Six of the biggest challenges in eCommerce businesses today – and how to fix them
Due to the global epidemic and the following lockdowns, many people spent extra time at home trying to carry out their daily tasks.
As a result, the eCommerce industry exploded and outperformed analysts’ forecasts. It finally resulted in an extra 19% increase in revenue in 2020, exceeding estimates by 22% in retail sales the following year.
The tables have turned in 2023. As the world embraces post-pandemic freedom, eCommerce is becoming an increasingly complex business to break into. Small eCommerce businesses are trying to compete with large companies in terms of pricing, delivery, and return policies.
There are many ways to help you run your ecommerce business. All from automation to personalization, there are so many ways to make sure that you can compete with the large eCommerce businesses. Consider checking out Ron Earley and Automation Empire for ways how to manage and automate your ecommerce business
Here are the six most common eCommerce challenges your company may face today, and solutions on how to fix them.
1) Order fulfillment
While hopeful, the rise in eCommerce brought new and unexpected eCommerce challenges for eCommerce platforms and the warehouses that provide their stocks. One of the biggest eCommerce challenges that arose was eCommerce fulfillment. Sellers and warehouses could not match the rapid rise in demand with their present operational capacity.
Solution
If your online store is overwhelmed with customer orders and deliveries, you can outsource your order fulfillment process to a third-party logistics company like rakutensl.com. They will help meet customer expectations, improve inventory management, help your business grow, and provide your customers with a better online shopping experience.
2) Online security
As the internet continues to expand and provide increasingly different revenue streams for businesses, fraudsters are also coming up with new technologies in the eCommerce domain to defraud online businesses.
Ecommerce fraud may take many forms, from someone using a stolen credit card when shopping online to so-called ‘friendly fraud’, in which customers fraudulently claim the product purchased online never arrived and get a refund through the issuing bank. (Who then, in a classic bank manner, seeks to recoup that loss from you – with a charge on top!)
Solution
Ensure you stay up to date with your website’s payment system’s current standards to help protect you against eCommerce fraud. A solid online identity verification system is one of the best defenses against online scammers. Ensure you also install security plugins to ensure your customer data is safe.
You can be sure it’s them by asking customers to authenticate their identity when accessing your eCommerce website using security features, such as biometrics, a one-time password, two-factor authentication, and more.
3) Creating customer loyalty
Developing a solid foundation of long-term client relationships is critical for building a successful eCommerce business.
However, in today’s online business atmosphere, online retailers face this difficulty, especially since vendors and online shoppers do not know or see each other as in a brick-and-mortar store.
The customer is therefore deprived of the senses that they would typically rely on face-to-face interactions, making them more hesitant to make a purchasing choice and then trust the retailer in an eCommerce store.
Because client loyalty and customer retention are a result of your service, you must provide outstanding service and create pleasant customer experiences for them to trust you. Here are a few pointers to keep clients loyal to your company.
Be transparent
Being honest and clear about what customers may expect from your eCommerce store and your brand from the first encounter is one of the most critical factors in keeping customers and boosting online sales in the long run.
Get customer feedback
Customers are eager to offer their feedback about your brand. Collecting these opinions on social media platforms regularly provides you with more opportunities to improve your products to meet their expectations and has a beneficial influence on your overall customer base and brand image.
Create customer loyalty programs
Adopting loyalty programs for returning paying customers gives customers a reason to continue with your brand.
4) Staying ahead of the competition
One of the most common eCommerce challenges everyone strives to achieve in a competitive market is increasing their market share and outperforming competitors.
Creating an eCommerce business is challenging, but standing out from the competition is much more difficult when others provide similar products and services as you.
Solution
Understanding your competition and their business methods is critical to success. Ensure you understand what products or services they provide, the prices they charge, how they promote their business, and so on. Conduct research to exploit your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses in such areas.
Remember, competitors are defined in two primary ways – your brand competitors (the ones you hear about every day offline), and your search engine competitors (which are defined by your target keywords) – these are rarely the same, according to Bill, Founder at Linchpin.
5) Pricing and shipping costs
When several merchants provide the same goods, pricing becomes the primary differentiation for all eCommerce businesses. Consumers today have high expectations of eCommerce sites, and most of them check the pricing before placing an order.
While consumer demand increases significantly, a price war facilitated by price monitoring software makes life difficult for any firm operating in this market. Price wars may be extremely challenging and time-consuming for small and medium-sized eCommerce shops.
This is because they must not only compete on pricing with large eCommerce companies but also compete for eCommerce stores, maintain low prices, make a profit, and ensure customer satisfaction.
Ecommerce giants, on the other hand, are unlikely to be affected since they can provide items at a lower price. They have greater benefits to win the game by combining shipping amenities with multiple channels around the country, warehouses, and closed facilities.
6) Shopping cart abandonment
Shopping Cart Abandonment is an eCommerce challenge you must address. It occurs when a customer adds an item to an online shopping cart but leaves before completing the transaction.
Customers who shop online face many distractions that attempt to keep them from finishing their transactions. According to the Baymard Institute, 68% of e-commerce business carts are abandoned regularly. It means that for every 100 purchases made online, 68 additional prospective clients are lost.
Solution
The best ways to encourage customers to stay on your site and complete their purchase are to implement cart abandonment popups and create an enhanced shopping experience during checkout. Try to make the process simple with a few steps.
Reduce the information users must provide and the size of your forms – or the number of steps required to check out – to make the entire process easier. Live chat tools – or automated customer service – can also help with customer queries they have at checkout.
And, if everything else fails and you lose that consumer, why not go out of your way to earn them back? You may target clients who did not complete the conversion process with offers and discounts using an intelligent approach to email marketing.
