E-commerce Tips: Horrifying Traps to Avoid in 2020

E-commerce is defined as the activity of buying or selling products or services on the internet. E-commerce first became possible back in 1991 when the internet was opened for commercial use. However, since that date, hundreds and thousands of online digital businesses have come into being. The dawn of the 21st century has especially seen many e-commerce businesses rising to the surface and then further flying to the height of absolute glory.

The e-commerce history is collectively all set to hit $4.2 trillion by 2021, making e-commerce one of the most pursuable areas of the profession. Marketing, website design, developers, and networking are the professions ultimately relating to e-commerce. 

It takes a great deal of dedication, marketing campaigns, hard-work, and determination to take an e-commerce business towards success. However, this same business is prone to deterioration when encountered with a deadly trap, a mistimed campaign, and bad policies.

Here are some of the horrifying E-Commerce traps that you have to avoid in 2019:

Focusing on Poor Traffic Sources

Having a large flow of engaging audiences is every marketer’s and every e-commerce business owner’s dream. Normally, people turn to organic traffic sources for their traffic need and honestly, why shouldn’t they?

Organic traffic is the traffic you’re getting from search engines, through the implementation of effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques. However, sometimes the organic flow is simply just not enough. For example, a painter who owns an art gallery will not be able to divert their audience from a search engine to their website – unless the website has a separate blog covering various topics.

Or suppose if it’s a local clothing brand who totally relies on local SEO for its sales. That’s just a bad tactic. You should know what your niche is and you must know how to get the right audience to your website. If you’re a musician, an artist, a painter, or a blogger, you cannot start selling your services just by developing a website and implementing some SEO techniques.

You have to use mediums like social media, twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc. to build a brand for yourself – and then you can continue with your website. When you’re focusing on social media sources to build a brand name and maintaining your website along with it – you’ll be having double benefits! 

Firstly, you’ll be able to utilize channel synergy between organic and social media. Search engines will also prioritize your content in a better way because of authentication from multiple resources. Secondly, when you have a brand name, people begin to trust you. That way you can easily take them along as you go and you’ll have a live source of traffic as you breathe! 

Unpleasant Layout

Whether your digital platform is an android application, IOS application, desktop application or a plain website, your layout has to be intriguing. Human beings are designed to incline towards colors and atmosphere which pleases their aesthetic sense.

Make sure your platform doesn’t have an untrustworthy design and that it’s easy to use. According to research at Northumbria University, a UK University, the design of a website matters factors more into whether customers find it trustworthy and friendly than any other content on the site. 

Therefore, you have to make sure that your platform’s design is super friendly, efficient, easy to use, and aesthetically pleasing. 

Being Non-Profit 

It’s very common for a new e-commerce business to be non-profit. However, if you’re looking at the longer-term scene, you may have to change your perspective. Normally, a business owner who is serious about working in e-commerce may like to observe the statistics at first and be in a business model that is yet not profitable.

However, when you’re looking at a new e-commerce business, making a profit should be a very important goal in the beginning. Not only does this give you a motivation to improve and do better in the future but it also helps your costs scale with production, without losing any money if the sales spike. 

Selling Wrong Products/Services

As a digital business owner, you must be vigilant of the products and services you’re selling. You have to know who your audience is and what they’re looking for. Selling products that aren’t needed is like singing in front of a cow – they don’t need it and nor do they care. 

Moreover, make sure that you aren’t selling substandard products. There can be a bunch of similar products in the market from different brands. While they may seem similar, it is highly likely that they’re not perceived as equals in the market.

Therefore, always make sure that you’re selling quality products that are valued in the market. If you have low-quality products in your store presently, try removing them and observe any uptake in your conversions. 

Lack of Initial Business Planning 

The lack of initial business planning can lead to huge holes in business later on. According to most successful business owners, it’s always a best practice to spend detailed time during planning instead of regretting it in the future.

The planning includes setting up goals and objectives, financial planning, calculating ROI plans, marketing spending, maintenance, and profits. Also, the most crucial parts of the business should be addressed in the planning phase and the doubts should be cleared away before moving on to the next phase. 

In summary, you must avoid all kinds of unethical behaviors that put your website in jeopardy. For example, at all times avoid Black Hat SEO, which are the unethical practices to improve your organic rankings in search engines. Opting unethical practices to artificially improve your rankings in the search engine can result in a permanent ban from Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

The primary avoidance tips covered above belong to a larger domain and cover a couple of subjects in general. We hope you’re able to extract a thing or two from the above tips so you can easily contribute towards the success of your e-commerce business.

Lastly, you learn with experience. It’s perfectly fine to make mistakes as you go on your journey. Even if you’re not able to prevent your downfall, you always have the power to recover, flourish, and continue!