Ecommerce, to put it simply, is the present and the future. To ensure your own customer base is continually growing and improving your bottom line, here are four common blunders you can and should avoid in the early stages of your ecommerce business. Creating content for the wrong audience Content marketing and ecommerce go hand-in-hand. For this reason, it's vital that you spend the time to properly plan out each message you send and realize the effect it will have. It is now a valuable tool to help businesses get a good sense of their customer demand and save money when it comes to inventory management. To survive in the turbulent world of ecommerce, be sure that each and every important decision you make is backed up and validated with proper data. When you run an ecommerce website, customers expect their information to be kept safe. If you are new to ecommerce, or have not taken serious precautions to ensure your platform is safe for everyone, don't waste any more time in getting to know the basics of website security. Failing to prioritize web security is one of the biggest blunders you can make when you're running an ecommerce store. Underestimating the value of customer service One of the most common myths associated with ecommerce is that customer service is irrelevant.
Ecommerce, to put it simply, is the present and the future. According to eMarketer, online sales are expected to exceed $4 trillion by 2020!
But, retail will also always be a story of David and Goliath. In the past, stores battled bricks-and-mortar giants named Walmart and Kmart. Now, their names are Amazon and eBay. The harsh reality for smaller ecommerce outlets is that even the slightest hiccup can turn customers away and, in turn, hurt their revenue.
To ensure your own customer base is continually growing and improving your bottom line, here are four common blunders you can and should avoid in the early stages of your ecommerce business.
1. Creating content for the wrong audience
Content marketing and ecommerce go hand-in-hand. The primary goal is to put the right messaging in front of the most susceptible eyes. If used correctly, your branded content can be your most valuable asset. On the flip side, it can be one of the biggest disconnects with your target audience.
For this reason, it’s vital that you spend the time to properly plan out each message you send and realize the effect it will have. This involves playing to the prevalent concerns and issues within your industry. Luckily, there are all kinds of tools out there to help you with this.
For instance, Digimind is a web-monitoring software that allows you to track certain keywords across social media networks and major news outlets. By engaging in in-depth research, you can glean all sorts of insights for content inspiration.
Even more important than finding the hot button topics is your need to create content that adheres to different levels of interest. For example, someone casually browsing to find solutions to his problems is not typically looking for aggressive sales-oriented content; he (or she) is looking to be educated. Therefore, you need to examine the entire buyer’s journey of your ecommerce business and know how to gear content accordingly.
2. Misjudging demand
Inventory issues can bring your ship down faster than anything else. Because ecommerce is a relatively new method for conducting retail operations, businesses everywhere face a number of growing pains and miscalculations. The smallest error can spell disaster for your logistics and eat into your profits.
The good news is that ecommerce and big data are evolving parallel to each other. Predictive analytics is no longer a futuristic fantasy. It is now…
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