5 Ecommerce Mistakes You Should Avoid

We’ve all been there: you have a great business idea that will allow you to sell online and work from home! You do a ton of research on your own about Shopify, Squarespace, and WordPress to figure out which CMS your website should be on and you’ve begun your budgeting process. Your business will depend on ecommerce marketing, so you take every step to ensure you have all the social media accounts so you’re prepared for launch.

The first hiccup in starting your ecommerce business might be in the domain name– there aren’t many .com’s out there for any common words (or string of words), so you figure to either add a dash to your domain name or go for a .co or .net instead. Besides that, you were able to make a Facebook account without a problem and you’re feeling confident about the whole operation.

However, ecommerce marketing mistakes can happen from the get-go. You may not realize it from the start, but every choice you make when launching an ecommerce business impacts its future.

Here are 7 ecommerce mistakes you should avoid from the start:

 1. Putting SEO off until your store sells

This is a common mistake I see in our clients– many ecommerce marketing strategies for business owners put off on SEO until they start seeing sales. They work hard on getting the website up and running with necessary content, but they don’t work on blogging or other content areas on their website that can help their website get indexed by Google. Submit your sitemap from day one, folks, and starting writing blogs as soon as you conceive the idea of your business.

2. Not collecting emails from the start

Lead generation cannot be underestimated for ecommerce businesses– the value of a strong email list can be really high if you start from the beginning. Imagine having thousands of email addresses that will receive updates from you everyday? Email marketing for ecommerce is perhaps one of the most valuable channels to drive traffic to your website, and it’s FREE! You don’t pay for each individual email, they’re always there unless they unsubscribe. Invest in email marketing early, you won’t regret it.

3. Posting unengaging content on social media

An ecommerce business is often judged from their social media page, especially if they are predominantly marketing through social media. From the get-go, you want to be able to provide valuable content to your followers to make sure engagement is high. It’s much easier to like a post that already has likes than a post that has none, or comment on a post that already has comments on it than a post without any. Get great photography and videography going for your business to reap the benefits of social media.

4. Your website is too slow

This is something you definitely want to take care of at the beginning, but it’s often ignored until sales start rolling in. A slow website decreases conversions buy a LOT. You want your website to be under 5 seconds in loading time to make sure you aren’t losing valuable traffic due to website speed. Isn’t that a terrible thought? You lose a potential customer not because of your product, but because they couldn’t see your website either way? A good web design and theme can make sure you don’t lose leads.

5. Your web design is lacking features

First off, we recommend Shopify for any start-up ecommerce business due to the support, plugins, and available themes out there. But if you designed the website yourself or used a bad web design agency, your web design could be lacking a lot of features that can help boost your conversion rate and lead generation. Functionality is most important on a website with visuals coming at a close second, so making sure you web design is functional from the home page all the way to the checkout experience is pivotal. Choose a web design agency if you’re unfamiliar with Shopify web design to ensure your website is functional and visually pleasing to your consumer’s eyes.

Ecommerce marketing isn’t the easiest thing for a business owner, but we’d like to take the stress away for you. We understand that there’s a lot to it that is time consuming, which business owners don’t really have a lot of time for ecommerce marketing. Give us a call at 310.402.1613 for any inquiries related to social media marketing, Google AdWords digital advertising, or marketing-related initiatives. We look forward to helping your website grow and achieve success through ecommerce!