Ecommerce companies are coping with broader issues in addition to the growing demands within their industry. And as technology continues to offer online business owners options, it also introduces a lot of roadblocks and hazards.
Here are 8 e-commerce difficulties tagged with how you might start to overcome them.
1 Cyber Security and E-commerce Fraud
As the internet keeps progressing and gives ecommerce enterprises new options for earning money, fraudsters are also evolving to keep up with the changes. Fraud is no doubt a problem that internet sellers must be cautious of.
E-commerce fraud can take many different forms, from someone using a stolen credit card to buy products to making up stories about online purchases not arriving and requesting a refund.
So make sure your website’s payment mechanism complies with the most recent standards to protect you from e-commerce fraud. A solid online verification system is one of the best barriers against online scammers. You can be confident it’s actually your consumers by asking them to confirm their identity using methods that are only known to them, such as two-factor authentication, biometrics, a one-time password, and more.
2 Targeting the Right Customers
For your business to succeed, you must know who you are selling to in order to sell effectively. This is one of the fundamental principles of business, and every would-be operator of an online store outlines it in the executive summary of their business plan.
Although understanding your target audience has become more challenging, you can fight it.
You can create a set of buyer personas to address this e-commerce issue. These profiles are imaginary; they are prototypes of your ideal customer, however they are preferably based on genuine facts. Personas should incorporate information about the customer’s goals, pain areas, social media presence, and major information sources. Put the distinctive personas for your company together and then use them. Make sure to keep this collection of personas in mind while creating any material, marketing emails, or search engine advertisements.
3 Converting Visitors Into Paying Customers
You might have heard about prioritising traffic as a crucial gauge of site success. But as an owner of e-commerce stores you sure know that having visitors to your site alone won’t cover your expenses. It’s more of buying something rather than just visiting.
So try to figure out why your clients aren’t converting as a first step. Could it be related to your website? Your efforts to convert a browser into a customer may be doomed by a single broken button or an inconsistent user experience. Make sure that things like your payment system are operational and that all the information on your store is accurate and free of errors.
Infact, difficulties in converting clients could have more general implications for how your e-commerce company is positioned in the market. You probably need to improve on how you tailor methods to the right audience or work on creating a trustworthy brand that is recognizable and memorable.
Once you figure out why your clients aren’t converting, they will very shortly.
4 Meeting Customers’ High Expectations
Meeting customers’ high expectations is no doubt a challenge for average e-commerce. However you can try to overcome this challenge. One of the things you can do is personalise the customer experience wherever it is practical. One of the keys to e-commerce success is personalization, especially when it comes to offering clients discounts and deals via email marketing.
5 Offering High Quality Customer Service and Support
It’s a competitive business world. There are so many companies vying for the same market share. But it’s not impossible to set your product apart from that of your main competition in the ecommerce industry. One way to do this is Customer Service. Step up your customer service; create a personalised, attentive approach to customer service. This entails addressing the concerns and annoyances of customers requesting a return or exchange but also reacting to complaints with warmth, compassion, and understanding.
Additionally, excellent customer service would only be complete when accompanied with convenience. The more contact options you can provide your customers the more likely they are to use the one that works best for them. In the end, the more at ease customers feel working with your company. You can employ contact options like social media, live chat, phone, email, or a contact form on your website.
6 Finding the Right Return and Refund Policies
This is one of the main problems for e-commerce. So how can you strike a balance between having a straightforward, forgiving returns policy; one that appeals to customers and at the same time that isn’t so forgiving that “friendly” scammers can misuse it?
Honesty is the best course of action to achieve this balance. Therefore, be open and honest about your return policy, especially its restrictions, but avoid using condescending language.
7 Avoiding Cart Abandonment
One of the biggest difficulties for ecommerce is this persistent threat. One way to address this is to audit your checkout process first. Employ a few testers to “order” items from your website (they should be strangers to your company). After that, request their feedback on the procedure. Through feedback you’ll learn about some things that could be done better.
It could be simplifying the process by lowering the amount of data users must enter, reducing the size of your forms, or lowering the number of steps required to check out. Here too, live chat technologies or automated chatbots might be helpful by surfacing to free the user at significant friction spots.
And even if you still lose that customer, why not use email marketing strategically to entice them back in with offers and discounts on the product they were considering buying?
8 Choosing the Right Tech Partners
Failure can be a result of the partners you chose to work with. And the results of selecting poor partners can be disastrous. So avoid this by choosing the right partner. Regardless of the technology you use, make sure you’re doing your research.
It’s crucial to choose technology that is suited to your particular sector, if possible. These partners are typically a safe pick because they are well familiar with your industry and geographic region and are acutely aware of your pain issues.
Sources
Jobs: Olena
Annie: Imaginaire Digital
Akshay: OnlineCourseing
