Launching a web store usually requires plenty of efforts and initial expenses. Every single day online business owners and developers make the same mistakes, which should be thoroughly analyzed and investigated as their prevention will help to make overall ecommerce development process much more effective, yet ignoring them can throw a business off and result in spending a fortune on fixing related issues in future.

It is not just enough to build a website (now almost everyone can do that!) and wait for someone who will come and buy your products and services.

Any web store owner needs to have a high quality ecommerce project with the clear marketing strategy for its growth. Remember, you create a website not for yourself, but for prospective customers, so take into consideration all their preferences. Many customers don’t want to spend their precious time on understanding how to use a website, so they will probably go somewhere else rather than investigating your sophisticated ecommerce functionality. If you still think over building an online store, my critical online business mistakes overview below can be of a great benefit.

Poor Design & Functionality

The importance of having memorable and modern design is a significant element of any web store, as customers can make aesthetic judgments about the company itself from the very first glance. The main aspect you have to notice is a website layout that should contain necessary text and graphic materials and stay rather informative at the same time to make the first impression. With good and responsive design you can be sure that pages of your store will load quickly what is really important for customers who don’t wish to wait for a while.

Moreover, any website owner has to do everything in order to provide some particular information their customers actually need. First of all, it’s quite essential to offer them an effective and reliable on-site search. The lack of speed and poor search results usually frustrate people. For more convenience, don’t forget to make a drop-down menu what will reduce time on choosing an appropriate product category. Provide customers with an opportunity to get back to previous pages which have been viewed. If to speak about poor design and functionality, please take a look at the High Noon Holsters. Major text data is messed up and uncomfortable usability won’t allow you to make a purchase even if you’re actually willing to make the one!

High Noon Holsters

Standard Content

The other common mistake is using standard content without regular updates. A website shouldn’t make an impression of a desolate house that doesn’t contain any valuable and unique information. Some online stores don’t possess actual information about products offered and as a rule you can find product descriptions taken from manufacturer websites, like thousands of competitor projects. Use all possible and impossible descriptive methods to outline product features and specifications in your own way to attract prospective clients. For example, let’s assume that you’re selling tablet PCs among which you’re featuring Samsung Galaxy Tabs. Do you wonder, how many online stores use the same standard content from the manufacturer’s page Samsung Galaxy Tab® 4 7.0? Thousands! Stand out from the crowd with your unique content and you’ll make a real difference with your website performance and increase conversions and sales dramatically.

Samsung Galaxy Tab® 4 7.0

Sometimes online store owners do their best and add very extensive volume of information. Don’t overload your customers with the large articles to read or long video data to review. A lot of vendors think that most of their customers know what they actually want, but this is a substantial mistake: only well-structured and inducing descriptions can sometimes stimulate prospects to make a purchase.

Lack of Payment and Shipping Information

One of the most important questions for any customer is the product’s total price and delivery costs. This information should be given to customers in the first turn, as no one likes to be surprised by the final invoice, so if you can’t provide your customers with some specific options (like free delivery, for example), it’s better to let them know beforehand about this. The same thing concerns terms and ways of delivery which must be clearly explained to end users telling them how long they will be waiting for the purchased items and what shipping services are available.

Make your customer shopping experience more pleasing with modern options such as a one-click checkout, helping them to make purchases on the go, without complex registration forms and advanced verification. Furthermore, different customers have different payment preferences, so a person can pay using his bank account or electronic check and the other one wants to use a credit card or PayPal. Whatever customer needs are, you have to meet them to the fullest in order to succeed online.

PayPal

Complicated Checkout

Many customers are tired or even hate filling long online application forms, that’s why try not to bother them with unnecessary information. Allow your prospects to modify their order if they made a mistake and want to remove wrong products from their shopping cart, instead of starting their ordering process once again. The checkout process, which is divided into many steps, can confuse your clients as well and make them leave online shopping cart abandoned without completing an order. For example, such well-known online stores as Sephora or Peapod have a checkout process of more than 5 steps, so guess their ecommerce experts should definitely think over how to improve their clients’ shopping experience.

Sephora

Try to avoid mandatory registration. Remember, customers came to you for an easy and hassle-free shopping experience, so if a web store requires an account to order something, lots of them can eventually switch to another, more flexible your competitor. Give your clients the freedom to choose between fast purchases and special deals for return and registered users.

Insufficient Photo and Video Data

While visiting online shopping malls, customers can’t touch or try products as in brick-and-mortar retail stores, so they need at least to know how these items look like before making a purchasing decision. For example, tiny, poor quality images will never convince customers of buying something in your web store. Only large professional photos from different perspectives can make a real difference to your conversions. For example, I really like how data is presented at Focal Price (if to take the computer/electronics field) or Bathtubs Plus and Chopping Blocks (if to take general home products/accessories). They have essential specifications available, user reviews, photo materials and other necessary information to make a deliberate purchasing decision.

Focal Price

Chopping Blocks

Some huge virtual shopping malls like Amazon are a bit oversaturated with the text and visual content (because of their enormous size and business concept), though provide their customers with pleasant shopping experience as well.

Amazon

Video content can also be an essential part of a successful ecommerce strategy. Using product review videos of your own production will help your grab prospect’s attention and allow them making the most deliberate choice. I personally upload them to YouTube as well and this works for me as an additional advertising channel.

YouTube

Did you face some other critical mistakes while launching your brand new web project? Glad to hear about your personal experience in the comments below.