6 mistakes to avoid with your e-commerce.
Today I want to introduce you to the most common mistakes that could negatively affect your e-commerce performance.
Most entrepreneurs think of e-commerce as a safe and easy harbour to increase sales of their products. Nothing could be more wrong.
Unfortunately, e-commerce is regarded as an IT project and nothing more. This consideration could probably be taken as true in the years when online shops could be counted on the fingers of one hand and where competition was almost non-existent.
E-commerce is certainly an extraordinary tool that should not be underestimated if started with the right precautions and designed with a proper marketing strategy.
Now let us look together at the 6 reasons that often cause an online shop to perform poorly:
#1 You have no idea who your Target is
Have you considered the target group of your potential customers?
Before starting with the design of an e-commerce site, it is important to undertake a thorough study of the target group of people who might be interested in your products. It is precisely on the basis of this data that an entire online project must be designed, whether it is a website, an application or an e-commerce.
On the basis of your target group, you can design an ad-hoc marketing strategy to cater for your ideal customer, what in Inbound Marketing terminology we call the Buyer Persona. Thanks to your target group, you are able to understand not only the design of your website, but above all the search terms they will use to find what they need and which channels they will visit most.
#2 You have not indexed your e-commerce
E-commerce indexing is a costly yet essential matter.
By identifying your target audience, you are able to spice up your e-commerce pages with the right keywords and descriptions.
To index your website correctly, always remember to sympathise as much as possible with search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and others. Search engines penalise duplicate content and haphazardly placed keywords so take the time to write a short and comprehensive meta description for each page of your website, including product pages. Don’t abuse keywords, insert those that are really relevant to the content of your pages. There are various tools on the Internet that are very useful in searching for the most used keywords according to competitors, such as the Google Adwords Tool.
#3 You do not analyse the behaviour of your users
Never forget that the best method to study a marketing strategy lies in observing the behaviour of your consumers.
Rely on available web analytics tools such as Google Analytics and observe how your consumers behave on your website, how much time they spend on your pages, on which pages they spend most of their time, etc. Based on this, you will be able to understand the shortcomings and potential of your website and have a good idea of the mistakes to be made. Based on this, you will be able to understand the shortcomings and potential of your site and have a good idea of the errors that need to be fixed.
#4 Do not create training content
What do I mean by educational content? We have to think of the web as an ocean full of information that today’s user uses as if it were a heavy encyclopaedic tome that he flips through to find answers to his questions.
The audience wants to go beyond your brand, wants to understand why they should choose your product over another.
Creating content is important whether in the form of a blog, where you can explain to users the potential of your products, how they can use them, etc. etc.
For example, if your site sells kitchen products, show them how to use them by writing recipes that include the use of your products, this way you will not only show your customers good reasons to buy your products, but you will give them a reason to return to your site every time they look for a recipe to cook using your non-stick frying pan.
Writing writing writing
The user who buys online is in a hurry, so it is important to provide the messages he wants to know without forcing him to browse the entire site.
Have you decided to ship your products free of charge over 50€? Tell him, write it in the top bar of your site, perhaps in a place he will see on all the pages of your site.
The concept is, if you are not a well-known brand, you have to win the trust of your customers.
Pamper your customers, make their lives easier, provide them with interesting content that will give them good reasons to come back to you.
#5 Your shop has no Customer Care
Create a section of your website dedicated to serving your customers.
Your online shop is a sales channel that must satisfy all your customer’s needs. It must be full of useful information, whether text descriptions or video tutorials. The age of digital communication offers us numerous means to spread our messages. Choose, always with reference to your target audience, the best tools to create on your website, on Twitter or on the channel you consider most appropriate a customer area where you will give them the opportunity to have answers to problems or curiosities about your products. I have dedicated an article to this very topic.
An example of customer service could be a playlist of video tutorials on YouTube, a Twitter page where you can answer your customers‘ queries in person, or even a live chat to clarify consumers’ last doubts before making a purchase.
Audiences often distrust abandoned websites that are poor in content, they feel like they are in a shop without a salesperson.
#6 Invest in Interruptive Marketing
Last but not least, I dedicate my last point to all those companies that have taken the next step, namely advertising their interactive shop.
Unfortunately, there are traditional marketing methods that do not give the desired effects, what I call interruptive marketing, i.e. outbound marketing.
In a nutshell, interruptive marketing is the TV commercial, the promotional phone call, the newsletter we are not interested in, the banner ad, the pop-up, i.e. all those advertising channels that interrupt the user at unwanted moments.
On the web, 10 per cent of clicks are for interruptive advertising, the remaining 90 per cent are for inbound channels, i.e. newsletters we are subscribed to, search results, content we want to read, videos we want to watch.
All this does not mean that it is wrong to do marketing, in which case I might as well delete the whole article, but that it is important to build a marketing strategy that meets the needs of users without the necessary need to interrupt them with a pop-up while they are reading an interesting article.
Final considerations
We reasoned about the 6 fundamental mistakes caused by an outdated marketing strategy.
I wanted to make some brief remarks on what are solid starting points for designing a well-functioning and profitable online shop.
I also introduced a few key points that are part of Inbound Marketing, i.e. the marketing strategy that focuses on gaining traffic and customer trust through content that they themselves want to consult.
Bordegoni has prepared for you the first Inbound Marketing Video Lesson in Italian, which will help you discover how to increase your site’s conversions thanks to Inbound Marketing. Watch the Preview now:
Below you can download the full Video of the first lesson for free. Enjoy!
