1. Cyber & Data Security
When it comes to eCommerce, one of the biggest challenges faced is security breaches. There is many information/data that is involved while dealing with eCommerce and a technical issue with data can cause severe damage to the retailer’s daily operations as well as brand image.
Solution:
Webstore™ staff are vigilant and always back up your data. Webstore™ offers latest SSL 3.0 certificate and supports TLS 1.2 protocol that encrypts data communication between customers’ machine and the server. In addition to that all personal data is encrypted and stored in back-end therefore, it minimises the risk of data getting stolen in case of an intruder somehow manages to enter through back door.
2. Online Identity Verification
When a shopper visits an eCommerce site, how would the retailer know if the person is who they say they are? Is the shopper entering accurate information? Is the shopper genuinely interested in the eCommerce products?
If you do not have the accurate details or information, how do you proceed? Well, it does become tricky. The solution would be to invest in online identity verification.
Solution:
There are different ways to incorporate online identity verification. Webstore™ offers single sign on customer account creation for Enterprise and Advance account holders. This allows vendors to monitor the customer’s pattern of purchasing habits and trends.
3. Attracting the Perfect Customer
Shoppers have a numerous option to choose from these days. If they are looking to buy a mobile phone, they do some thorough research before finalizing on one. If shoppers have several options, how do you make sure they pick you? How do you go about finding that perfect customer that wants your product, at your rate and to the places, you can ship?
Solution:
Partner with companies that help you target your customers. Digital marketing is preferred over traditional marketing because they can target your ideal customer. While this might not happen overnight, with A/B testing, fine tuning and analysis – your products could be showing up to potential customers on different social media platforms. Webstore™ offers built-in analytics that provides insights where storeowner can gain the knowledge which of their products are popular and which are not.
4. Customer Experience
Customer experience or user experience is key to a successful eCommerce website. Shoppers expect a similar if not same experience as one they would get in a brick and mortar store. The flow of the website, the segmentation of the website and the retail personalization of products based on the shopper’s preferences are imperative.
Solution:
with Webstore™ vendor’s store would have has most important thing that is a clean and simple website so that shoppers can view all products, its pictures with small description and price, on home page, navigate through various sections easily. The next point would be to it comes with clear CTA’s(call to action) so that the shopper knows exactly what to do.
5. Customer Loyalty
Here are two facts that show the importance of customer loyalty: (a) It can cost up to 5 times more to acquire a new customer than retaining an existing one and (b) the success rate of selling to a current customer is 60-70% compared to only 5-20% success rate of selling to a new customer.
The above two facts are testament to how important customer retention or loyalty is. Once a customer makes a purchase or utilizes a service from a retailer, they have to make sure that they keep this customer for life. But how is this possible?
Solution:
These are a few different methods that can be used to retain customers. The first would be to have excellent customer service – a customer is happy to have purchased a great product, but they are ecstatic when the customer service is on point. The next step is to keep in touch with the customer via a method that they like; Webstore™ offer subscriber’s form widget where visitors can subscribe for your newsletter as well as promotions. It comes with built-in emailing system that keeps track of subscribers’ list as well as all your promotional newsletters correspondences. The last point would be to let them know about new products, sales promotions and special coupon codes for being such loyal customers. At Webstore™ there is provision to create time bound discount coupons or volume based discount coupons.
6. Converting Shoppers into Paying Customers
One of the biggest ecommerce challenges is to convert visitors into paying customers. An eCommerce website might have a lot of traffic, a lot of clicks and impressions but they aren’t making the sales they anticipated. What can they do to get more sales?
Solution:
The primarily would be to understand why your shoppers are not converting – You must target the right audience. Make sure website working seamlessly on mobile devices. Store websites build on Webstore™ platform renders effectively on all devices. Develop customer base trust. Webstore™ comes with built-in theme selector so you can personalize your website for your customers according to seasons or location so, you can think from a shopper’s perspective and see if you are doing everything possible to make them pay. Such as banner advertising on the home page. Inside Webstore™ there is a provision to publish unlimited rotating banners on the top section of home page that would make customers to stick to your website and navigate more. Create banners to highlight new arrivals or discounts or future promotions etc.
7. Competition & Competitor Analysis
Have you heard of a Jam Experiment (Offering lot of choices creates confusion in customer)? Well, it has quite a controversial conclusion, which is – the less you offer customers the more likely they are to actually purchase something. A lot of people these days are fatigued by all the options that are out there. A simple search (personalized search) for something like headphones will give you thousands of options – how does one make a choice?
From a retailer’s standpoint, how do they stand out from the crowd? How do they bring shoppers to their website, instead of buying a similar product from their competitors?
Solution:
Always do a thorough analysis of your competitors. Find out what products they are selling, how they are generating leads and how they keep in touch with their customers. The next step would be to make sure you stand out – be it the colors you use, the topnotch functionality of your website or amazing user experience. And finally, offer services or products that are unique and relevant to your customer base. With Webstore™ you are not alone; you get proper guidance and support on the path of your success in business.
8. Price & Shipping
We have all heard of customers that prefer to purchase products from places that have free shipping. eCommerce giants like Amazon provide such attractive shipping deals that customers seldom want to look at other places. How does one bring down costs for shipping?
Solution:
While all eCommerce sites cannot completely get rid of shipping costs, always look to find options that work for your customer base. At Webstore™ onscreen tips are available in finding out who are the competitive shipping service providers in your country. Considering the volume of business, you are getting from customer at Webstore™ you can set threshold amount for free shipping so you can offer them free shipping over certain purchase amount. Would a certain time of the month give them lower shipping costs? Or is there a carrier that is reliable but offers a cheaper rate? Be sure to do your research and find the best possible solution for your shoppers. Apart from that, Webstore™ also offers Invoicing method of selling. The method of invoicing allows storeowners to send digital invoices for the orders that cannot be fulfilled by existing shopping cart for example discounts on volume orders or special pricing for custom orders.
9. Product Return & Refund Policies
According to ComScore, more than 60% of online shoppers say that they look at a retailer’s return policy before making a purchase. When an eCommerce site says “no returns or refunds”, it makes a shopper nervous and less likely to trust the retailer. When shopping online, customers want the flexibility of making a mistake that doesn’t cost them.
Solution:
Customer satisfaction is the most important factor for any retailer. Therefore, having a flexible return and refund policy not only helps with customer satisfaction with it also helps with customers making purchases without being nervous. At Webstore™, you can create and add as many pages as you want and define your return policy, terms and conditions. It is good practice to add Frequently asked questions (FAQ) page and write about your return policy on FAQ page. It also comes with merchant account where you can manage order and issue full or partial refunds.
10. Choosing the Right Marketing/Partners to improve your eCommerce profile.
Choosing the right marketing or partner will make or break your business. A retailer’s growth might be stunted because their ecommerce platform is limiting them or because they have hired the wrong agency to help them manage their sells and marketing.
Many aspects need to be in place for a successful retail business. In any case starting or running an ecommerce store on good footing is vital.
Solution:
Choosing a good, comprehensive and powerful ecommerce platform like Webstore™ is crucial instead of reinventing a wheel to fix all your eCommerce challenges. Using image recognition and data science for generating customer intelligence, and combine these with market insights, to power growth.
Nothing has propelled eCommerce like the one the conditions during 2020 to 2022 and it will continue for years to come forward. While there have been many exciting and positive changes, there are still online businesses that struggle with the challenges that eCommerce brings. The above mentioned solutions are fixes that can help any eCommerce business move closer to their ideal customers and targeted sales. Also, ecommerce entrepreneurs can read through Successfully start an ecommerce business- a Systematic approach.
11. Customer Support
With the scale of eCommerce increasing rapidly and with the rising number of users facing everyday issues with eCommerce services, Customer support has been augmented with live chat which enable faster processing and quicker responses to customers questions. Please note, many customers find themselves feeling uncomfortable or dissatisfied with automated responses from chatbots.
Solution:
The solution to this eCommerce challenges is fairly simple – eCommerce companies should utilize a combination of FAQ pages and human assistance to deal with customer questions by tagging specific issues that require human assistance and distinguishing the queries that can be handled by a live chat.
12. Cross-border eCommerce
A lot of eCommerce sites tend to stagnate due to the lack of interaction with customers outside their geographical range. Users that prefer to deal in their local currency tend to look for other retailers that can offer them a product in local currency. Moreover, the differences in pricing, tax rates, etc., deter users from purchasing across borders.
Solution:
Implementing a multi-currency tool that makes customer to buy in their local currency can make a huge difference in attracting customers and improving your conversion rates. Using Webstore™ to enable an easy conversion of currencies and taxing the products appropriately will also significantly contribute to growth.
13. Marketing Budgets
With digital marketing becoming the norm for most eCommerce businesses, more companies are flocking towards their digital and social media ad spends. With the demand for clicks and virtual advertising space increasing, so does the price. This can become very expensive for small and medium-sized retailers and in fact, this is one of the biggest eCommerce challenges that they face.
Solution:
Create specific business profiles on open advertising platform such as Regularads.com, will help their business by targeting social media, sharing with subscribers and search engine ranking so that you significantly improve your return on investment on your spends.
14. Going Omnichannel
Selling your products through multiple channels enables you to increase your overall revenue and Average Order Value (AOV). A customer that shops on multiple channels is likely to spend three-times more than the average customer. However, if not done right, some channels might lead to losses if they don’t attract the right customers and the required volume of customers.
Solution:
Use the data you receive from the different channels you operate on to identify the top-performers and optimize them for your customers and reduce your spending on the platforms that do not gain the traction that you need.
15. Data Privacy
Customers today are aware of the importance of their data and the need for data privacy. Device manufacturers like Apple are going the extra mile to ensure that their users’ data are kept safe from third parties. However, user data can also enable platforms to provide them a better user-experience.
Solution:
Prevention is better than cure. At Webstore™, few cautions are observed, and proper mechanism are in place to keep privacy of customer’s private data. It comes with SSL 3.0 certificate and TLS 1.2 protocols to encrypt digital communications & data transfer between customer’s machine and the server. In addition to this stored customer’s data on the back-end is encrypted so that it would minimize the risk of data stealing in the event of intruder’s back door entry.
16. Logistics
Companies across the world are affected by supply chain issues every year, and considering it is a layered process, issues and errors occur at multiple steps during the process, which leads to added expenses and delays.
Solution:
Gain visibility of your entire supply chain. Supply Chain Visibility enables you to track your inventory accurately and also establish a clear communication system that can help you stay up to date with different parts of the supply chain process. This is one of those eCommerce challenges that requires time and effort but is also extremely essential. At Webstore™ alerts storeowner when stock levels go below threshold, so they have adequate time to reorder and maintain the stock.
17. Store Agility
How rapidly can you roll out new features, post and market fresh content? Due to the rapid evolution of ecommerce, it is crucial that you implement an agile company model. Staying relevant and up to date with trends is crucial for eCommerce businesses to survive and thrive and provide their customers the best possible user-experience.
Solution:
Being agile helps businesses deliver an enhanced shopping experience. To be agile, eCommerce companies need to keep a close watch on emerging trends across all platforms and must deliver personalized experiences to keep customers engaged and inspired. One example of being agile would be to consistently put out new content according to different platforms and devices. Although agility majority depends up on agility of team supporting the store operation. This is more of a process than a solution – ensure that your team is adaptable and has processes set to deal with changes, both internal and external to enable quick decision-making. Off course when decisions are made simple to use tools are required to implement new changes such as changes in product price or the description of a product, or change the store theme or add specific banner on home page. Online store build with Webstore™ comes with built-in simple to use Content management system so that storeowner or its staff can change product prices and description, enable/disable or add/remove banners, create new pages with custom contents or edit and enable/disable/remove existing one, Change entire theme of a store with a click of a button.
18. Customer Expectations
Modern consumers these days are increasingly informed and aware with the advent of new technology and exposure to multiple brands and services. The modern consumer has high expectations for the kind of products and services they pay for and are constantly on the lookout for better experiences.
Solution:
If you wish to solve this problem for your e-commerce business, a thorough awareness of contemporary web design trends is required. A thorough examination of current trends will enable you to recognize the adjustments that your company needs to make and assist in making them.
19. Placement of Elements within your page
This might come across as surprising – but the design and placement of important elements such as the navigation bar, tabs etc., on your website can significantly impact your conversions and sales because your user-interface contributes to the customer’s experience on your site. Users tend to be wary of sites that they cannot easily navigate through
Solution:
Constantly improve on your User Interface design, utilize A/B tests to understand what designs your customers respond well to and remove any unnecessary hindrances that hamper your users from fully engaging with your site.
20. Sustainability
Retailers are now being incentivized to market their goods and delivery services as having a low environmental impact due to the increased global attention on sustainability due to consumer demand. Nearly 60% of consumers are ready to alter their purchase patterns in order to lessen their impact on the environment.
Solution:
Improve the efficiency of your supply chains and identify key areas where your carbon footprint can be reduced for improved environmental impact.
21. Handling Customer Reviews
Customers these days are as tech-savvy as eCommerce companies are. In times when we can get our favorite celebrities or influential people to talk to us on social media via tags or mentions, status updates have become a thing.
Customers are so fast to share feedback that they instantly pick up their phone and put reviews, both good and bad. Remember, they might skip a good one, but bad? These bad reviews never slip the customer’s mind.
Solution:
In a highly connected and tech-savvy world, gathering good reviews from customers and managing the bad ones becomes a huge challenge. That is when EventsMaster.ca survey tool comes into the scenario and helps businesses to collect the best reviews from customers.
22. Capitalization of Data
The expansion of eCommerce and its operations, including integration with other platforms (like payment gateways), is one of the major eCommerce challenges. Usually, eCommerce ends up becoming a side hustle rather than a fully integrated part of the business as a whole.
To make eCommerce blend into other business operations, businesses are working hard towards deploying solutions that are synced with each other via data. This will help businesses measure Key Performance Indicators or KPIs and improve performance over time.
Instead of experimenting based on assumptions, data should be systematically captured at all customer touchpoints and made to use for better purposes. Entrepreneurs need to realize the impact of data on day-to-day operations as well as long-term business decisions.
Solution:
Start right with Webstore™ simply because it comes tons of ecommerce tools and features, begin as a single function rather than a separate function altogether. This would help storeowners serve customers better with data visualization and remarketing techniques, making a cross-digital impact and ultimately improving revenue.
23. Rising Customer Expectations
Business owners constantly try to build their reputation and a sophisticated brand image with the promise of a great experience. In these times when Amazon has guaranteed next-day delivery with a solid shipping method, it is difficult for rising eCommerce channels to fulfill customer expectations.
Therefore, competing with the big tech giants and meeting exploding customer expectations is a huge challenge for retailers.
Solution:
The majority of the customers are more likely to pay more for a better customer experience. To match the capabilities of tech giants, small eCommerce businesses should try to collaborate with reliable supply chain firms and work on improving their delivery cycles. Moreover, they can use data to offer a highly personalized customer experience.
The customers should feel valued and special at every point of their interaction with the brand. For example, you can use customer preferences and choices based on past purchases to market similar products via SMS and emails.
24. Marketplaces versus your own branded store
At online marketplaces like Amazon, Alibaba or eBay, you cannot build your brand there. It is like Flee market where customers visit here with an expectation of getting cheaper deal and unfortunately, they forget seller name or your brand after they get the deal and remember the brand of marketplace and not yours. There is always fear of getting banned on market places. In such situation, you will have to start from zero once again at somewhere else. After your sells reach certain threshold at marketplaces you will be presented with new features and you will be asked to pay more fees and if you ignore their suggestions then your listing will start disappearing from search results or pushed at the bottom. You may not notice these as search results shown to you are different than what customers see on their end (manipulation of search results).
Solution:
Never get fooled by the false promises offered by marketplaces. However, at these market places you can get some idea of high selling products. You may try to see and learn the demand of certain products so you can narrow down the products you wish to sell. Always start business with products that are in demand in the market. What you think will sell good will not always be true.
In any case you must think and plan to build your own brand by having your own online store with Webstore. They give you a domain name, email addresses and many other tools and features for the store. Most search engines rank your business well when you have domain for the online store and customers will locate your business with domain name. Secondly, when you communicate with email address that ends with the domain name of the store customers starts believing in your emails an trust starts building.
25. Digital and social media marketing for ecommerce
Digital and social media marketing are essential part of ecommerce business. Here is simple thumb rule in business that applies to any kind of business "No marketing. No sells." With the invent of internet searches and social media, businesses have drastically changed their marketing strategies. Now-a-days those are spending more on online marketing than conventional marketing methods like banners, billboards, flyers, print ads etc.
Solution:
Every day millions of people search on Search engines (like Google, MSN, Yahoo) to find products and services. Search engine marketing is essential part of digital marketing strategy therefore, you need to make your store website search engine friendly and implement on page search engine optimization techniques. Secondly, many social media sites allows pixels marketing. Pixels can be ingrained into your store website. Therefore, you need to narrow down ecommerce platform that has provision to implement on page search engine optimization and pixels. Webstore™ provides all of these provisions and either store owner or their SEO expert can easily implement it onto your store website.
Apart from SEO and Pixel you need to have digital presences out side o your website. somewhere like open advertising platform such as RegularAds where off-page SEO techniques can be more effective and could boost your ranking on search engines. For off-page optimization, you can write blogs or create advertisement using most searchable keywords. Keywords in simple terms are the words your prospects would type on search engines to locate your business or website or products and services you are selling. When you have commonly used Keywords onto your blog, advertisements or store website then search engine will pull your site and show in the search results. Everyone wants their site be ranked on first ten list of search result. Search engine ranking is a slow process and proper care must be taken in selecting and using keywords. In some cases keyword research and implementation could be an ongoing work.
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