5 Myths About e-Commerce That You Should Know And Avoid

5 Myths About e-Commerce That You Should Know And Avoid

Setting up an e-commerce store sounds like the dream. After all, it’s something that you can do from home (or a café), it means that your business can reach a global audience, and we’ve all seen the stories of Amazon and others… we know how lucrative e-commerce can be.

There are some misconceptions about just what it takes to be successful with e-commerce, however. Many people enter the space with the best intentions, only to have to close up shop soon after. To ensure that you’re not one of those, make sure you’re not falling for any of these traps.

1)      It’s easy.

There are many reasons that e-commerce is anything but easy. There’s a lot of competition out there, you’ve got to understand the technology behind it, and then there are the logistics, need for 24/7 customer service (because you just never know when someone’s going to buy something), and marketing.

Most successful e-commerce stories go out of their way to recruit the best possible people in every discipline, and then, because the competition is so severe, make sure that they have industry-leading HR best practices in place to retain the staff.

It ends up being quite the investment, but it’s also the only way to prevent your store from stagnating and falling behind your rivals.

2)      “If I build it, they will come.”

Many e-commerce retailers believe that once they put their website on the Internet, then that’s it. They can just kick back and enjoy the revenue coming in then. Of course, that’s not true at all, and indeed, pushing the site live is just the start.

To get people to use your website, you need to have a combination of SEO expertise, a quality user experience, marketing (especially around email marketing), an active social media presence, and you need to have an offline presence, too – whether that’s in attending events, having a bricks-and-mortar retail outlet, or simply advertising in traditional media too.

3)      A desktop website is enough.

Statistics show that around 40 per cent of e-commerce purchases in total come from mobile, and around 79 per cent of smartphone users have made a purchase online using their mobile device in the past six months.

Traditionally, many e-commerce vendors have assumed that customers might do research on their phones, but will ultimately make the purchases on their PCs later.

This isn’t proving to be true at all, and those e-commerce platforms that don’t have a good mobile experience will find themselves missing out on an increasingly large percentage of the customer base.

4)      I need to be selling globally right away

For a small e-commerce platform, trying to sell globally can sink the business almost before it has started. There are a few reasons why you should sell locally first, and then only broaden your reach as your capabilities increase:

-          It’s much cheaper and easier to improve SEO when you focus on your local market, than trying to compete with the global e-retailers.

-          Local customers are the most likely to be loyal and repeat customers, particularly if you give them a good experience. The wider your geographic reach, the more expensive, resource-consuming, and difficult it is to offer a truly personalised experience to the customers.

-          Logistically, global operations are incredibly difficult. Consumers expect quick and efficient delivery these days. Achieving that without becoming prohibitively experience requires an effective logistics operation, which takes scale and resources to grow.

 5)      Price is all that matters and the secret to success

May online e-commerce retailers try and compete by being the cheapest, and undercutting all the rivals in their space. The reality is that, especially for a boutique e-commerce outlet, that is the exact opposite to what you should be doing.

Being competitive in price is important. Customers don’t like feeling fleeced. However, if you look at any sector, you’ll see a thriving market for premium options. People might but the cheapest TV, but they’re also just as likely to buy a premium-priced one from a brand they respect.

People would rather buy a quality loaf of bread, if their budget can afford it, than a cheap and tasteless one.

People will look at the price tag for a car or house – of course they would – but ultimately it’s whether the car or house offers what they need and want that will drive their purchasing decision.

For a boutique or start-up e-commerce publisher, focusing on building brand loyalty with an excellent user experience, superior support and customer engagement, and higher quality products is wiser than trying to compete on price alone.

Being able to maintain decent margins is important to strengthen the cashflow and allow the business to start to scale.

Establishing an e-commerce retailer can be an enormously rewarding venture and a lucrative career move. However, as with any other form of business, being successful requires an understanding of how successfully e-retailers operate.

When you start, don’t make assumptions. Make sure you do your research, understand the market and the opportunity, and build a successful go-to-market approach from the outset.