3 Surefire Ways to Sink Your Ecommerce Store

Building an online business can be tricky. This is especially the case if you’ve never had an online business before. Fatal mistakes are too easy to make, and it’s something that you cannot reasonably afford when starting out. But, if you know the mistakes that are commonly made, you can dodge the pitfalls that have conquered countless stores before you.

1. Weak Design and UX
   

The design is the first thing that a prospective customer will notice. That first impression is crucial, and if the design is poor, and if the user experience (UX) isn’t smooth, then you are repulsing your prospective buyers. You’re a dead fish in the water. Here are some common qualities of a bad design and a bad UX:

• An ugly design with a poor layout. People are attracted to things that are visually pleasing. If the aesthetics are off, prospects will be reluctant to trust your site.
• The site loads slowly. A slow-loading site is like a kiss of death.
• Poor photography/stock photos. When customers shop in brick-and-mortar stores, they have the opportunity to directly view and hold a product, but with online shopping, they cannot directly view the product in a hands-on manner. That’s why product photography is so important, and if it’s poor, customers will not have a good grasp on the look and quality of the product.
• The site is too complex. If a customer want to go from A to B, don’t make them take an unnecessary detour. There are simply too many sites that are too convoluted. They usually have overly complex navigation and a chaotic layout.

2. Terrible Margins

Many new stores will drum up business by offering discounts and price reductions, but in some cases, that can do more harm than good. Businesses capsize when there are too many costs and not enough profits. And while discounts can attract new buyers, you need to have either one of these things:

1. Enough capital to stay afloat if the margins are negligible.
2. High margins that would still yield profits.
3. Not Marketing the Store to the Best Target Audience
   

Whether you’re using SEO, PPC, content marketing, social media or anything else, you need to be targeting the right market. Here’s a simple reason why:

Your first customers are the most expensive to acquire. Your target market will be the prospective buyers who are the easiest to convert. If you are targeting the wrong audience in your market, you are wasting time and money– two resources that are extremely valuable in the beginning periods of your online store.

Knowing your target market requires thorough research. You need to nail down the exact persona that is most likely to buy your product. Then you need to uncover how to best reach that specific type of buyer. Then you test different marketing channels to really figure out the best method in attracting and closing prospective buyers.

Conclusion

These are three mistakes that are easy to avoid. It’s important to review your efforts to see if you are making these critical mistakes. If you are, take the advice given in this post to avoid sinking your ecommerce business.

Are you ready to discuss your next e-Commerce website project with the leader in e-Commerce development and digital marketing? If so, contact Zen Agency today! We are a group of WooCommerce experts.