strategic Negotiation

Transacting Safely In Craiglist

Tags

Lucia Patterson is the woman behind TheLegalGuides, a blog solely focused on legal guides, tips, and advice. Lucia loves essay writing and blogs at EssayWritingGuides from her college days.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Popular

Follow Us

Recent

Related