5 Common Mistakes eCommerce Website Owners Make

By jack123 | SEO | 0 Comments

Common eCommerce Mistakes

eCommerce is a constantly expanding space where new tactics and competition are emerging constantly. If you want a chance to compete and stay relevant nowadays you need to make everything in your power to implement the best practices possible. However, there’s always room for error and that’s why we’re including in this article the 5 most common mistakes eCommerce website owners make.

Building an online business entails trial and error from the get-go. The tips that we’re mentioning in this article can help you avoid some common mistakes and have a headstart. That being said, let’s dive deep into these mistakes and start analyzing them.

Confusing Checkout Process

The 21st century is largely defined by speed and convenience. Using a confusing checkout process is one of the biggest common mistakes in eCommerce, which can result in countless lost sales. Often Content Management Systems (Shopify, WordPress, etc) can have a checkout process that’s too long and complicated. This can frustrate customers, increasing the chance that they will drop the purchase.

You should improve your checkout experience by eliminating any steps that aren’t mandatory. If you can get rid of an extra step or field while still being able to process the order then do it. Instead of requiring an account to order, offer the customer the possibility to use a guest account. Minimize the number of clicks that your customers need to perform.

One of the most efficient and highest-converting systems is the “One Step Checkout” solution. This keeps all of the processes related to the checkout on a single page while offering the user the option to auto-complete certain fields. This is the fastest and most straightforward system that every eCommerce entrepreneur should use.

Duplicating Product Descriptions

When building an eCommerce business, you need to maximize all traffic channels, especially the free ones, to withstand the vast competition. SEO is going to play an intrinsic role in the organic traffic your website generates. You’ll need to update your pages and products with detailed descriptions and quality content.

However, Google is not fond of using duplicate content, which many website owners end up doing for their product descriptions. If you’re just copying the manufacturer’s content for your product pages you’ll miss out on a lot of organic traffic.

Coming up with a unique product description for each product that you’re selling is exactly what you should be doing if you want to maximize your site. You can even go as far as taking the product pictures yourself, having an all-around unique display. You can even take it a step further by linking internally towards your other relevant pages, ensuring that you have a solid linking system.

Google is always eager to reward quality content by ranking it high. As a general rule try to stay away from duplicate product descriptions since they are already indexed.

Not Preventing Spam and DDoS Attacks

The digital world is full of spam. Although service providers got better at filtering and preventing it, spamming is still a tactic used in 2020 to attack the competition. Experiencing a DDoS attack and getting your website spammed by competitors can throw you off track and put you out of business for a few days, or even weeks. Such attacks can have long-lasting effects on the experience of your users, thus making prevention an increasingly important task for website owners.

These kinds of spam attacks are popular on eCommerce websites, especially those that drive sales and generate traffic. It’s not hard to perform one, further incentivizing competitors to engage in this kind of black hat tactics to increase their chances for ranking. Moreover, many sites allow for the creation of accounts that can act as a back door that can generate free backlinks.

Fortunately enough, most Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress or Shopify have features built into their platform that can help you manage spam. You can also install something like “Recaptcha by Google” to prevent people from creating fake accounts that can harm your site.

When it comes to DDoS attacks, a service like Cloudflare is one of the best options out there. It’s a highly-effective tool when it comes to preventing DDoS attacks and it can save your business. Although this kind of services are paid usually, the cost of not getting one is far higher than the cost of getting one.

Limiting Filter System

Customers are only interested in getting a product if the purchasing process is convenient and fast enough for them. If you have lots of products but you’re missing a great filter system then the whole process of narrowing down results becomes very frustrating. The more products you include in your site, the bigger the need for a filter system becomes.

A good filter system makes the life of users far easier, converting more leads into sales in the process. As a minimum, you need to give customers the option to filter results based on price ranges, size, color, and other niche-specific metrics.

Lacking a blog page

Although most eCommerce website owners do have a blog page, some still consider that they don’t need one. They see online stores and blogs as two different things. Even if this is partly true, incorporating a blog as part of your store can greatly increase your free traffic.

Blog pages are a guaranteed way of establishing trust and authority in your niche. It helps you create a relationship with your customers and establish you as an expert. Customers have more things to do on your site now, something that takes the pressure off and gives them a reason to come back and maybe make a purchase in the future. All this creates trust, and trust always generates sales.

Moreover, blogging is great for generating free traffic and improving your SEO. You can target problem-solving keywords through articles and attract more potential customers this way. You can extend your reach past brand keywords by simply posting some articles. If those articles are of high-quality, you might even generate some links, further impacting the ranking of your blog posts and even products.

Conclusion

eCommerce is a highly competitive space so you need to avoid common mistakes mentioned above to succeed. If you want to gain some sales and ensure your presence, you need to implement the best tactics possible. As long as you have a solid foundation that ensures your clients’ comfort and the safety of their data, you can be sure that your store is future-proof.