E-commerce has become highly successful post the worldwide lockdown owing to the corona pandemic. However, not every online store can tap into its enormous potential. This is mostly because of not recognizing and resolving the mistakes they make. If you’re wondering what they are, this write-up would be very much useful to you.
In this blog, we’ll discuss the ten most common e-commerce marketing mistakes.
10 E-commerce marketing mistakes to avoid
Read on to know the oft-occurring e-commerce marketing mistakes and ideas on how to overcome them.
1. Targeting the wrong audience
Any marketing campaign is effective only if it’s done to the right audience. This is where most e-commerce businesses, particularly newbies, fail. They unintentionally tend to choose the wrong audiences. Not defining your target audience will make it difficult for you to develop apt marketing strategies that suit your market.
So, come up with a description of who you want to offer your products and services
to. It should include their demographic details, interests and hobbies, the way they make purchasing decisions, and preferred platforms. This will help you develop the right marketing content, achieve your business goals faster, and develop stronger customer relationships. This will also save you significant money, time, and effort.
2. Ignoring Competition
Ignoring competition is another common e-commerce marketing mistake. With many businesses adopting e-commerce nowadays, competition in every possible niche has increased. You need to know who your competitors are and what they offer to
stand out from them.
So, carry out background research on your chosen field to identify your close competitors. Keep an eye on whom they’re targeting and how they do it. This will help you draw inspiration from successful tactics and learn from their failures. You’ll also get to know what’s trending and accordingly be prepared.
3. Disregarding mobile users
Many people use smartphones and other mobile devices for shopping and carrying out other online transactions. This makes it indispensable for e-commerce businesses to make their e-stores mobile-friendly. Several things go into rendering an e-store mobile-friendly.
These include-
- Making your site responsive across various device screens.
- Reducing heavy content to facilitating fast loading and presentability on mobile screens.
- Making navigation user-friendly.
- Optimizing rich-media content.
- Making the check-out process intuitive.
- Ensuring an omnichannel experience.
- And more.
So, seek professional help to accomplish these.
4. Unattractive product descriptions
E-commerce purchases are triggered by a brand’s reputation and its product descriptions and images. So, procure your products from reliable sources and focus on providing enough information about each product. These descriptions should be appealing, short, simple, and easy to understand and given alongside the product image.
For instance, if the product is a photo frame include details like the material used to make it and the dimensions of the item. Additionally, include compelling and persuasive descriptions of how the product differs from its counterparts. You should develop this content to suit the spending habits of the concerned buyers.
5. Lack of social proof
Reviews, ratings, product videos, and product images from customers help other customers to make informed buying decisions. That’s why they look for these. As an e-commerce store, these are valuable social proof that you should gather and display. So, make provisions on product pages for customers to give feedback on the products they’ve purchased.
Actively collect such social proof by asking customers for these as soon as your product has been delivered to them. You can automate the asking and simplify the procedure for customers by incorporating a link. And don’t forget to thank them for their feedback. This not only sounds polite but also encourages them to submit reviews and ratings on their future purchases too.
6. Pricing products with no research
Another e-commerce marketing mistake to avoid is pricing products without performing market research on it. So, study the market using market research tools to get an idea of how much your product is worth to your customers. This way, you’ll know if your pricing is higher than the market is ready to pay or if your prospects would pay more than you think.
Oftentimes, e-stores set their pricing based on their competitors’ charges. Though there’s a logic behind this, if you learn through your research that consumers aren’t satisfied with the options available, and your offering is an ideal solution, you may consider increasing your pricing.
7. Improper tech stack
Choosing the right tech stack, that is the platform you use for running your e-store matters a lot. For, these play a crucial role in customer experience, security, customer retention, customer referrals, and more. Here are some tools you should choose wisely.
- E-commerce platform: While there are low-cost basic platforms for running your e-store, these do not have options for future scaling and native customization options. So, spend time studying the various options available.
- Security tools: Securing your e-store should be considered an investment rather than an expense. For, unsecured online stores are prone to be attacked by online scams, infected lines, financial frauds, and more. Some basic security tools you should employ are SSL certificates, HTTPS, and antivirus software.
- CMS: Sometimes, e-commerce businesses consider creating their content management system (CMS), which is not at all advisable. For, these are hard to develop, do not integrate with other tools, do not get support, are difficult to secure, hard to train your staff on, and may lack all the features you’d need. So, build your own CMS. Use an existing CMS.
8. A poor mix of imagery, media, and videos
The ultimate aim of your e-commerce business is to motivate potential customers to buy.
For this, you need to give sufficient information to make the products attractive, without being overwhelming. This is where many new e-commerce businesses fail. They tend to throw everything on the product pages or even the entire site. Focus on achieving the right mix of media, including videos and imagery.
Here are some ways to do it-
- Choose appealing, easy-to-understand, and convincing images.
- Your images should visually support or present your content.
- Optimize your images and videos for SEO.
- Get the image size right.
- Post videos on how to use a product, if the product is new in the market.
- A/B test images to improve conversions
- Include a lot of white space.
9. Neglecting to ensure a great user experience
User experience matters a lot when it comes to shopping online. Here are some ways to help improve your e-store’s user experience.
- Categorize your products to make it easy for shoppers to find the items they’re looking for.
- Provide detailed business contact and service information such as shipping costs, delivery duration, returns policy, etc. to address potential concerns.
- Ensure excellent navigation by providing clear product categories, shopping cart, wishlist, contact page, checkout page, and a footer with links to your About Us page, FAQs, etc.
- Have a guest checkout option in your checkout process.
- Include as many payment options as possible.
10. Not using analytics to power your marketing
Powerful marketing combines creativity and data. A mistake that can render your e-commerce marketing inefficient is not using analytics to improve your marketing. So, employ a marketing strategy that is influenced by customer behavior.
This will help you know what works in attracting and retaining customers and what turns them off. You’ll also be able to identify your winning customer acquisition channels. With all these data handy, you can fine-tune your future marketing campaigns. Besides, you’ll recognize opportunities for engaging customers and increasing their purchase frequency.
Wrapping up
Oftentimes, e-commerce businesses tend to commit some of the common e-commerce marketing mistakes. The first step to avoiding them is getting to know what they are. In this blog, we’ve discussed ten of the top marketing blunders that e-stores make and provided solutions to avoid each of these. Hope you’re now equipped with the knowledge to launch yourself on the path to success!
