Starting an ecommerce shop sounds like a great idea. You can work from anywhere, connect with people worldwide, and sell products you love.

It’s not all fun and games, though. The sobering fact is that ecommerce retailers fail every day — can you guess why? For the most part, a lack of education and failure to plan are the typical reasons why online ventures go up in smoke before they even take off.

If you’re investing capital and time into running a business, you must be aware of online store owners’ typical mistakes. By sharing these, you can cover your bases to ensure you don’t make the same errors and can avoid closing up shop. Just as you can learn from success stories, you can learn from failures, too!

Here are the top 10 mistakes made while creating an ecommerce strategy for business and how to avoid them.

Mistake 1: Lack of Defined SMART Goals

Every business needs a set of parameters that hold it accountable for achieving its goals and implementing an ecommerce growth strategy.

SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. These goals ensure your website and initiatives are effectively working toward achieving sales, marketing, operational, and business objectives that will help the company succeed.

Moreover, SMART goals can be adjusted as needed, but they help to measure short and long-term success. Without them, your business won’t have any foundation to measure success and will struggle to grow and scale.

Use analytics tools to evaluate how your online store is doing across its goals. Some ecommerce platforms, such as Ecwid by Lightspeed, come with built-in sales analytics. It gives you a detailed overview of your conversions, visitors, orders, accounting, and marketing, making tracking and understanding your progress easier.

Mistake 2: Inefficient Ecommerce Platforms

Ecommerce platforms support businesses by selling goods online to customers around the world. Not only do ecommerce platforms exist to sell products, but they also offer customer support, analytics, inventory management, accounting, and more.

Without a powerful ecommerce platform, companies won’t have access to robust features and business tools that can help them scale and grow. Inefficient platforms may offer one or two features that seem ideal in the present time but fail to support a growing business and its needs.

Ecwid by Lightspeed has everything you need to succeed in the increasingly competitive world of ecommerce. With features such as multi-channel selling, customizable design, inventory management, and more, Ecwid offers a comprehensive solution for businesses of all sizes.

Mistake 3: Neglecting SEO

SEO, or search engine optimization, can help any business build exposure, reach new markets, and grow its visibility and presence online. Part of SEO includes establishing and using your brand’s keywords throughout your website so your business will come up in search results when consumers use your search terms.

Using practical SEO techniques, ecommerce retailers can increase organic website traffic, ramp up sales, and build a solid brand reputation. It doesn’t mean that SEO is a simple task, though. Whether trying to rank on high-volume keywords or securing your authority as a leader, SEO is not a set-it-and-forget-it type of project.

Some companies feel overwhelmed by the task of SEO because they don’t know where to begin, and the to-do list is never-ending. From creating high-quality content to performing keyword research, building backlinks, and measuring their efforts, SEO can quickly fall by the wayside if you let it.

In doing so, you fail to compete in the space that matters most for your brand — online. An ecommerce SEO strategy is critical to business growth, particularly for ensuring potential customers can find you online.

If you use Ecwid by Lightspeed for your online store, it has tons of tools for enhancing your online store SEO, such as adding custom meta tags and alt texts, creating redirects, registering a custom domain, and more.

Mistake 4: Underestimating Content Marketing

An effective ecommerce marketing strategy should include content marketing. It will help you build relationships with your audience and establish your brand as a trusted competitor.

An ecommerce content strategy should aim to answer any questions that potential customers have to build trust and encourage them to make a purchase.

Brands can provide all the education customers need to feel confident in their purchases through blog posts, newsletters, video guides of products, images, FAQs, and more.

Without these resources and information? You’re leaving potential customers wondering why they should invest in your business and inviting them to find a competitor who will provide the necessary information.

Your ecommerce promotion strategy should also include social media. Social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook are great places to showcase your products, engage with your audience, and promote any sales or discounts. You can also utilize influencer partnerships to increase brand awareness and reach a wider audience.

Check out the following resources for more tips and information on how to promote your business on social media:

Essential tips for your Facebook ecommerce strategy What you need to know about creating an Instagram ecommerce strategy.

Mistake 5: Underdeveloped Email Marketing Strategy

If you think email is dead, you couldn’t be more wrong. Nearly 80 percent of retailers consider email marketing their most effective customer engagement and retention channel.

An effective ecommerce email marketing strategy can cross-sell, upsell, and boost overall sales. You can also use email to onboard new customers, re-engage with previous customers, and nurture leads.

With an underdeveloped ecommerce email marketing strategy, your online store is missing out on engagement with leads, along with current and previous customers. You’re also failing to provide a seamless customer experience for active customers. Don’t neglect nurturing an email marketing strategy for leads and customers — you’ll regret it!

Ecwid by Lightspeed sellers have tons of tools for email marketing, including automated emails, email list building, newsletters, and integrations with popular email marketing platforms like MailChimp, Omnisend, and more.

Mistake 6: Ineffective Ecommerce Ads Strategy

PPC (pay-per-click) marketing provides ecommerce retailers with a reliable way to reach new customers through their websites and social media platforms. Regardless of the business model or industry, more companies are using PPC ads and implementing ecommerce retargeting strategies to stimulate sales and brand exposure online.

While running ad campaigns costs money, once optimized, the ROI can be staggering. Without a practical ecommerce PPC strategy established, your brand will struggle to find new customers online.

If you sell online with Ecwid, you can improve your ad campaigns by using Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, and Pinterest pixels for retargeting, which allows you to show ads to people who have already visited your website. Plus, you can automate and optimize your Facebook and Google ads for best results using the Kliken app.

Mistake 7: Neglecting Omnichannel Presence

Without an omnichannel ecommerce strategy, the shopping experience across mobile, in-store, and online will never feel seamless. When an omnichannel experience is well-designed, customers will have a consistent experience no matter where they shop or interact with your brand.

Research shows customers are more loyal to brands that provide a consistent experience across all channels. Failing to create this will result in a less reputable brand, lower customer retention, and decreased brand loyalty.

A marketplace strategy is another crucial component of a successful business. By diversifying your sales channels, you can reach a wider audience and reduce your dependency on one platform. It also allows for better customer acquisition and retention, as different customers may prefer shopping on other platforms.

With Ecwid, you don’t have to worry about managing multiple platforms. Our seamless integration with popular marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Google Shopping, and more allows you to sell your products on these channels without additional work quickly.

Furthermore, Ecwid’s unified dashboard makes it easy to manage inventory, orders, and customer information across all channels. It saves time and streamlines the process for both you and your customers.

Mistake 8: Overcomplicating the Shopping Experience

Now more than ever, consumers want an easy shopping experience and are likelier to shop with brands that offer that. With powerhouse retail giants like Amazon making the shopping experience seamless, small shops and ecommerce retailers must mimic this experience as much as possible.

Keep things simple by offering a mobile-optimized site with easy search functionality and seamless navigation. Create product listings that use quality photography and well-written product descriptions that include all the necessary information and details about your products. Don’t forget about a streamlined checkout experience, where customers can quickly enter their information and complete their purchases without hassle.

Overcomplicating the shopping experience will likely result in abandoned shopping carts and a failing ecommerce sales strategy.

Luckily, with Ecwid, creating a user-friendly online store is simple and hassle-free. With customizable templates and design blocks, you can create a professional-looking website that is easy for customers to navigate and use.

Additionally, Ecwid offers multiple payment options, such as Lightspeed Payments, PayPal, Stripe, and Square, to cater to the preferences of different customers. It ensures a smooth checkout process without any technical difficulties or limitations.

Mistake 9: Shipping & Fulfillment Fumbles

Losing customers because of inefficient ecommerce shipping strategy or fulfillment mistakes seems like it should be entirely avoidable, but unfortunately, it happens all the time.

Whether your ecommerce fulfillment strategy has holes or growing pains, establishing a bulletproof shipping process is mission-critical for any online retailer. If you can’t ship appropriately on time, or if your products arrive damaged, you will undoubtedly lose customers.

Suppose you’re shipping enough volume that your staff can’t keep up. In that case, it may be time to partner with an outsourced order fulfillment provider to cut costs, improve productivity, expedite delivery times, and use staff for other tasks.

To make shipping more transparent for customers, display real-time shipping rates in your store and estimated delivery times. All are available for Ecwid sellers, of course.

Mistake 10: Overlooking Ecommerce Customer Retention Strategies

No matter how elaborate your customer acquisition strategy is, it won’t mean much if you can’t retain those customers. Ecommerce customer retention strategies should be a top priority for any online retailer.

However, many businesses make the mistake of focusing solely on acquiring new customers and neglecting to invest in keeping their existing ones happy. It is known as the "leaky bucket syndrome" — constantly bringing in new customers but losing them just as quickly.

One way to combat this is by implementing customer loyalty programs that reward repeat purchases and foster a sense of appreciation for your customers. Another must-have strategy is providing exceptional customer service, which includes prompt responses to inquiries or issues, offering refunds or exchanges when necessary, and going above and beyond to ensure customer satisfaction.

Ecwid offers many tools for retaining customers, such as loyalty programs, retargeting ads, automated emails to bring back inactive customers, customer management tools, subscriptions, and more.

Set Your Ecommerce Shop Up for Success with Ecwid

In the retail landscape, having a powerful ecommerce platform to set up your online store and shopping cart has never been more critical.

To achieve your goals, provide a seamless customer experience, and gain access to all the features and benefits you need to sell anywhere, get started with Ecwid today.

The post 10 Mistakes in Creating an Ecommerce Strategy for a Business first appeared on Ecwid | E-Commerce Shopping Cart.

Ecommerce has skyrocketed in the past decade, riding the digital wave to simplify shopping like never before. Industries better shape up or ship out to keep up with this online shopping spree!

Efficient order processing in ecommerce is the key to keeping up with those high customer expectations. To go above and beyond, businesses must dance through a slick order-processing tango.

Here’s everything you need to know about order processing and how to improve it.

What Does Order Processing Mean?

Some may wonder: what does order processing mean? Simply, order processing means accepting, managing, and fulfilling customer orders. It is the series of steps that ensure that an order successfully reaches the customer who made the purchase.

Steps of the Purchase Order Process

Order processing methods vary depending on a business’s type and scale. However, the fundamental steps for order processing remain consistent across online and fulfillment companies. Here is a broad overview of the steps in the purchase order process.

Customer Places an Order

The customer will order a product through an online store, email, or with a company sales representative.

Company Receives the Order

The company will receive the order from the customer, including details like the ordered product, amount, shipping details, payment processing data, and delivery information.

Depending on the company’s size, an individual may receive this order through a sales email, online store, or an order management system. This information must be manually or automatically verified to ensure a properly executed order.

In the case of companies with multiple locations or warehouses, the order management system will determine which location will handle the order.

Inventory Picking

Then comes the picking of the inventory. This is when the specified items and quantity will be collected from the current stock to satisfy the customer’s order.

The picking part of the process needs to be optimized in every way possible for efficient order processing. The sooner the items are allocated and picked out, the faster they can be prepared and sent to the next part of the process: packing.

Order Packing

This is where the items are packed into shipping boxes to prepare to send them off to the customer.

The packing procedure involves weighing the boxes and attaching required labels, address details, and delivery instructions.

Shipping

Following the packing process, the next step involves shipping the order to the customer.

Smaller companies usually send orders directly to customers, while larger enterprises often consolidate and ship batches of orders to nearby locations simultaneously. These orders are then distributed to specific locations as needed, which can help cut costs by reducing the number of shipments sent out.

Customer Notification

After shipping the product, it’s crucial to inform the customer that their order is en route with tracking information. This proactive approach keeps them updated and significantly boosts customer satisfaction.

While these steps vary for different company types and sizes, every step is essential. No matter the company, each step should be followed to ensure a smooth order process.

Tips for Improved Order Processing

Now, let’s discuss some tips for improved order processing. These strategies help streamline the process and make it more efficient for both the company and the customer.

Implement a Clear and Organized System

Having a well-organized system in place for order processing is crucial. It includes having a designated area for storing and organizing orders, creating clear guidelines for employees to follow, and using technologies like barcode scanners to track orders.

Use Automation Tools

Automation is becoming increasingly popular in the business world, and for good reason. Companies can save time and reduce errors by automating certain parts of the order process, such as sending out notifications or generating shipping labels.

Optimize Packaging

Optimizing packaging is one of the areas that is essential to optimize. Whether a company uses premade boxes, templates, or custom packaging, it must have the best dimensions and be cost-effective.

Packaging should be the right size to fit and protect the products while being affordable enough to not cut into the product’s profit too much.

Make Shipping Cost-Effective

Affordable and efficient shipping is critical when handling orders. Shipping costs can really add up fast if not done well. Take a small ecommerce business, for example — they may start shipping products on their own, but as orders grow, so do those costs.

It all adds up when you factor in the time spent grabbing materials like tape and boxes and packing and then the time and fuel to haul shipments to the carrier.

As a business grows and orders pile up, it might make sense to start partnering with a distribution service to handle your shipping load.

To reduce shipping costs, consider purchasing discounted supplies, opting for flat-rate shipping, or using lightweight and custom packaging materials.

Learn more about cutting shipping costs in this article:

Use Order Management Software

During the initial stages of a business, handling a few orders is no big deal. But as traffic picks up, things can get tricky, leading to more errors. That’s when it might be wise to consider getting some top-notch order management software.

Such software can help track incoming and outgoing orders, orders in processing, inventory levels, and much more. It offers more transparency over the order process, improves accuracy, and can help to increase efficiency significantly. It also frees up a considerable amount of staff to focus on other areas and growing the business.

Monitor Order Processing KPIs

Every ecommerce business should determine its key performance indicators (KPIs) throughout its shipping process. These metrics can be monitored to determine the efficacy and efficiency of the order fulfillment process.

The most critical metrics in this regard are the turnaround time for an order, customer satisfaction, fulfillment rate, and accuracy rate.

Let’s learn more about them:

Order turnaround time: The time it takes between an order being placed and delivered to the customer. The lower this number, the more efficient the process is. To improve its turnaround rate, a business can track step times to pinpoint inefficiencies in specific process stages. Accuracy rate: The number or percentage of orders completed and fulfilled without errors. It helps pinpoint common mistakes and find ways to fix them, leading to a much better rate of accurate orders. Customer satisfaction rate: It measures how customers perceive the business and their satisfaction with it. To gather data, ask customers for feedback through surveys or follow-up emails. Customer feedback is vital in pinpointing any issues in the order processing chain, like long delivery times, damaged products, wrong items, or other concerns. Fulfillment rate: The fulfillment rate is the number of orders that have been completed compared to the number that are still in progress. It can help quickly identify problems or inefficiencies in the fulfillment process and identify areas of key demand for specific products. Every business should strive to keep a high fulfillment rate to ensure customers receive their products promptly.

Some businesses may also consider some extra or more detailed metrics. Still, these are the basic ones that should be monitored regularly to ensure a smooth and efficient order fulfillment process.

Stay on Top of Inventory

Another critical aspect of order processing is inventory management. Keeping track of inventory levels is crucial in ensuring timely delivery of products. Businesses need to have enough stock on hand to fulfill orders, but not so much that it becomes a burden on storage space and finances.

A good practice is conducting inventory audits to track stock levels regularly. It can also help identify potential issues such as overstocking or slow-moving products.

Enabling low-stock alerts also helps in staying on top of inventory levels. It allows businesses to restock and fulfill orders without delays.

By staying on top of inventory management, businesses can avoid stockouts and backorders, leading to dissatisfied customers and lost sales.

Keep Customers Informed

Order transparency and status are among the best ways for a company to improve customer satisfaction. Customers should either be regularly informed of their order status or be able to check the company website for information.

It won’t hurt to notify the customer about the following steps:

Order in process: The company has received the order and is currently going through the above steps, such as verification, picking, packing, and preparing to be shipped. Order processed: This means the order is collected, packed, and ready to be shipped. Order shipped: The order has been sent off to the customer. It should also include tracking information so the customer can monitor their order.

This information helps customers feel in control and stay involved with their purchases. It can make all the difference in their satisfaction with the purchase process.

Not only does this contribute to them becoming returning customers, but they will also be more likely to recommend the company to others.

Order Management Made Simple with Ecwid

Running your own ecommerce business can be an incredible journey, and Ecwid is here to help you achieve it. Our ecommerce platform is designed to make running an ecommerce store more effortless than ever.

Ecwid helps you enhance your order processing and smoothly handle the entire order lifecycle, from placing an order to getting it delivered on time.

Here are just some of the tools that make order processing a breeze with Ecwid:

Keep track of orders from all sales channels in one dashboard, with handy filters for payment and fulfillment status, date, and more. Keep your customers informed about their orders by updating the statuses from waiting to processed, shipped, and delivered. Ensure your team stays updated on any status changes to speed up order processing. Stay on top of your inventory with low-stock alerts to keep track of all your products and ensure you never run out of stock. Provide tracking information to your customers so that they know when to expect the order’s arrival. Use other tools for efficient order fulfillment, such as new order alerts, staff notes, comments on orders, and order list export. Buy discounted shipping labels right from the Ecwid admin.

In today’s fast-paced world, having a powerful online store is essential for any business. So why wait? Create a store today and explore Ecwid’s possibilities for your business.

The post 8 Tips to Improve Order Processing in an Online Store first appeared on Ecwid | E-Commerce Shopping Cart.