What are the challenges of creating and maintaining an e-commerce website?
E-commerce is growing rapidly, and people have started purchasing online. This rapid growth comes with so many challenges in e-commerce websites, and if you’re running an e-commerce store, you should consider these challenges and try to solve them. In this article, we’ve covered the top 10 challenges of creating and maintaining an e-commerce website in 2021.
Without wasting a second, Let’s Begin!
Here are 10 – Common Challenges Of An e-commerce Website and Their Solutions
Challenge #1: Cyber and Data Security
eCommerce is completely an online business, which means a lot of personal and confidential data is involved in the whole process. If you want people to purchase from you, you strictly need a safe and secured platform. People will feed their personal information only if you have a strong platform in terms of privacy protection and cybersecurity. Having such a strong eCommerce secured platform is one of the biggest hindrances that most eCommerce companies face today. And if you want your eCommerce site to be secured, then we have a solution for you.
Solution: There are several things you can do to maintain security:
- Ask for the SSL certificate from your hosting providers and keep it updated.
- Always protocols that are updates like HTTPS.
- Whatever CMS you are using should be well known and trustworthy in the market.
- Change the store’s password frequently and make sure it is complex and won’t be cracked by an AI tool.
- Ensure the security of your users’ confidential data by opting for a safe payment gateway.
- You can also go for the anti-virus and anti-malware softwares to feel secure from hackers.
- You can also use the security plugin that will secure your data and take all the backups.
Challenge #2: Online Identity Verification
As your entire business is on the online platform, any frauds or malicious bots are always ready to do any harm that can reduce your revenue and essential data loss. To make sure such things won’t happen, you have to identify each person who takes access to your store. This is the only single way to stay safe from such fraud.
Identifying each person is not an easy task, but thanks to technology, some legit ways can help you in these situations.
Solutions: First of all, verify the information of the users and order related suspicious things. Do not forget to use the plugins like captcha because it will help you find the fake users, and it will blick them. You can also send the verification link through email or direct message as soon as the user proceeds to sign up. To maintain the scams in the Cash On Delivery, always verify the official address.
Challenge #3: Selecting A Responsive Design For The Website
Responsive Design is one of the biggest needs of today. If you have an eCommerce site because customers can visit from mobile devices, and if your website doesn’t support them, they will surely find something better than you. It is also a fact that eCommerce only gets more than 50% of traffic from mobile devices. And this is the point where you are not left with any justified point not to make your website mobile responsive.
Solutions: You have to invest money to make your site mobile responsive. It won’t cost you a lot of money, but a decent amount, and you should make this investment anyway by hiring a good eCommerce web expert.
Challenge #4: Dealing With Product Returns and Refunds
This is one of the eCommerce site problems that everyone is facing. It feels very bad when someone returns the product and asks for the refund. It is not only about the reputation of the company when any product returns because businesses have to face all the losses that occur due to the shipment cost and other factors. And removing the return policy can not be a solution because people check the return policy before purchasing any product. If you remove the return policy, you will face heavy losses on your business.
Solutions: You can not do anything to be safe from this mess, but here are some things that you should remember:
- Do not try to be over-smart by hiding your policies and hope that customers won’t see them.
- Do not try to manipulate the customers by using hard English. Use simple English.
- Help the customers by giving them full support via. the customer support.
Challenge #5: Creating Navigation That Acts As A Guidance System
Your eCommerce site should not have too many options for the visitors; otherwise, this will irritate the people and force them to leave the website. You could think your website is great if you have more menu options, but these ridiculous options confuse the customers and resist purchasing. This is one of the major problems that almost all eCommerce sites face, and no one can tell you what exactly people will like, but here we have a solution.
Solutions: Keep your interface as simple and short as possible. The website should look more like a guide with all the necessary hierarchies. Loud colors should highly highlight all the clickable buttons and options. Do not leave any distraction in the path. Focus more on the UX so that you will end up getting the customer’s purchase.
Challenge #6: Keeping The Site Informative Yet Fast Loading
eCommerce has great competition in the market, and the only way to be smarter than the rest of the eCommerce owners is to be faster than them. If your website can load in less than 2 seconds, then, believe me, people will love your website. No matter how great or engaging content you have, if your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, people will start fidgeting, and there are higher chances that they can shift to another site as well. So you have to be quick.
Google considers the loading speed under the Top 3 requirements of SEO indexing, so you can not give any excuse not to make your website’s loading speed faster.
Solutions: As you know the importance of this point, you have to invest in the speed of your eCommerce store to make the experience of all the users delightful. Hire an expert or a freelancer and get this work done.
Challenge #7: Struggle Of Pricing, Shipping, and Order Fulfillment
In the eCommerce business, deciding the appropriate price for the products that are affordable for the customers and contain a good amount of profit margins for the business is a very big challenge. You can not expect the shipping charge from the buyers because no one likes shipping charges at all. And you can not ignore the challenge of shipping and other fulfillments, especially if you are a small business, as you can easily fall into the problem of the shipping cost, packaging problems, and so many things. Then what can probably be the best solution? Let’s get the solution.
Solution: For deciding the optimized price, you can do the comparative analysis, and then based on that, you will have an idea of appropriate pacing that will work for you the best. Some well-known methods are also there, such as Cost-Based Pricing, competition-based Pricing, etc., you can go for any of those. And as far as the shipment and packaging-related challenges are concerned, you can easily go to any packaging material wholesaler and find different shipping service providers until and unless you find your cost-efficient one. Also, get the guarantee for your packaging material wholesaler about the safe journey of the product.
Challenge #8: Increase Sales
Why have you started your eCommerce website? To make the profits! And if you want to make a profit, then you have to increase sales. It is not as straightforward as it sounds because making sales is not an easy task in itself.
Solutions: You have to focus on the marketing portion of your store. To be very specific, you have to provide the right product in the right place at the right time. Improve your tactics and strategies if you want to make more sales.
Challenge #9: Customer Retention
The eCommerce business is way more expandable, but it is one of the most difficult parts for almost any giant company when it comes to retaining customers. However, retaining the customer is key to success in the eCommerce business. There are more than thousands of reasons customers won’t purchase from you, but rather than focusing on the negatives, you should give more attention to how you can retain your customer?
Solutions: Firstly, It is important to remember that loyalty builds from the emotional bond. Business customer relationships also need time and effort to flourish. Bring all the marketing tactics such as better UX together and then make a strategy, and you will end up getting loyal customers.
Challenge #10: Relevant Leads
You can easily get more traffic on your website if you spend some money, but the challenge comes when you find the relevant leads because only such leads convert into potential customers. And getting such relevant leads is a very big challenge. The conversion rate of the people in the eCommerce industry is around 2.57% of the total user visits. You have to struggle for the relevant leads, but there is a way to help you in this matter, and for that, read the solution below.
Solution: You will get all the interesting leads if you somehow manage to rank on Google. And for that, you have to do strong SEO (Search Engine Optimization). One more great option you have is PPC (Pay Per Click). PPC can also take you to the right audience. There are also so many solutions for this challenge in marketing, such as email marketing and so on. Growing importance of Insurance Policy Administration
Final Verdict
After reading this article, we hope you’ll work on these challenges and solve them immediately. That’s why we’ve added solutions for each challenge. Now it’s your turn to start working on solutions and grow your e-commerce store. Drop your comment and let me know which challenge you want to solve first?