Ray L. Perry Consulting

10 E-Commerce Mistakes to Avoid Before Christmas

Free photos of Online shopping

Ho ho ho! Holidays are coming, and you can find decorations and gingerbread everywhere.

You don’t have to wait long to start feeling happy during the holidays, do you? This time of year can be especially stressful for entrepreneurs who have decided to move their business online.

The sellers would like to see more sales on their online store to start the season. The shopping really helps the local economy A great hike during the festive season is a good thing because people shop like crazy. This shopping really helps the local economy.

E-commerce businesses have the potential to be very successful, especially during the holiday season when people are more likely to do their shopping online. This can generate a significant amount of traffic to the website and result in record-breaking sales. However, this is not always the case.

It is just as easy to make a mistake that will result in a loss of revenue as it is to drive sales when people are interested in buying. The challenge for e-commerce businesses is to meet the ever-increasing expectations of their clients. Even if businesses try hard to give customers a positive experience, they can still make a lot of small mistakes that could lead to a big, fatal problem for the business.

E-commerce mistakes to avoid

The most common mistakes that e-commerce businesses make are not being prepared for the holiday rush and not having their inventory in order. Read on to find out.

1. Ignoring the power of social media

Some e-commerce business owners neglect social media, even though it is obvious how important it is. They barely communicate with their audience, and don’t manage their community at all.

The union of e-commerce and social media is most advantageous during the pre-holiday season, as many features work to augment sales. If you do not use social commerce or plan your communication in advance, you can suffer from decreasing sales, a dwindling community, and low engagement rates.

Shoppable feeds are now a requirement for e-commerce brands that want to be successful. There are a few social media management tools available that you can use to plan your social media strategy ahead of time. Additionally, you should ensure you’re active on the platforms where your clients are as well.

2. Providing sub-par customer service

Your customer support team will be very busy during the holiday season and will need to work hard to provide a great customer experience.

Omnichannel support really matters. Many customer support teams do not deliver satisfactory results for both current and potential customers. If you don’t respond to your clients quickly or if you don’t have enough data or knowledge to help them, they will choose an offer from one of your competitors.

You need to be prepared for more questions and queries than you ever have been before—if you don’t react quickly, you might miss your opportunity. It may be a good idea to hire extra people during this period to make sure customer support is uninterrupted.

Chatbots can save your customer service team time by automating some processes. This way, your team can focus on more important tasks. If your customer support does not meet the needs of your clients, they will turn to your competitors and tell others about their bad experience with your company. This is not the best way to end the year.

3. Not Understanding the Prospect’s Purchasing Process i.e. Buyer Persona

Running a business without knowing your ideal audience is like running into a brick wall. No punch would land in the right spot. To be successful in this competitive industry, you need to identify your target audience and cater to their requirements.

If you want to create pitches that your target audience will connect with, you need to first figure out who your target audience is. If you are familiar with your target audience, you can create content that they would find interesting, engaging, and interactive. This is one of the biggest eCommerce mistakes to avoid. Make sure you know your target audience. If you don’t know your target audience, you’re just guessing, and hoping you’ll get lucky and hit the target.

To understand your audience, you can ask yourself these questions:

Answers to the following questions will give you a good idea of your target market. There are many other questions you can answer to get a clear idea of your ideal audience.

4. Limiting Promotions to Discounts Only

Discounts are the most reliable method of increasing your festive sales.

Depending on eCommerce too much can lead to mistakes. Some people believe that offering more discounts during the holiday season can actually lead to less money being made.

Offering too many discounts may make customers question the quality of your products

Some buyers believe that lower prices mean the product is not valued highly. So, don’t rely on giving discounts only. You can also prefer other promotional techniques like,

5. Delivering an awful mobile experience

Your clients are buying increasingly via mobile, whether you like it or not. The value of m-commerce retail sales is increasing rapidly and is expected to surpass desktop retail sales by the end of 2021 at the latest. Although many websites are designed to be responsive, not all of them meet the required standards. In some cases, only the main page is responsive. In some cases, product descriptions are located in a way that obscures photos, while in other cases, the reverse is true.

No matter what, this won’t make a good impression on your customers. The trend of researching online and purchasing offline is no longer as common, since more and more shoppers now decide to purchase items in an online store instead of going to a brick-and-mortar store. Also, the trend has changed a bit. In the past, people used mobile phones to find information about products and services and then finish their purchase on a desktop computer. If someone has a strong urge to buy something, they want to be able to complete the purchase quickly, even if they’re using their phone. If you make it difficult for customers to purchase your products, you will miss out on a lot of sales.

6. Complicated Checkout Process

A complex checkout process prevents users from paying you. If you don’t make your checkout process simpler, it can be one of the biggest mistakes you can make, especially during sales or any other time when there are a lot of customers.

Your convoluted checkout process may cause potential customers to not complete their orders. A study showed that improving the checkout process can lead to a 35.62% increase in conversions and revenues. Therefore, you should improve your checkout process to make it more efficient.

Here are a few ways to smoothen your checkout process:

If you want to improve your checkout process, you should implement these points.

7. Disobeying e-commerce trends

E-commerce businesses need to stay up to date with the latest trends if they want to stay competitive. There are some high-tech trends that may seem impractical, but there are other more practical ones that you can try right away.

Although creating certain assets for AR or VR implementation can take time, you can start by providing personalized customer support and positive experience. Although artificial intelligence and voice commerce may not be priorities for your company right now, you should be aware of their existence and begin looking for opportunities to incorporate them into your strategy. Trends reflect the future direction of the entire industry, and your company should be part of that future.

8. Overlooking the marketing activities of your competitors

You need to act and react quickly if you don’t want your competitors to overtake you during the pre-Christmas season. In addition, you need to do painstaking research. You will not be successful unless you keep track of what your competitors are doing on social media, TV campaigns, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and other channels.

If you don’t research and just do your own thing, you’ll quickly find out that your competitors came up with ideas much more quickly and have already started implementing them. If this is the case, your Christmas marketing efforts may not be successful, which could result in lower sales and make PPC advertising less effective. Although some companies may be able to use this mistake as an opportunity to improve their image, not every company has this ability. It is better to take precautions and be prepared than to be sorry later. Be sure to do your research ahead of time.

9. Focusing On One Marketing Channel Only

ECommerce businesses typically use email marketing as a key tool to promote sales during New Year’s and other holidays. The events of Black Friday and Cyber Monday will be availed through emails only. Email may not be the only platform for marketing, but it is still alive. But mere emailing will not reach a wider audience. That means you should also advertise on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and Pinterest.

Make sure to engage with those prospects who haven’t interacted with your emails in the past 60 days. Email can be synced with social channels. There are various methods of communication you can use to reach your audience through social media platforms. Chatbots are one of the most trendy mediums these days. They are easy to build and set up, don’t require too much effort, and market your brand pretty well.

group chats and video calls Aside from bots that act as messengers, you can also take advantage of features like group chats and video calls.

You may be surprised to find that your inactive subscribers start responding more to your ads.

10. Lacking a Solid Return, Refund, and Exchange Structure

30% of all the products bought online are returned. This means that 3 out of every 10 products you sell would be returned to you. You need to be prepared for an influx of returns if this many are expected. If you don’t have a solid return and exchange structure in place, it can be a huge mistake. This is because many users are loyal to a brand because of the brand’s amazing return policy.

Your return, refund, and exchange policy should not cause any hardship for customers who need to use it. Making it easy for your target audience will make them more likely to choose you over your competitors.

Make your e-commerce business one you would buy from

Design a store that will be appealing to customers during the holiday season, and that they will continue to frequent even after the holidays are over. Whether you run post-holiday campaigns or not, keep your store attractive and inviting. It is still possible to get potential customers during this busy time, even with the fierce competition. It is more difficult to turn leads into deals and make a client visit your store throughout the year than just when the weather is bad.

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