6 Mistakes Online Store owners make that cost them huge.

Some entrepreneurs or small business owners build their online stores hoping that they will start making money. But facts are different. E-Commerce store needs various other marketing tools, strategies, and tactics to make money. My experience working with E-Commerce store owners tells me Six common mistakes that most store owners make. Discover Six mistakes online store owners make.

• Ignore SEO
• No Email Capture & Email automation
• No Sales Funnel
• Poor quality product photography
• Copywriting
• Poorly designed product pages

1. Ignore SEO

Most Online store owners focus their 100% on paid ads. They think that paid ads will start generating profitable revenue. The real-world story is different though paid ads start getting results once the user has already gone through multiple touchpoints with the brand.

Search Engine Optimization helps online store owners to generate organic traffic to their website using keywords that people use on the search engines to find solutions to their problems.

This organic traffic comes to get their problem solved. If your brand can hook them and draw their attention, chances are they will start recognizing your brand and will consider buying stuff from you.

You can google tag or pixel this organic traffic and retarget paid ads to remind them about your brand and the products or services you are selling them.

Of course, with a decent budget, you can do paid ads for traffic generation as well. But if that is not the case, then it is better to do SEO. Then not doing anything in terms of generating traffic to your website.

2. No Email Capture

Most online store owners give discount offers, but they do not exchange those discount offers with the store visitors by asking for an email address. Getting an Email address for the exchange of the discount coupons signifies the intent of the store visitor.

Higher chances are he/she has a will to purchase the product, and now it is the responsibility of the store owner to address friction points in the purchasing decision process. These friction points can be trust, fear & objections related to products, services, or brand values.

You can address the above friction with email automation & content marketing. Provide content addressing those trust, fears, and objections. Of course, you can address friction points in product pages, but sometimes online store visitors skim through your page content without reading them in detail. Email provides you with multiple chances to communicate with them. You can use emails to upsell & cross-sell. Make announcements etc.

3. No Conversion Funnel

Your online store visitors do not purchase at the first visit. They are busy people. It might be that they are viewing your product or store and get a phone call leaving them from their desk and forgetting the store they visited.

You need to track your customer’s journey and look out for various touchpoints. Usually, the customer journey includes four stages:-

1. 1. Awareness
   2. Interest
   3. Desire
   4. Action

Your online store needs to communicate at various stages of the customer journey. And nurture website visitors to proceed further in the customer journey.

Your ads, email campaigns, content marketing, and videos should address the various stages of the customer journey. Major store owners do not implement e-commerce conversion funnels. They think just by creating an E-commerce store alone. They will be able to get tons of sales and revenue.

4. Poor quality product photography

There are countless online stores where their product photography or hero images are of poor quality. In the E-Commerce world, customers cannot feel or touch the product. It is your product photography that will help you to overcome this challenge.

The irony is that most store owners use stock photos or add photos of their products with low resolution, poor lighting, or lack of focal point on the product images.

E-commerce stores with high-quality images help in building trust and also in conversion.

5. Copywriting

Copywriting is vital in convincing your online store visitor to do business with you. If you have a weak brand story or vision and mission statement, that will not help you win the game. Your brand story should articulate why did you start your brand? What was the problem, concern, or gap in the market your brand is trying to solve? What are your brand values? Or any charitable work you are doing in your E-commerce store.

Besides these, product page copy also needs to convince your online store visitor to buy from you. Your copy should be able to relate features along with benefits. These should not be technical writing. But written in the language used by your existing customers. Or should be able to be understood by laymen.

If, you want to learn more about product page copywriting. Read this article from conversion xl.

The Complete Guide to Writing Product Descriptions That Convert

6. Poorly Designed Product Pages

Many E-Commerce store owners usually make one common mistake: the add to cart button is always below the first fold on mobile devices. These kills conversion. Some might argue that mobile users do scroll. Hence it does not matter the position of the add to cart button.

My take is that when a user comes from a mobile device to the website. Probabilities are that he is commuting or might be in a hurry. Showing the add to cart button below the first fold and making him scroll down will create an unnecessary distraction.

There might be an exception in placing the add to cart button below the fold. It might work in cases where you need to explain the product before the user buys. If the product is self-explanatory and users are accustomed to buying online. Then you can place add to cart button below the fold and near to pricing option.

If you want to learn more about product page design, read the following article from conversion xl.

E-commerce Guidelines: Product Page Design

Do you have an E-Commerce store and are looking for help in increasing sales and revenue. Then feel free to fill the form below and schedule a free strategy call with me.