Lesson23 - Ideas for a successful websites

Lesson23 - Ideas for a successful websites

Top 10 E-Commerce Mistakes to avoid

The business world that many people think of starting off which is commonly referred as the “small business sector” is one with a lot of complexities. Knowing these complexities before hand would be beneficial to you. In this article we will describe ten of the most common mistakes that should be avoided in E- Commerce.


Weakness in the design

One thought that should be kept in mind that every website is only a click away from the enormous competitions available out there. If your website faces poor design than it will fail in the first part of the test. Your online presence will be judged on the basis of your design. Let’s face some facts we would not want to buy goods or services from a website that is poorly designed. Your website should be professionally designed and should have the latest technologies to keep you abreast with the current technologies.

Your website should make it easy for your visitors to find matter that you would like to find over the net. One way of doing this is to make sure that your navigational menus link everything that you have on your site. You can also do this by showing the articles that interest your readers on the home page. To cite one very good example would be the MSN.com page. They literally have millions of articles; the home page reflects the articles that would interest you.

Usability Inadequate

The concept of your website should be clear and useful to your audience. This will be reflected on the website by offering information that is related to your business. In short if your site is not doing the job that it was designed for than it is basically useless to the customer.

To explain this point more clearly lets assume that you are offering legal services to people. Your site should tell people what kind of cases you handle. You can also have some tips to help them know what procedures they will go through when they are in certain disagreements with the law.

Your site can also have visual aids and presentations that will prove to attract people and also get the point across to them more clearly. Be forewarned though that the site could load slower than usual because of these heavy graphics.

You should have the site evaluated from a third person eye. It would be fruitful if you would ask friends and family to help in this as you can than dig for questions to help you better design the site.

Shopping Obstacles

One of the main reasons why people want to buy online is because of the ease of shopping. Any signs of trouble in this area will have your visitors leave in a blink of an eye. The problems which are related to this could be that way too much information is asked for. These obstacles should not be bothered to them in the early section of the website.

One of the most common fears that affect all e-commerce vendors is the fear of giving out credit card information. You have to gain the trust of your visitors by telling them that the information that they supply to them will be held in strict confidence and that the information will not be shared.

Another mistake that is related to shopping online is the price tag. Every product should contain the price tag. This is very essential as your visitors would want to know how much it would cost.

Lack of a marketing plan

If you have built a site you would need to know the reason of why they should come to your site. For all websites you need to have a plan that will help you market your website. The marketing plan will contain points on what, where and when advertisements should should be posted. The answers to these questions are very essential for you to know.

Poor customer service

You can have all the customers in the world but if you don’t treat them right they will not be there for long. You should remember that the customers are like wives, if you touch or say wrong things at the wrong time you will have a bad attitude which will result in the loss of a valuable client.

Poor service will include not answering emails, poor service, right goods not delivered, complaints being ignored or shipment delays.

Selling of the wrong products

People are of the notion that you can sell anything and everything online. This is hardly the case. The reason being is that items like shoes for examples have to be tried on and the photo of it online could have impressed the customer online but the actual products could have a negative impression. The other fact is that the cost of shipping the items should also be considered. The cost of shipping products like sofas, dinner tables and other furniture’s would be almost equivalent to the product price.

Lack of growth plans

Yes you will be surprised that some of the business that has been shut down is because they could not handle the growth situation. If all things are right you will have to make sure you are ready for the business expansion that comes along with it.

Lack of fulfillment

All products should arrive on time; your products are special to some people. Your products could be ordered on a special date and having the product delivered on time will mean much to people. This has been the problem for most small businesses with the statistics seen the products have arrived later than the required time. You should keep room for delays so that any unforeseen delays can be resolved.

Failure to specialize

If you are the jack of all and master of none you may loose business as people would like to do business with people who are specialized. In order for you to become specialized you will have to know what the competition is like in the market. What can you do to overcome those pressures and challenges that you will be faced with?

Security Failure

One of the biggest threats to small businesses is the risk of security issues such as credit card issues. You would need to learn how to deal with these security issues from time to time. This is one of the reasons that you will have to stay in touch with tomorrow’s technology today so that the information that is entrusted to you is kept safe and confidential.