Lack of Passion
Most e-commerce merchants started off with a great interest in a product they want to sell, however, their passion didn’t last long enough before they start to make a real profit. No matter what you are doing, you need to have passion in order to persist in what you do. If you don’t have a deep interest and you don’t love what you are selling, don’t even start!
Passion is what keeps you going on and on. Most online sellers lose interest in their own products when they can’t see a profit gain in short term, like 3 months, 6 months or even a year.
If you fail to maintain your passion towards your business, you will lose persistence, and your e-commerce journey will eventually fail.
Unattractive Online Store Design
Well unattractive is one thing, and consistently frustrate the hell out of your visitors is another. Every visitor that come to your site is a potential customer. If your online store design is not able to capture the attention of these visitors, it’s just like a boy met an untidy girl at a party and will just walk away within 3 seconds. No matter how much you spent in marketing and advertising, if you have an ugly web design, it’s just not going to work.
Web Design plays a vital role in e-commerce as there is no salesperson to serve your visitor in your online store. Your website represents your salesperson and your business outlook. A weak web design translates to a weak salesperson working in a dirty store, which I think most of the people will just walk away.
First impression is so important that you must never let this one goes easy. Make sure your landing page is neat, attractive and able to retain your visitor.
Web Design that is not User-Friendly
“How can I buy this? How to select my preferred color? What is the size measurement? How can I pay?”. If your visitors are asking questions like this, you need to solve them as soon as possible or your e-commerce store is going to fail really soon, yes, like now. Making it easy for customers to buy their things is one of the main advantage of e-commerce, if you fail to comply with this advantage, then why do people want to buy from your site?
Make sure your website navigation is easy and fool proof. One crucial factor of a profitable e-commerce business is website usability. If your products are good and people want it badly, don’t make it difficult for them to get what they want!
Another thing to take note about being user-friendly in this era, is being mobile friendly. There are a lot of people surfing the web with their smartphones these days, you don’t want to lose these market by having an unfriendly mobile website. If you don’t know how to build one, find a mobile web designer that knows how.
Payment Barrier
“I’ve got 10 items in my shopping cart, now let’s pay! Hey…wait, I don’t have a credit card…what a bummer!”
Payment method is one of the most discussed topic in e-commerce development. If you are a young entrepreneur, most of the time you are not able to offer abundant of payment methods, because you have limited access, like credit card.
Most failed e-commerce merchants mentioned that they have high exit rate on checkout page and one of the reason behind is the payment barrier. They failed because they only offer very limited ways to receive payment, like just having one bank for you to transfer you money or TT into. What if your customers do not have an account with that particular bank? You lose them.
Please be reminded again when it comes to e-commerce, people want it to be easy. I have a credit card, and I want to pay everything with it. So make your e-commerce store to be able to receive multiple types of payments, like Credit and Debit Card, Bank transfer, or even Cash on Delivery.
Bad Customer Service
Don’t ever think that having an e-commerce site means that you can go to sleep and let the money rolls on its own. Yes you can do this if you have a capable team to maintain the website for you, or else you are carving your business name on a tombstone.
Most e-commerce starters failed to engage interaction with their customers, provide exceptional after sales service and up selling them.
Doing your business online is not too much of a difference with doing it offline. You still need to have a good customer service in order to retain and establish positive word of mouth.
Now you have known the factors which will lead your e-commerce to a dead end, you should try to avoid these and continue to improve your business and yourself in order to sustain in this e-commerce world.
Sanz Teoh
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Good points. Although there are a lot of people think that doing e-commerce site is easy these days, they missed out some of the key elements in sustaining a business online or offline, and that’s passion.