When you finally decide to open an E-commerce store after long hours of thinking and pondering, you will probably feel very excited. You might also feel nervous, since opening an online store is not always easy. There are many common problems people face in regard to opening a website for an E-commerce store, and if you would like to learn more about those problems, and more importantly what solutions we provide to them, then keep on reading!
Technical Issues
Technical issues are a real bummer when it comes to your online store, and they have many negative impacts on your business. One of the most common technical issues are website crashes. Imagine that you open your online store, all excited and ready to make sales, and all of a sudden, your website crashes. You realize that until it is restored, not only will no one be able to access your site which will prevent you from making sales, but more importantly this will ruin your brand’s reputation! Not a single customer would like to be browsing your store when a crash happens. Even worse, imagine the customer was inputting their payment information when the event happened, this will leave them worried, unsatisfied, and possibly angry, which is certainly not something you want to happen. This is why at Kishman, our Webstore has 99% of website up-time. This ensures that there are no bad surprises for either you or your customers!
Issues with Cybersecurity
As an E-commerce owner, the most important issue you might face is cybersecurity. A good cybersecurity system will protect your customer’s personal details, like their payment information for example, from data thieves and security breaches. So, when you own an e-commerce store, it is your responsibility to protect not only your data, but also the data of your customers. There are only so many ways to stay away from data breaches: creating strong passwords and making sure that you are only using platforms who provide enough security. While you cannot control what passwords your users create, what you can do, is use a secure e-commerce platform. As a business owner, it is in your best interest to provide your clients the best protection possible. With the Kishman WebstoreTM, you can sleep soundly knowing we have a SSL certificate, that we provide back-end data encryption which means that any data that needs to be stored is encrypted and finally that we have a secured hosting environment, which protects your website from unauthorized access.
Payment Processing Issues
Inadequate payment processing can bring along a multitude of issues. One of the issues related to that topic is a very serious one, which is payment fraud. There are many types of payment fraud: - Triangulation, which happens when customers purchase from unreliable websites. When the customer enters their credit card information, the website steals the credit card information right away. Hopefully, you are simply trying to grow a successful e-commerce store and not a fraudulent business, so this type of payment fraud does not concern you. - Clean fraud, which happens when the criminal already has a lot of information about the payment details of a person, but you do not have control over how a person protects their own financial information, so this type of fraud is out of your hands. - Identity theft, which is when somebody steals another individual’s personal information, which is considered a serious crime The only way to protect yourself and your customers against payment fraud is making sure the e-commerce platform you choose has good security measures in place. However as discussed with WebstoreTM’s top-tier security system, rest assured that no thief will steal your customers’ personal information while they are browsing or making purchases on your online store. Another issue sellers might run into is the inability to sell in multiple currencies. When customers go on a website where all the items are sold in a currency unfamiliar to them, they get discouraged when trying to shop while converting every single item’s price on a currency converter. Sometimes, even if they really like your products, they end up leaving your website without buying anything because they get so frustrated from non-stop converting. However, this will not be a problem you face with our platform since we offer a multicurrency option on our Webstore. This will make your sales go up and provide your customers a better shopping experience. Finally, trying to integrate a payment provider to your webstore can be such a hassle. You need to study the pricing of payment providers, check the transaction limits, examine merchant account options, make sure the gateway supports the cards you are planning on accepting from customers and many more complicated points. However, our Webstore comes with integration to a payment system provider, so do not worry about it, we take care of it! All you need is an application, and you will be all set.
Shipping and Fulfillment Issues
Shipping of your customers’ orders can be hard when it really does not have to be. Here are some important points to consider in regard to shipping: - Shipping costs: different shipping agents have different pricing, and these price points can vary by a lot. You have to make sure you choose the most effective shipping provider for your needs, think about the following: will you be sending orders all over the world, or only in your country? Maybe only in your city? The distances have a big impact on shipping costs, you might want to start with clients that live closer and expand your shipping further down the line. - Shipping speeds: If your shipping speeds are way too slow, do not expect your customers to be extremely happy. Of course, the faster the shipping method, the more it costs, so you have to find the perfect middle ground where you do not over-pay for shipping, but at the same time your shipping delays are not too long. - Shipping locations limitations: As discussed earlier, the locations where you plan on shipping your items do have an impact on the price, so make sure to consider them carefully. - Offering free shipping: Often, sellers would like to offer free shipping after a certain amount of money spent at their store. Not only do customers love free shipping, but it also encourages them to spend more to reach that price mark that gives them free shipping. - Possibility to track orders: To be able to track orders is an extremely helpful feature, it reassures your customers that their items are in fact on their way, and also lets them know when their items will arrive. However, the possibility to offer shipment tracking depends on the shipping provider you, or your customer choose. This sounds like a lot to think and worry about, but WebstoreTM makes it easy for you. You simply have to choose the shipping provider you prefer after doing some research, and that provider will be integrated into your store. You can also choose an amount to spend before offering free shipping if you wish, and when a customer gets to that amount, the free shipping option will magically appear! You can also give your clients the option to choose the speed of shipping, depending on their needs.
Customer Service Issues
As an e-commerce owner, offering the best customer service possible can be hard, since all of your business happens online. However, having the right tools be there to help you with that task is a huge advantage. You need to be organized with all of the orders’ processing and shipping, to make sure no orders are left unnoticed. The worst thing that can happen is that a customer places an order, and never hears from you again, since this shows that the store is unorganized and unprofessional. When all the processing is done automatically, you do not have to worry about remembering whatsoever, which is very convenient. You also need to stand out from other sellers with extra customer service features, like a live chat for example. Many live chats are impractical because they are powered by robotic artificial intelligence, which customers notice quite quickly, and it makes them realize that they won’t be able to get any actual help from the chat. So, a chat that has a real person to help your customers is the best option, and it makes your clients notice your dedication to them. An important thing to remember is that a chat that has extremely long response times is useless, so if you activate it, make sure there is an employee available to answer it! The same thing goes for email replies, they should be fast and helpful. Also, you should not forget about the power reviews have; they are an extremely helpful tool! To prove this to you, I will give a simple example by putting you in the place of the customer: when you buy something on amazon, you choose the item that has the biggest number of good reviews, because you see that many other customers enjoyed a specific product. On the contrary, when an item has no reviews, you feel rather hesitant to buy it. In short, top-tier customer service is the backbone of your online store, it makes customers love your brand, feel appreciated, and makes them want to come back! This is why we made sure that our WebstoreTM offered all the tools you need to make offering excellent customer service to your clients a walk in the park, since we have a live chat that you can enable and disable as you wish, branded email accounts to make your emails look professional, and a system of reviews that allows you to choose the most relevant reviews you wish to display!
Hardships when trying to set discounts
There will be times where you might want reward certain customers with a discount code or set a whole-store discount for a specific holiday, since this attracts new customers and makes old ones want to spend more money at your store. People love deals, and discounts are the best way for you to give them deals and reward them. This can be a complicated process, and not all e-commerce platforms even offer it, so consider your platform options wisely. Another type of discounts is a store-wide discount. When it is the time of holidays, you might want to increase your sales by setting a discount on your whole store. This type of discount gets customers excited to get a bunch of good deals, they might even do some promotion by telling their family and friends your store is having discounts! However, oftentimes discounts and promotions are not shown clearly, so the promotion goes unnoticed, which can be a total bummer. This is why on our platform, not only do we offer you the possibility to create store wide discounts, but we also have a banner section that allows you to make any important information visible to the clients at first sight! Additionally, we offer you the possibility to create your own discounts codes, choose their percentages, and expiration date, all of this through and extremely intuitive and easy-to-use interface.
In conclusion, e-commerce is not an easy business if you do not have the right tools or the right platform. However, with WebstoreTM, it will be so much easier for you to focus on growing your business instead of wasting your time on the intricacies of e-commerce stores. You will also have access to our help and support throughout your journey, which will make your life easier and your ownership of your store more enjoyable!
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