The journey of business is full of setbacks. So, it’s assured that you will not be making it right all the time. You are sure to commit mistakes in making the correct business strategies, choice of products to be added in inventory, or miss some of the most validated business points.

Don’t be afraid of it, as this is something you will surely make. The critical point to consider is, you learn from all those mistakes and never repeat them again in the future. When you take your first step by building your eCommerce store with Builderlfly, we encourage you to connect with the Builderfly community- a community full of entrepreneurs, thinkers, and business enthusiasts like you!

When you connect, communicate, and collaborate as a business, you not only share your ideas but learn from the mistakes of like-minds and try to avoid them in your industry. This way, you grow as an individual and as a person with a lot many experiences before walking through that journey on your own. It boosts your confidence and prepares you mentally to deal with many things and changing situations.

We consider mistakes as learning opportunities. With our experience and connect with several e-commerce businesses, we are sharing the list of most frequent eCommerce mistakes that you must avoid.

• Platform to build your website:

The most common mistakes that eCommerce businesses commit in the initial days of business is the choice of the eCommerce platform to build a site. The primary reason for such a mistake is the budget restrictions that you have. Earlier, with the limited choices, businesses don’t have much to think of, rather than opting for custom eCommerce development. But, now there are plenty of web designing as well as eCommerce store building options to count on.

However, now, it’s a bit tricky to decide the best web-building option as there are endless options. To make it an easier task, we recommend you to check for the end goal of your business and ask these questions to yourself. If you are looking forward to creating a B2C store or B2B store? Do you want to build your eCommerce store only, or you like to opt for certain solutions that can help you streamline your business? If you’re going to opt for server-based hosting or want to leverage open-source software? How much is traffic that you are expecting in your store for the next few months?

Once you find the answer to these questions, count on the features that you want in your bucket. This further makes it simpler for you to choose the best pricing plan of the eCommerce platform as per the size and requirements of your business. When you are taking the baby steps and starting your journey as a startup, there is already a lot to manage. That’s why we advise you to choose DIY eCommerce platforms like Builderfly to get your store ready within minutes without spending much of your time store design as well as finding and learning tools that can help you in your business. Once you are done creating the foundation of your business, you can explore other opportunities to grow your business to the next level.

• Educate your customers

When you start your journey as a startup, there are hardly any people knowing you. This implies that your first and foremost responsibility is to generate brand awareness. For the time being, you will surely be using different marketing tactics, creating ad campaigns to motivate your prospective customers to visit your website.

But, the conversion then depends on how you introduce your brand to your prospects once they visit on your site. The first 30 seconds that a customer comes to your site and stick to it to explore further, entirely depends on your ‘About Us’ page of the brand. Do you remember the value of those first 30 seconds of you introducing yourself in the interview? Well, that’s the same role your ‘About Us’ page is playing for your visitors. It can be a deciding factor for your customers to trust you and explore you further, or simply close the tab to leave you.

By telling your brand story, you add the first stepping stone to build the customer’s trust. Don’t forget to add the brand logo to your site to add more to the trust bank. The next thing is, be genuine, don’t write with the aim of overmarketing.

• UI is vital, take it easy

We believe that by now Unique Selling Proposition “USP” made its path to your dictionary. Having something unique always helps you stand ahead of others, and we know it’s hard to find something unique when everyone in the industry is seeking for the same.

For the sake of making things look unique, don’t play with the UI of your store. People adore unique, but they won’t find themselves connecting with it so quickly. You may get a few like-minded people in the journey, but you are not creating your store exclusively for them. So, it’s best if you use the generically acceptable designing ideas for your customers as well. Go unique, but don’t go exclusive.

Connect with qualified researchers who are aware of branding and its standards to maintain your online reputation and make your UI look adorable. If you are building your store on your own, we recommend you to go through the guide of research in branding standards, so you won’t miss a loophole anywhere.

In the present scenario, when 51% of youngsters prefer to shop online using their smartphones, the responsiveness to the website is the vital point to be taken into consideration. Don’t forget to look for the responsive website themes when you are getting your store developed. If you are designing your store with Builderfly, rest assured that you will find SEO-friendly responsive themes to get your store working without any additional worries.

Unlike static websites, an eCommerce website has a lot of pages. When you are just starting, it may be some 50-60 pages, but at a later stage, the more will be the count of products in your inventory, higher will be the count of product listing pages. So, even when you categorize your products under different sections and sub-sections, it will be tricky for your customers to find precisely the product they are looking for. Leveraging the feature of mega-menu, you can make the navigation section of your store easier for your customers. To make it further easy for customers, don’t forget to enable direct search options at your store.

• Understand your product detail pages:

We know that you are in a hurry to launch your store and want to make everything quick. But, that doesn’t mean that you leave the details aside.

It is one of the classic mistakes that most businesses commit. When the basic information of products in the catalog is meant to be updated, the other attributes are given to improve the chances of product understanding. Believe it or not, if you aim to be preferred over the brand names, provide extra attention to your product detail pages.

If you are a registered seller of Amazon, you are undoubtedly aware of the option of creating A+ content pages for your products. In the beta version, the option is available only to the registered brands. Sooner you understand the value of product detail pages better. You will be able to draw in customers to your products. While creating the product detail pages consider:

• • • • • Adding all the product details that are important to be known to your customers.
        • Make keyword-rich sales copy
        • Optimize your product images and add a zoom option to enable a detailed view.
        • Update SEO details for each of your product description pages
        • Don’t leave valuable attributes
        • Preferably add benefits over the features of the product. Keep them side by side.

• Ineffective Call-to-actions

What’s your ultimate goal of a business?

To get sales! Yes, we know that. But, to attain that goal, it is essential that your prospective customers interact with your brand rather than just scrolling through your site. That’s why, when you are designing an eCommerce site, you must keep an eye on all those sections from where you can improve the chances of conversion. Call-to-action buttons or CTAs, when used effectively, can help you attain your end goal sooner. You can add CTA buttons to your banners, about us as well as contact us pages.

Additionally, you can take the help of pop-ups to boost your conversion ratio. But, keep in mind that you don’t overdo it. Else, it can also be the reason of your visitors leave your website without completing any final transaction. If you are using pop-ups, reduce their display time or resize them in a manner that they won’t overlap the entire page.

Well, these were just the important ones, but there can be several loopholes like lack of knowledge of your target audience when you are designing your campaign. Not keeping the A/B testing options while creating ads and graphics. Your mistake can be of leaving the contact details page unattended, or it can be as silly as the selection of ‘divide budget equally in all days’ while promoting the posts. Yeah, we know that’s a silly mistake! But, it happens in reality.

Remember that starting your business adds a lot of responsibilities. Unlike your job, here you are not reporting to anyone, but you are liable to report to yourself. This doubles your worries as well as chances of making your mistakes because, here, you can’t blame anyone for anything. You are liable for your mistakes. Don’t feel it like a burden on your shoulders, there can be grey days, and there will be the bright ones, just learn and improve yourself to lead to the path of success!