I want to point out that this article is a collaboration of José Uso, author of the blog: 'José Uso's Personal Blog' that I have completed with my opinion and reflected in an Infographic to give more clarity.
I have read that 90% of the online stores in our country close within a year of opening.
The figure is scandalous, but if we take into account that many of them are opened as if it were a hobby and thinking that there is no cost once the initial investment to start it is made, perhaps we can understand the large percentage.
For this reason we have created a list with eight mistakes that you should not make if you plan to set up an ecommerce:
1. Not having the target audience well identified will mean that your efforts are not giving you the best results. Knowing the tastes and preferences of potential consumers of your products will help you design a more effective media strategy to reach them. Tip: do a prior study in which you identify your target audience.
2. The promotion of the brand name through marketing has not been taken into account. Not only do you have to develop the idea and design the store, you have to be present in the market with all the power of the brand, transmitting a character, a way of doing things and relating to potential consumers. Through marketing our brand has to achieve notoriety, differentiation and even prestige. It is a process that needs time and constant adaptation.
3. The passion for our project does not let us see what is happening. We must allow ourselves to be advised by third parties who are not involved in the project and who provide a critical vision of our way of doing things. In an environment as changing as ecommerce, we never know everything and the external vision is especially relevant for improvement.
4. Not listening to the market or the competition. You have to be up to date. If we have a physical store and want to make the leap to online commerce, we must take into account that our product is easily replaceable. The product offering is very large and only by being attentive to the changes that occur in the tastes and ways of interaction of our customers will we be able to continue in the market. The same thing happens to our competition and we can see what and how they do it.
5. Go for the 'cheapest'. You have to offer a product, but above all added value. We will always find better prices than ours and the consumer, with the purchase decision made, will choose the one that offers the most. The added value that we provide with our product will be what decides the purchase towards one store or another. If we sell a brand name product and its price is comparatively low, it can cause distrust.
6. Forget SEO. Positioning work well done is vital for the survival of ecommerce.
7. Not having the fixed cost structure well defined. I would recommend having a fixed cost structure that is as light as possible and transferring as much as possible to the variable costs so that if things do not go as planned, you can get away with it as successfully as possible.
8. Do not offer the opportunity to the customer to make the purchase without having to register. It seems silly, but there are users who have no intention of continuing buying products from your store, only on this occasion and for a special reason. If they have to leave all their data, they will easily go buy the product from another store. Therefore: allow your customers to buy without having to register. In the event that in the future a customer wants to make a purchase again, you will have to facilitate the registration process now by recovering the few data that he has already entered and requesting only the missing data to complete the registration.
