The most common mistakes in online shop development - part 1

e commerce mistakeThe most common mistakes in online shop development- part 1
Most of the owners and developers of online shops have good awareness about how to create a smoothly running e-commerce environment and avoid most common mistakes. However, mistakes are still frequently done, because of various reasons. It might be the lack of time, concentration or knowledge. In upcoming articles we will try to fill the gaps of knowledge by discussing some of the most common mistakes in the development of online shop. Naturally, you will still be the one, who needs to spot the mistakes and make necessary changes. In the following, ten common mistakes will be discussed, which might help you to make your web store even more successful and convenient place for customers.

1. Lack of choice
Many developed online shops have a serious lack in the variety of offered products. If you are not gigantic web warehouse, consider specializing in more constricted niche: online shop, which offers just shoes, will be more successful than the one, which contains small amounts of shoes, dresses and accessories. One of the most important initial tasks in the development of your own online store is finding the right boundaries. Selling perfume in the jewelry shop is probably not the best decision as the buyers will not get a clear image of your shop and will not be able to differentiate it from others. For that reason, make a clear statement about your exclusivity.

2. Vaguely defined sales promotions
When you developing sales promotions in your web stores, make sure that they are perfectly clear for the buyer. One thing is always true: if the buyer has arising doubts, he will not buy the product in your online shop. Nobody likes catchy information, which later on appears not to be 100% true. For instance, the web store states, that there is 15% discount of all the products, but later on you notice small text bellow, which defines exceptions of products to which discount does not apply. If you came to the online store specifically for those products, which are not discounted, you will probably leave the shop instantly. Most of the times, better choice is to be more specific in your sales promotion, for example: “15% discount to all iPhones”.

3. Lack of product delivery information
One of the most important pieces of information from the buyer point is total price of the product, including delivery costs. Try to provide such information as early in the buying process as possible. Customers do not like surprises while they are ordering the products. If you cannot offer free delivery, do not withhold such information till the last minute. Otherwise, the buyer will be disappointed or even frustrated about the final price, and will probably never visit your shop again. In conclusion, include all the cost elements and make it clear for the customer.

4. Create your own content
It was already mentioned, but it is worth repeating: unique content in your web shop is essential. Creating your own content is a part of search optimization system. Search engine works in the way that it tries presenting differentiated results for the users. What would happen if every internet shop would have same product description created by distributer? Unique descriptive product information will differentiate your online store and make it more attractive for the customers. Moreover, it will promote your store as well as definitely improve online search results. However, we can often notice that creators of online stores are still ignoring the importance of original content (you can read more about development of product related information in our previous article).

5. Visual information is essential
One picture could be worth hundreds of words, especially, if the picture is informative and in high quality. For that reason, try to provide as many as possible high quality descriptive product photos. Below you can see the bad example of product related photos:

bad product introductionsbad product introductions

As you can see these bad quality photos are presented in the homepage of the web store, which definitely does not give a good first impression. On the other hand, when you see a photo, which is presented below, the impression is much better and you will probably wish to actually buy the product:

product okproduct sample ok

Excellent quality pictures, which present the product from all different angles, do not require addition zooming and definitely increasing the sales possibilities.
However, have I mind that you should optimize your pictures for the search engines as well. Your competitors will probably do not take this into account, so this is a perfect chance for you to get ahead of them!