Running an e-commerce website won’t always be smooth sailing. If you’ve just started your own online business, you will probably deal with these four obstacles: high shipping costs, product returns, marketing costs and online visibility. Read below to find out how you can conquer each one:
1. Not Getting Enough Website Visitors
You have the website set up, but it seems like no one is visiting it. If it were a brick and mortar store, everyone would be walking past the front door without a second glance. How do you make sure that your website doesn’t get swallowed up in the online market? How do you stop your business from being invisible?
If you want to make your website visible to shoppers, you need to invest in search engine optimization techniques — this will get your website to move higher up in the search results. You can use keywords, titles, links, tags and high-quality content to push your business to the top of the list. Ideally, you want to be one of the first options shoppers can see.
2. Shipping Costs
Shipping costs can add up quickly, especially when you have customers that live across the country or overseas. You don’t want to forbid people from making an order, but you’re not sure how you can keep up with the shipping fees.
If you want to keep those customers, you can use a courier broker to take advantage of discounted shipping rates. With the long list of courier options and shipping rates, you can find the cheapest way to drop ship heavy e-commerce items and reach international customers without putting a massive dent in your budget or raising your prices.
3. Too Many Returns
One problem that comes with online shopping is that customers are more likely to return the products that were delivered. According to CNBC, 15 to 40% of online purchases are returned by customers — this is a huge percentage when you compare it to the 5 to 10% of returns from in-store purchases.
To limit product returns, you should make sure that the customer can see exactly what they’re getting delivered to their door:
- Post lots of product pictures in good lighting.
- Give thorough product descriptions and specs.
- Include reviews and recommendations from previous customers.
- Send confirmation emails to double-check that the order is correct.
4. Marketing Costs
You don’t have a large enough budget for an expensive marketing campaign, but you want to reach more customers and get them interested in everything you have to offer.
One of the most inexpensive ways to market your online business without draining your resources is to use social media platforms. They’re free to join and easy to use. Managing a Twitter account or Facebook business page will be an affordable way to reach millions of potential customers without breaking the bank.
You’re bound to run into problems with your online business. If you follow these tips, you’ll at least make sure that those problems remain small and short-lived. They will be tiny bumps in the road at the start of a long journey.
