Many businesses are moving to a virtual platform, through an app or a website post-pandemic. The practice has been more prevalent for the retailers, who want to maintain business continuity, if another lockdown has to happen in the future. If you are thinking of investing in business aspects, there is no denying there are umpteenth benefits to yield from ecommerce business.

For a while now ecommerce has been presented as the sure way of scaling your business success; but is it that easy? Every business and marketing formula comes with its fair share of challenges. It is similar to ecommerce.

So, before your venture into the ecommerce domain, let’s get you acquainted with the biggest challenges for ecommerce business, you will need to overcome to surpass your sales and revenue targets.

1. Delivering An Omni-Channel Customer Experience
2. The Need For Online Identity Verification
3. Lack Of Security And Privacy Leaks
4. Unprofessional, Dated Design
5. Bad User Experience
6. No Online Chat Support
7. Fake Product Reviews
8. Poor On-Site Search Engine And Filter Option
9. Lack Of Personalization
10. Missing Or Unclear Product Information
11. Shopping Cart Abandonment
12. Too Complex Check Out Process
13. Payment Failures
14. Poor Tracking, Logistics, And Long Delivery
15. Not Having A Flexible Return Policy

1. Delivering An Omni-Channel Customer Experience:

Users prefer an Omni-channel customer experience these days. Now, what is that? It is the interaction between the business and its target audience across multiple platforms and networks. It aims to create an ecosystem for customer engagement, where they can buy online through a website on a desktop, an app on a smartphone or tablet, or the traditional way from a brick and mortar store, and the overall experience will be equally seamless.

Why is it important? An Omni-channel customer experience allows ecommerce businesses to reach the target audience using multiple channels at every juncture of their journey while staying relevant contextually. This significantly improves the quality of customer engagement.

Omnichannel is how you have the maximum impact on your customers and yet, it can be quite challenging. Here are a few ways you can create better omnichannel marketing strategies and mitigate the challenges of creating a cohesive customer experience.

• The key is to understand the customer mindset. Once you can tap into that, you can sell your products easily across multiple platforms, channels, and networks seamlessly. So, map and understand your customer’s journey; where they begin, where they pause, up until they finally make a purchase.
• Always listen and consider the feedback of your customers. You can get them through reviews, social media comments, consumer complaints, etc. Considering them will help you improve your service and product quality.
• To give your customers a seamless experience you need to leverage the right use of technology. These days a lot of ecommerce businesses, make it possible for customers buy the products at social media platforms like Instagram. That’s one way you can extend your reach while giving yout customers an omnichannel buying experience. You can also try using technology to give them a personalized experience through product recommendations, personalized emailers, offers, and likewise.

There are ample ways to improve your omnichannel experience for customers, by:

• Making efforts to understand the customers better.
• Get all your stakeholders, and the entire team on board to create the best omnichannel experience.
• Analyze and revamp the content from time to time.
• Be more responsive to the customer.
• Be consistent in your endeavors.

Read More:

What is Omnichannel Customer Experience and Why Should You Do It?

2. The Need For Online Identity Verification:

In the physical world you can prove your identity by government-issued ID cards, but what about the virtual world? With the rising instances of identity thefts and identity frauds, online identity verification has become a significant challenge for ecommerce businesses. Payment frauds, fake phone numbers, credit card frauds, stolen payment credentials, etc. can not only cause you revenue loss, but it ruins the brand reputation as well. So, what can one do?

• Stay alert and keep monitoring the platform for any suspicious activities, especially related to transactions.
• Track if a single source has unusually high orders.
• It is best if you can send an automated verification/confirmation link to the customers when they are signing up and making the purchase. It will help you validate the authenticity of the customer and the purchase.
• Invest in platform security by integrating it with advanced software solutions that can identify fraudulent activities via multi-layer authentication, such as identity checks, SSN verification, instant authentication, etc.

3. Lack Of Security And Privacy Leaks:

This is more like a continuation of our last point about online identity verification. A data breach is not a new threat. Time and again it has put the security of online businesses at risk. So, one of the challenges that you will have to fortify your ecommerce site from is cybersecurity threats.

When customers register on your platform, they do so by providing a few personal details, like ID proofs, payment information, etc. Now, if someone steals that data, it jeopardizes the security and privacy of your customers, while doing irreparable harm to your brand. Here’s what you can do to deter the threat:

• Make it a point to use and manage your servers. Host your platform on a standalone server, not a shared one. If you use a shared server, a single malware attack on any one of the sites hosted on the same server will jeopardize the rest.
• Back up all your data regularly.
• Update your ecommerce platform frequently using official patches, safety components, plugins, etc.
• Integrate your platform with security plugins like firewalls, and 2-factor authentication, and likewise prevent hacking attempts

4. Unprofessional Design:

In a physical store, it’s the display that attracts the customers to go inside the store, browse the products, and purchase. Have you ever bought anything from a cluttered store? Well, the same goes for ecommerce patrons. If they visit a site and they don’t like the layout, they will not feel the urge to make the purchase.

The design of your ecommerce site is synonymous with your brand identity and credibility. If it is good, people will trust your brand. So, you must update your designs according to the latest trends, keep the layout clean and easy to browse, and make sure that the overall look and feel of the ecommerce site are professional. It should match the core identity of your business.

5. Bad User Experience:

User experience (UX) is how your target audience interacts with the website, and the experience they get from the same. It means that from the moment they enter the site up until they exit, the experience and engagement should be stellar. There should be no delay in page loading, glitches in product videos and pictures, payment processing issues, delay in customer care response, and similar issues. Good UX ensures that your site will be easy to navigate and buy from. Here are a few points to achieve that:

• The website structure should be easy to navigate
• Insert visual guides for customers
• Guide the customers by introducing personalized product recommendations
• Encourage customers to leave a review
• Increase responsiveness of customer support
• Enhance user experience through transparency in all of your processes, like payment, shipping, tracking, etc.
• Ensure social proof
• Keep a reward or loyalty program for your customers

For the best impact, you can leverage the professional expertise of a UI and UX developers, to ensure a stellar experience for your customers.

Read More:

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6. No Online Chat Support:

In a physical store, there are shopping attendants or customer care desks where you can get relevant information and even help to buy what you are looking for. In an online set up you need to have adequate support that can attend to your customer’s queries in real-time. The best way to do that is through online chat support.

If your customers have any queries, they can simply ask the same via chat online and your customer care executive on the other end can be of assistance. its not always necessary both have a customer care executive on the other end. You can invest in AI chatbots and let them guide your customers through a stellar buying experience.

People don’t usually prefer buying stuff they are not sure about. An AI chatbot can be the perfect shopping support to your target audience, clearing any doubts that one might have regarding a product. You can get help from our professional AI chatbot app developers in that regard.

Not having online chat support is like leading your customers down the road without any directions. It creates the premise for misunderstandings, cart abandonment, wrong purchases, etc. leaving a bad impression on the UX. So, online chat support is a must.

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7. Fake Product Reviews:

Customers are long past being gullible. They are cautious while buying and read through all the details and descriptions before making the purchase. Customers prefer reading reviews posted by the previous buyers, learning from their experience, and then making the purchase. Surely, you do the same when buying anything online.

So, encouraging buyers to leave a review is necessary. You can mail them, send them an SMS as a reminder, or go creative by offering special offers per review. While you are working on the reviews, steer clear of fake reviews. Customers are smart enough to make the fake from the real. It can deal a bad blow to your brand reputation.

8. Poor On-Site Search Engine And Filter Option:

We have already mentioned it once; you must make your website easy to navigate. Your customers should not feel lost once they are on your site. There should be clarity in the layout. Not only that; but since ecommerce sites have several products, browsing through all can be tedious. So, our recommendation would be to incorporate a site search engine and adequate filter options just to streamline the process.

People buy online for a lot of reasons, one being timeliness. Imagine if they had to go through the painstaking process of non-stop browsing just to find a single product; would that serve the purpose? They would get bored or tired and move on to the next ecommerce site offering similar products. By giving them tools like a site-search engine and filters, you can simplify the process, making it fast and enjoyable. It adds to a positive user’s buying journey.

You can also develop faceted search on your platform to enhance the buying experience. faceted search uses the product and its features as a criteria to refine the search results. It further breaks down the search by offering several filters to narrow down the search to a handful of products. It makes shopping, easy, more precise and fast. You can reach out to our ecommerce developers to get a full scope of such incorporations.

9. Lack Of Personalization:

Customers seek personalized experiences these days, where they feel like you are attending to their shopping needs solely, giving them your full attention. Personalization acts in favor of your brand value. The customers feel closer to the brand and it enhances brand loyalty. However, creating a personalized experience is easier said than done. There are multiple factors to consider when creating such an experience. Here are a few ways that you can personalize the ecommerce experience for your customers:

• Onsite product recommendation
• Onsite search
• Single customer view of customer data, onsite activity, purchase history, etc.
• Emailers
• Social media ads (target advertisements)
• On-site pop-up recommendations

These are a few ways that you can improve personalization on your platform. 

Read More:

How to Personalize the Ecommerce Customer Journey To Boost Sales?

10. Missing Or Unclear Product Information:

The product featured on your website should have clear information detailing all its aspects and specifications. If a product is missing its information or has content that does not provide clarity then it can become an issue. Your target audience will be reluctant to buy the product leading to a decline in conversion rate. It can be fixed by:

• Adding relevant pictures and multimedia to the product
• Including content that describes the product in detail
• Adding a 360-degree view of the product
• Adding visual guides for product use and likewise

Give complete clarity to your audience and witness your sales skyrocket.

11. Shopping Cart Abandonment:

One of the biggest ecommerce challenges is shopping cart abandonment, which is frequent for all ecommerce sites. But there are ways that you can resolve that.

• Make it easy for customers to browse through the project
• Don’t make it a lengthy checkout process
• There should not be any glitches during the payment processing
• Remove any unnecessary long forms
• Monitor for any bugs that might disrupt the shopping and checkout experience
• Keep tools (chat options, visual guides, etc.) handy for the customers during checkout
• Keep reminding your customers of the product that they added to the cart and left without buying. A little coaxing doesn’t harm.

Apply these elements so that you can minimize cart abandonment. 

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12. Too Complex Check Out Process:

Checkout is the transition point between purchase and payment. There is a long history of people abandoning their purchase midway, right at this junction. Why? There are multiple reasons. So, how can one fix it?

Keep the checkout as simple as possible for even the most novice user to move past easily.

It should not be a multi-step time-consuming process; best if you can make it a small 2-step checkout process.

Make sure you can provide all relevant details regarding the product, cost, date of delivery, etc. during checkout. Lack of information and clarity can lead to abandonment.

Ensure there are no bugs to disrupt the checkout process.

13. Payment Failures:

We all have faced it at least once in our lives! Payment failures at ecommerce sites can be a bummer. It can be both frustrating and demoralizing, not to mention turn one off from purchasing anything from that site again. So, to all ecommerce owners; you must integrate a robust payment gateway, keeping multiple payment options, to avoid any payment debacles for your customers. If not fixed, it can significantly impact your brand value. Here are a few tips to follow:

• Use a payment gateway, which routes the customer transactions through multiple processors. Use a smart payment routing engine.
• Prioritize the online payment security and privacy of your customers.
• As already mentioned, keep multiple payment options.

14. Poor Tracking, Logistics, And Long Delivery:

Real-time tracking, delivery updates, and the overall logistics; are crucial factors that impact the customer experience. It is directly associated with the quality of the service that you provide. After purchase, the customer must receive a tracking ID to monitor the movement of the product. This adds more transparency to your service.

Partner with credible delivery companies so that there are no unnecessary delays. In case there is a delay, the customer should be notified of the same. In such circumstances, you can compensate by crediting a few reward points to the customer’s account or giving a special voucher for the next purchase.

15. Not Having A Flexible Return Policy:

Ecommerce sites that do not have a clear and flexible return and refund policy are often blacklisted by the customers. They refrain from investing in such a brand because they are unable to put their trust in the service and the product.

So, it is recommended that you keep a document detailing the return and refund policy. Link it on the checkout page as well. In case there is a refund, ensure that things are made simple and flexible for the buyer. So they are encouraged to buy again.

Conclusion:

Don’t let all these challenges scare you! With the right collaborating ecommerce website development company you can mitigate these challenges and offer a seamless customer experience to your target audience with ease. With the perfect customer experience; nothing can stop you from meeting and eventually surpassing your revenue and growth targets. For ecommerce website and app development consultation, reach out to our team. We guarantee same-day response and flexible quotes that fits right with your ecommerce requirements.