13 eCommerce Mistakes To Avoid in 2025

The eCommerce business globally is expanding at a massive rate. It is one of the best markets to tap into as data predicts that by the end of 2025, global eCommerce sales will reach $5.4 trillion. 

More and more people are switching to buying online instead of visiting their local brick-and-mortar stores. However, you would be surprised at how much effort it takes to take an e-commerce site and get it off the ground. One of the crucial aspect for succeeding is having an understanding of ecommerce mistakes to avoid.

Most people think that an eCommerce store will generate revenue once they start marketing it. While, setting up an e-commerce store is one of the most popular ways of making money online, building it into a successful business is a challenging task.

There are a lot of good options to start with. There’s Shopify, BigCommerce and WooCommerce if you are using WordPress to build your store. With a fast-performing WordPress theme, you have total control over the customization of your eCommerce store.

Besides building a user-friendly store, there are so many other factors that need to be taken into account. So, in order to stay ahead of the competition, you need to understand the nuances of selling online. 

Sure, there will be a trial and error method on the way to building an online business, but without being aware of the e-commerce mistakes, it is easy to repeat them over and over again! 

Here’s a list of some common e-commerce marketing mistakes that you might be making and their solutions along the way!

1. Not harnessing the power of social proof 

It might sound abstract, but we experience this concept of eCommerce mistakes on a daily basis. Social proof is the idea that a customer will adapt to a behaviour according to what other people are doing. You are most likely to go to a restaurant with the highest views or ratings, won’t you? Many businesses fail to utilise this powerful lead magnet to their advantage. There are as many as dozens of social proofs you can choose from with each having a different impact on your website sales performance. 

Adding a Social Proof to your website shows a vote of confidence in the product value. Whether it is a celebrity endorsement, a review on a third party website or adding a sales pop up social proof to display what other customers bought or added to their carts, these create a positive impact from the actual users. 

2. Not understanding your target audience

The most important and crucial part of selling a product online is to understand who you are selling to. One of the major eCommerce mistakes that budding entrepreneurs do is try to appeal to everyone.

Take an example of the game of darts. You are supposed to aim in order to hit the board. When you hit the board, you score. BUT if your aim is very good you hit the bull’s eye. Voila! Likewise, defining a target audience is one of the most important strategies to hit the bull’s eye. A target audience will help you shape the language or design of your website that will truly resonate with your customers. 

3. Neglecting the potential of Photo and Video Gallery 

Your website can lose visual appeal by not adding images or a video gallery to it. It is better to show than tell. The images act as the story tellers and you are losing out on a huge chunk of digital storytelling if you haven’t already showcased photos in the highest quality online.

The image gallery also provides some SEO benefits when you label them properly and search-friendly metadata or descriptions. With a gallery on your website, you’ll get more eyes on the website than ever. 

4. Choosing the wrong platform

Your eCommerce platform can truly make or break your business. Choosing the wrong eCommerce platform will affect your website’s SEO that can lead to a range of issues like revenue loss, lower conversions, traffic reduction, security issues, poor design, and much more. This is one of the most common ecommerce marketing mistakes that you can avoid. Make sure you take the time to choose the right platform for your eCommerce website.  A proper eCommerce platform must have the following SEO built-in features.

• Rapid Load Time
• Mobile Optimized 
• Google Indexing 
• Offer structure data
• Have default meta tags

You would also need some addons like WooCommerce Plugins to enhance the performance of your online store.

5. Ignoring the importance of a good Web Host

Businesses often fail to choose a host that is secure and compliant with the highest international standards. Web hosting lets you store content on your website. You need to make sure that when you publish your content, it is safe and stored on secure servers all around the world. This makes sure that the site loads faster for the visitors from all parts of the world. 

6. Non-availability of Live Support

Live chat is one of the best tools that many online businesses are utilizing on their websites, because it converts. Adding a Live Chat helps real people. Responding faster to a lead or a potential customer can make or break your revenue. 

Here’s simple formula Responding faster = more leads. Not adding a chatterbox is a mistake particularly observed in the online business platforms. 

7. Missing Custom Domain Name

Another one of the common ecommerce mistakes is that entrepreneurs are under the impression that owning a domain is enough. Wrong! One should get a personalized domain name that resonates with the background of your website. It is one of the best SEO practices and will also give an edge over your competitors. The most important thing that you must keep in while choosing a domain name is that it must be short and catchy so that a visitor identifies what your website is about instantly.

8. Not Having Proper Analytics Installed

Not having analytics installed for your website means you are missing out on the valuable insights of your strengths and weaknesses. Analytics allow you to quantify the effects of making a change to your marketing strategy, and that’s invaluable to the process of improving and optimizing online marketing campaigns.  You can even watch your visitors’ screen recordings with this free plugin to monitor your site’s performance by analyzing how your visitors interact with your site, giving you insight into their behavior, and also helps you to optimize conversions.

9. Cluttered and crowded look

Often website owners make the mistake of wanting so many elements on their webpage, and at the same time leaving no room for a user’s eye to breathe. The visitor will get confused seeing so many elements at the same time and won’t explore your site. 

A good layout keeps users on the website and makes important information easily accessible to the users. Your website template must be clean and bold, instead of being cluttered. Mundane websites make the users bounce off easily before you even get the chance of what you are all about. 

10. Limited Payment Methods

Your entire business revolves around generating revenue, and that will only happen when you get paid. When you start your online business your payment gateway must be the top priority. Most business owners make the mistake of not having a proper payment processor on their website. In order to have a fully functional eCommerce website you need to have multiple online payment methods that will serve the customers from any location. 

Your payment method must have different options that can appeal to all the customers having different preferences such as Credit Card, PayPal and Manual (offline) payments.

11. Bland Product Pages 

Your product page is the only opportunity to wow the customers with what you have to offer. Create an unimpressive page and you will find it difficult to convert your visitors. Digital products are intangible and their only selling point is when they have visual appeal, which comes from stunning product pages, layout designs and proper product descriptions. An eCommerce website must have a product page that showcase the product in the following ways: 

• Easy filtering options to make it easy for shoppers to find what they are looking for
• Product galleries to encourage shoppers to buy more 
• Must have a product widget that promotes a product on any page of the website

12. Not optimizing the checkout flow

Most of the websites lose customers on the checkout as they haven’t optimized their checkout flow process. According to geckoboard.com, the average shopping cart abandonment rate is 68.81% with the most recent study showing 74.52%. Due to this, businesses are losing billions of dollars in lost sales, but they don’t have to. When the retailers optimize their checkout page recovering even a few abandoned carts can make a huge difference. Here are a few ways you can optimize your checkout page;

• Adding Promo codes at the checkout
• Add a pay button and allow shoppers to checkout in just one click. 
• Customizing your cart page with different text, buttons and background colors. 
• Add a mini cart so they can quickly edit the order if they want. 

Customizing your checkout page will make the whole process of purchasing less hassle free, thus higher chance of conversions. If you avoid these ecommerce mistakes, you can see the ball rolling in your ecommerce game.

13. Not exploring Dropshipping

Dropshipping is basically an order fulfillment method when the vendors fulfill an order from a third party and ships them directly to the customers. Website owners often pass on this opportunity to earn some extra income. Dropshipping requires low startup cost and inventory cost. It gives you the opportunity to expand your business and your customer base. With the right type of platform you can start your dropshipping business in no time.

Wrapping up

As it is said by Beth Comstock, “You can’t sell anything if you can’t tell anything,” marketing is about how much you understand your audience. Understand these common ecommerce mistakes and make an effort to avoid them. Bear these in mind when you come up with a strategy for your online business.

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