10 Mistakes to Avoid when Creating an eCommerce Strategy

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Starting an ecommerce shop sounds like a great idea. You can work from anywhere, connect with people worldwide, and sell products you love.

However, it's not all fun and games. The sobering reality is that ecommerce retailers fail every day — can you guess why? The primary reasons are often a lack of education and insufficient planning. These factors cause many online ventures to go up in smoke before they even take off.

If you're investing capital and time into running a business, it's crucial to be aware of the common mistakes made by online store owners. By understanding these pitfalls, you can ensure you don't make the same errors and avoid the risk of closing up shop. Just as you can learn from success stories, there are valuable lessons in failures, too!

Here are the top 10 mistakes made while creating an ecommerce strategy for a business and how to avoid them.

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Mistake 1: Lack of Defined SMART Goals

Every business needs a clear set of parameters to hold it accountable for achieving its goals and implementing an ecommerce growth strategy.

SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. These goals ensure that your website and initiatives are effectively working toward achieving the sales, marketing, operational, and business objectives essential for company success.

Additionally, SMART goals are adaptable, allowing for adjustments as needed, and they help measure both short-term and long-term success. Without them, your business lacks a foundation to gauge success and will struggle to grow and scale.

To effectively track your online store's progress, use analytics tools to evaluate its performance across various goals. Some ecommerce platforms, like Rekisa, come with built-in sales analytics. This feature provides a detailed overview of your conversions, visitors, orders, accounting, and marketing, making it easier to track and understand your progress.

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Mistake 2: Inefficient Ecommerce Platforms

Ecommerce platforms are essential for businesses to sell goods online to customers worldwide. They not only facilitate product sales but also provide customer support, analytics, inventory management, accounting, and more.

Without a powerful ecommerce platform, companies miss out on robust features and business tools crucial for scaling and growth. Inefficient platforms might offer a few appealing features initially but fail to support the evolving needs of a growing business.

Rekisa provides everything you need to thrive in the increasingly competitive world of ecommerce. With features such as multi-channel selling, customizable design, inventory management, and more, Rekisa offers a comprehensive solution for businesses of all sizes.

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Mistake 3: Neglecting SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for any business aiming to build exposure, reach new markets, and enhance its online visibility and presence. A key aspect of SEO is identifying and using your brand’s keywords throughout your website to ensure your business appears in search results when consumers use relevant search terms.

By implementing effective SEO techniques, ecommerce retailers can increase organic website traffic, boost sales, and establish a strong brand reputation. However, SEO is not a simple task. Whether you're trying to rank for high-volume keywords or establish your authority as a leader, SEO requires continuous effort and cannot be treated as a one-time project.

Many companies feel overwhelmed by SEO because they don't know where to start, and the list of tasks seems endless. From creating high-quality content and performing keyword research to building backlinks and measuring efforts, SEO can easily be neglected if not managed properly.

Neglecting SEO means failing to compete in the most critical space for your brand — online. An ecommerce SEO strategy is essential for business growth, particularly in ensuring that potential customers can find you online.

If you use Rekisa for your online store, it offers numerous tools to enhance your SEO, such as adding custom meta tags and alt texts, creating redirects, registering a custom domain, and more.

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Mistake 4: Underestimating Content Marketing

An effective ecommerce marketing strategy must include content marketing. This approach helps you build relationships with your audience and establish your brand as a trusted competitor.

An ecommerce content strategy should aim to answer potential customers' questions to build trust and encourage them to make a purchase. Through blog posts, newsletters, video guides, images, FAQs, and more, brands can provide all the education customers need to feel confident in their purchases.

Without these resources and information, you leave potential customers wondering why they should invest in your business, potentially driving them to a competitor who provides the necessary information.

Your ecommerce promotion strategy should also incorporate social media. Platforms like Instagram and Facebook are excellent for showcasing your products, engaging with your audience, and promoting sales or discounts. Additionally, influencer partnerships can increase brand awareness and help youreach a wider audience.

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Explore the following resource for more tips and information on promoting your business on social media:

‍How to Grow Your Ecommerce Business with Influencer Marketing

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Mistake 5: Underdeveloped Email Marketing Strategy

If you think email is dead, think again. Nearly 80 percent of retailers consider email marketing their most effective channel for customer engagement and retention.

An effective ecommerce email marketing strategy can help you cross-sell, upsell, and boost overall sales. It also enables you to on-board new customers, re-engage with previous ones, and nurture leads. Check out How Mastering Cross-Selling, Up-Selling, and Down-Selling Strategies to Increase Revenue

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With an underdeveloped email marketing strategy, your online store misses out on engaging with leads, current customers, and previous customers. Additionally, you fail to provide a seamless customer experience for active customers. Don’t neglect the importance of nurturing an email marketing strategy for leads and customers — you’ll regret it!

Rekisa offers a wealth of tools for email marketing, including automated emails, email list building, newsletters, and integrations with popular email marketing platforms like Apollo.

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Mistake 6: Ineffective Ecommerce Ads Strategy

PPC (pay-per-click) marketing provides ecommerce retailers with a reliable way to reach new customers through their websites and social media platforms. Regardless of the business model or industry, more companies are using PPC ads and implementing ecommerce retargeting strategies to drive sales and enhance brand exposure online.

While running ad campaigns does incur costs, the return on investment (ROI) can be substantial once optimized. Without an effective ecommerce PPC strategy, your brand will struggle to attract new customers online.

If you sell online with Rekisa, you can enhance your ad campaigns by using Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, and Pinterest pixels for retargeting, allowing you to show ads to people who have already visited your website. Additionally, you can automate and optimize your Facebook and Google ads for the best results using the Kliken app.

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Mistake 7: Neglecting Omnichannel Presence

Without an omnichannel ecommerce strategy, the shopping experience across mobile, in-store, and online will never feel seamless. A well-designed omnichannel experience ensures customers have a consistent experience, no matter where they shop or interact with your brand.

Research shows that customers are more loyal to brands that provide a consistent experience across all channels. Failing to create this consistency can result in a less reputable brand, lower customer retention, and decreased brand loyalty.

A marketplace strategy is another crucial component of a successful business. By diversifying your sales channels, you can reach a wider audience and reduce your dependency on a single platform. This approach also improves customer acquisition and retention, as different customers may prefer shopping on different platforms.

With Rekisa, you don’t have to worry about managing multiple platforms. Our seamless integration with popular marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Google Shopping, and more allows you to sell your products on these channels effortlessly.

Additionally, Rekisa unified dashboard makes it easy to manage inventory, orders, and customer information across all channels. This feature saves time and streamlines the process for both you and your customers.

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Mistake 8: Overcomplicating the Shopping Experience

Consumers today seek an easy shopping experience and are more likely to shop with brands that offer simplicity. With retail giants like Amazon setting the standard for seamless shopping, small shops and ecommerce retailers must emulate this experience as closely as possible.

Keep things simple by offeringa mobile-optimized site with easy search functionality and seamless navigation. Ensure product listings feature quality photography and well-written descriptions that provide all necessary details about your products. Additionally, streamline the checkout process so customers can quickly enter their information and complete their purchases without hassle.

Overcomplicating the shopping experience often leads to abandoned shopping carts and a failing ecommerce sales strategy.

Fortunately, with Rekisa, creating a user-friendly online store is simple and hassle-free. With customizable templates and design blocks, you can build a professional-looking website that is easy for customers to navigate and use.

Rekisa also offers multiple payment options, such as, PayPal, Stripe, Peach Payments, Payfast and Square, catering to the preferences of different customers. This variety ensures a smooth checkout process without any technical difficulties or limitations.

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Mistake 9: Shipping & Fulfillment Fumbles

Losing customers due to an inefficient ecommerce shipping strategy or fulfilment mistakes is entirely avoidable, yet it happens frequently.

Whether your ecommerce fulfilment strategy has gaps or is experiencing growing pains, establishing a bulletproof shipping process is mission-critical for any online retailer. If you can’t ship on time or if your products arrive damaged, you will undoubtedly lose customers.

If your shipping volume has outgrown your staff's capacity, it might be time to partner with an outsourced order fulfilment provider. This partnership can help cut costs, improve productivity, expedite delivery times, and allow your staff to focus on other tasks.

To make shipping more transparent for customers, display real-time shipping rates and estimated delivery times in your store. These features are available for Rekisa sellers, ensuring a smooth and reliable shipping process for your customers.

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Mistake 10: Overlooking Ecommerce Customer Retention Strategies

No matter how elaborate your customer acquisition strategy is, it won’t mean much if you can’t retain those customers. Ecommerce customer retention strategies should be a top priority for any online retailer.

Many businesses make the mistake of focusing solely on acquiring new customers while neglecting to invest in keeping their existing ones happy. This is known as the “leaky bucket syndrome” — constantly bringing in new customers but losing them just as quickly.

To combat this, implement customer loyalty programs that reward repeat purchases and foster a sense of appreciation for your customers. Additionally, providing exceptional customer service is essential. This includes prompt responses to inquiries or issues, offering refunds or exchanges when necessary, and going above and beyond to ensure customer satisfaction.

Rekisa offers numerous tools for retaining customers, such as loyalty programs, retargeting ads, automated emails to re-engage inactive customers, customer management tools, subscriptions, and more.

Set Your Ecommerce Shop Up for Success with Rekisa

In today’s retail landscape, having a powerful ecommerce platform to set up your online store and shopping cart has never been more critical.

To achieve your goals, provide a seamless customer experience, and gain access to all the features and benefits you need to sell anywhere, get started with Rekisa today.

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Sourced originally from Ecwid By Lightspeed

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