Top 10 eStore Mistakes
10. Not having a plan or doing the due diligence necessary to determine if the new eStore can be competitive against the established sites already doing the same. Without niche — you’re nothing special. Selling the same stuff 100,000 sites are already selling, without offering anything unique or of greater value (service, freebies, member points, niche focus) is futile.
9. The store’s design is home brewed which lends to a lack of credibility. This type of “look” is many times due to the store owner cutting corners or modifying settings to their preference. Many don’t realize that white space is good, size 10-12 font size is adequate and that their preferred color scheme may cheapen their presentation.
8. One line generic product descriptions (and not thinking SEO) that do not include the basic information customers desire to know to make a purchase. Size, colors, and other specifics — and the more details the better — are critical to getting onliners to click the “Add to Cart.” button. Add to that typos and misspellings in content reflects a lack of attention to detail.
7. Not having any location contact information on your site. Why would people order from someone that they cannot contact or determine even where they are located? Doing so offers huge confidence perception value. Full physical or mailing address, phone, fax and customer service email should be clearly displayed or easily found with a click or two.
6. No privacy page stating what you will do with customer information. Being clear and reassuring that you will protect and not disseminate store customer’s information goes a long way toward building confidence to do business with you.
5. Poor quality graphics give the impression that quality is not of concern to the site owner. From logos to product graphics, low quality does not lend to offering a credible presentation. Many don’t know how to use their digital cameras or don’t want to pay a professional. You can’t have it both ways. The product photos are the primary and in many cases the primary selling tool. Blurry or pixelated product photos do not encourage sales or confidence in the eStore as being one that is concerned about quality.
4. Not having an eStore application that sends email order confirmations and shipping confirmations to customers. These two emails are essential to building confidence and ongoing relationships with your customers. Many customers have systems that do this for them — all they have to do is enter the shipping information and out the email goes. Because they choose to not make the extra effort to use this feature — customer confidence and future opportunity is minimized.
3. Not having the most commonly asked for or required information that a customer would seek in lieu of filling out a contact form that asks for everything but their shoe size just to get basic information. Operational and product FAQs should be provided with every question a customer has or may ask in the future.
2. Not establishing and then implementing and being involved in an aggressive marketing campaign to get the new store “out there.” With the sandbox waiting period of 90 days or more and established competition already ranked, new eStore owners have to be rabidly committed to participating in their own and others Blogs, discussion forms, social media site, creating newsletters and the like if they want to stand any chance for visibility. Ignoring PPC advertising as being too complicated and expensive is a genuine concern, but PPCs should be tried or at the very least looked into to determine if they can be cost effective in targeting your market.
1. And, the #1 eStore Mistake is… Assuming you can minimize the importance or implementation of these issues and still be profitable. Won’t happen…
At your service,
Judith
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