So, you have planned to build a website for your offline business. You invested in a good e-commerce theme and hired a web developer. Your site is ready after a few days, and you are more than happy! However, suddenly you begin experiencing glitches in your site. What could that mean? Probably you didn’t pay heed to some crucial factors while building your e-commerce website! What are those factors? Let’s read more to understand!
In today’s tech-driven world, bringing the businesses online has become a must for retailers. In order to make more profits and sales, almost all the large and medium scale retail businesses have made their online debut. So significant is the e-commerce industry that Statista predicts the growth of the e-retail sector to over 4.8 trillion US dollars by the year 2021.
However, many times, retailers often forget to pay attention to many of the crucial factors while developing their site. As a result, after some time, they experience various complaints about their site’s performance, and that even results in loss of customers and poor sales.
Are you also planning to launch your online site? Don’t worry, we have got you covered! Here’s a list of the top twelve factors that you need to pay attention to while building your online website.
1. Digital Payment Security
One of the foremost aspects that you need to take care of is robust payment security. Cybersecurity has become one of the crucial concerns for most online marketers in today’s digital world. Cyber threats like phishing, online malware attacks, DDoS, hacking, and credit card fraud have become prominent issues.
In such a case, it is better to ensure the complete security of your e-commerce site to mitigate economic losses. Deploying a multi-layered security system is the best way to protect your website from cyber threats. Additionally, implementing PCI scans, requesting non-storable CVV, SSL certifications, and strong user-passwords are some of the tricks by which you can secure all the transactions of your e-commerce site.
2. Warehouse and Logistics Management
Often it is seen that most of the retailers in the excitement of bringing their business online, forget to pay attention to the inventories and stock. As a result, they suffer huge losses and stock-out conditions. Not to mention, the stock-out conditions led to a decline in sales and resulted in customer and reputation loss.
Running out of stock, delivering wrong items, and late deliveries are also significant results of improper warehouse management. To mitigate these issues, one should actively use inventory management or warehouse management software. Additionally, leveraging barcode scanning methods, hiring a professional shipping service provider, and tracking the assets are also ways to ensure comprehensive warehouse management processes.
3. Client’s Disputes and Returns
One of the significant outcomes of wrong deliveries is client dissatisfaction and disputes. Often clients find the distribution of incorrect items an unprofessional behavior and claim refunds on disputed orders. Moreover, many times, it is also witnessed that refund frauds occur because of low security in the e-commerce site.
Stolen credit cards, another product delivery, low-quality product, and double billings are also some of the frauds associated with client’s disputes and refunds. What are the solutions to such problems? Simple! You should always ensure proper authorization techniques to be implemented on your site. Moreover, you should try to incorporate an appropriate payment gateway, and try not to charge from the customer until their item is delivered. Lastly, frame clear and concise refund policies on all your items.
4. E-Commerce Intellectual Property
Another significant risk while developing an e-commerce site is the protection of your intellectual property. IP is a legal term and mostly includes your logos, taglines, content, and other copyright-related stuff. Any violation in these can cost you massive amounts of money!
A simple way to protect your intellectual property is to monitor any suspicious activity happening at your site through AI or machine learning systems. Additionally, you should always perform an Intellectual Property audit and patent for your copyright materials, including products, images, and icons.
5. Customer Services
A recent study shows that many e-commerce companies suffer a loss of almost $62 million each year due to poor customer service. Customers are always crucial for your business. They bring you sales and profits, and even a slightest of mistakes can result in bad customer experience. Customer loyalty is also responsible for increased brand recognition and generating more customers through good reviews.
So, what could you do to improve your customer experience? First and foremost, respond to their queries timely and expertly. Create personalized suggestions and services for them, and give them loyalty points and discounts whenever possible. Furthermore, deploy chatbots for enhancing your customer services. Many leading firms have leveraged chatbots for an improved customer service process, and with new advancements in ML and the natural learning process, they are becoming more efficient.
Read More: Why is AI Chatbot Crucial for Better Customer Service?
6. Out-of-Date Content
Content is the king.
The above saying holds even in today’s digital world! If you use appropriate words and catchy headlines in your website content, it will surely create a positive impact on your customers. Likewise, displaying privacy policies, returns and refund guidelines, and the latest offers can also result in better user engagement and luring new customers.
Similarly, if your site is built long before, make sure you update it every three years. Usage of old fonts and themes can sometimes bore your customers, and they may leave your site forever! To eliminate such conditions, try to release the latest updates of your e-commerce site at regular times. Update your policies and change your offers as per the customer needs and market trends.
7. Regulatory Compliance
Regulatory compliance is a much-needed factor that can affect your brand’s overall reputation and effectiveness on a global platform. All the web merchants are given a specific set of standards and regulatory tools for protecting their sensitive client information. The Payment Card Industry and the Data Security Standards provide a particular set of tools to secure the users’ transactions and bank details.
What you can add here is set strong encryption capabilities of your sensitive data. Offer role-based controls and access to your management and executives and invest in good security solutions to store the card holder’s confidential information. Also, review all your security systems at regular intervals to ensure the complete safety of the data.
8. Weak Authentication Process
Having a weak authentication model implies your site is more prone to cyber threats. Cases like hacking, phishing, and malware attacks may increase your e-commerce site resulting in huge data and monetary losses. What can you do to make your authentication process secure?
The trick is simple! Use a two-factor or multifactor authentication process. Using a two-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security to your e-commerce site. Plus, you can even set provisions for setting strong passwords for added security. Plus, investing in proper security systems is never a deal of loss!
9. Improper Search Functionality
It is no doubt that even if your site has been built using the latest technology, it may fail at a global level if it does not have proper search functionality. People find it irritable if they are not able to search their favourite products on the site quickly. It is also seen that if the user doesn’t find anything on your website just after 5 seconds of logging, then he/she may never revisit your site!
So, to prevent such conditions, you can leverage smart AI search functionality. Today, with the digital advancements, AI offers many new features like voice-based search and personal AI assistants to enhance your user experience. With image-search capability and voice-searches, your users can seamlessly find their favourite products using an image or voice commands in no time. Not to mention, the personalized suggestions using machine learning concepts is also an add-on for enhanced UX.
10. Website SEO and Marketing
Out of all the significant e-commerce threats, SEO, and marketing can also become a major issue if not handled properly. We all know that Google changes its algorithms quite often. So, if no attention is paid in your SEO and digital marketing strategy, it may result in low rankings and eventually less traffic and sales!
To prevent such circumstances, including all the high GMS and relevant keywords in your home page and product descriptions. Perform competitor research to see what they are including and include the same in your strategy. Additionally, use social media to promote your brand on the global market. Social media has become a revolutionary platform for marketing your products and reaching a greater audience. So, leverage that platform.
Lastly, consistency is the key to digital marketing. So, experiment with new ideas and stick to your goal to witness promising results!
11. Broken Links
Broken links is also a significant aspect that can impact your e-commerce credibility. Whenever a customer clicks on a broken link, he/she gets a 404 error. That error restricts the users from purchasing a certain thing and decreases the customer experience and brand value.
Additionally, if your users might see the broken links during their first visit, they may never come back, which could lead to a loss in potential leads. So, to mitigate such issues, you should continuously inspect all the links of your site. Try visiting each link time and again to ensure that they are providing relevant results to your clients. If you find some of your offers are not working, remove them asap so that they do not disappoint your users.
12. No Call to Actions
Last but not least is the positions and presence of CTAs or Call to Actions. Call to Actions are the primary aspect of digital marketing to increase traffic and bring more customers to your site. From blogs to social media, CTAs are useful and are a basic aspect for all of them! In such a case, if your site has no CTA’s or their positioning is not perfect, then it may hamper your growth and traffic!
To avoid such scenarios, you should always invest in some simple yet catchy CTAs. Place them at the proper position where you think customers would be most likely to click them. Even a necessary Let’s Talk or Download Now button will drive the traffic to your website if used at a strategic position. So, consider those things, and you are ready to go!
Ready to build an e-commerce website for your business?
Those were some of the crucial factors that you must take care of while developing an effective e-commerce website. To conclude, we can say that bringing your business online has become a much-needed aspect for every retailer. People today spend more time on their mobiles and social media. In such a case, there will hardly be any time to explore any store to buy the stuff physically. Instead, today’s people like to buy more things that they see online or that could be directly shipped to their house.
E-commerce websites are one such way of fulfilling all the customer needs quickly and cost-effectively. You can showcase your products to a greater audience and outgrow your competitor and build a space for your business in today’s digital world.
So, are you ready to build an e-commerce website? Invest in the most user-friendly and cost-effective website development services to get more profits and sales. We have years of long experience in developing e-commerce sites for various clients. Our expert developers and testers promise to deliver an error-free site that can help you in the long run of an e-commerce business. Want to explore more about us? Reach us today and get a free 30-minute expert consultation on your first visit!
