The e-commerce market is increasing its growth rate, opening more and more online stores in different niches, but the mistakes made by novice entrepreneurs almost remain unchanged.
In this article, I will touch a very narrow segment – the errors in the creation and filling of the site of the online store, it is on this segment I come a lot of questions, because for many people the site is the first step in the world of online business and entrepreneurship.
An expensive and sophisticated online store website
The first mistake and the first extreme – is to try to provide everything and make the most of the high-quality and sophisticated site for a huge amount of money, not understanding the market for e-commerce, or competition, or in general, not knowing much about the site construction and usability.
All this in the vast majority of cases leads to very poor results, in terms of overestimated expectations, which in fact do not pay off. The site is an online storefront, approximately the same as in a retail store made of glass, aluminum profiles and chipboard, only in electronic form.
In itself, it does not sell anything, the client is primarily important product that he buys, its cost, delivery time, and how much will cost this delivery, and all the rest is secondary.
If you have no experience in e-commerce (as a manager/owner), you will hardly be able to foresee everything. And even if you have experience and raise is not the first online store, there is a lot depends on how much pumping your store and on how much data you draw conclusions.
If the annual turnover of your stores is less than at least 50-60 million rubles, then most likely you are very much aware of the surface of the e-commerce market. I’ve been through this myself – when the turnover of my store exceeded 5 million rubles, it seemed to me that I’m already so cool that I can know in advance that it will work on the site, or not. As practice has shown, I overestimated myself very much.
When the turnover exceeded the mark of 25 million, here I caught myself thinking that now I am steamy and know what to do. Alas, after the time when the turnover of the store exceeded 100 million, I again realized that then I did not understand anything, but now …
Then there were 200, 300, 500, 1000 and the picture was basically repeating itself, and I looked back and realized that I had made great progress in my knowledge. And it seems to me that this process is endless. So don’t try to anticipate everything at once and make the site work perfectly.
Especially in different niches there are a lot of their nuances, and what works well in one niche is not the fact that it will work in the other. In general, if there is no great experience behind the shoulders, you do not need to at the first stage to town an expensive and sophisticated site.
Choose just a good platform (CMS-system), and as you gain experience, knowledge and the first profit is already under yourself, it is necessary to finalize it. I’ll tell you a secret, the process of finalizing the site is almost eternal, constantly have to make some adjustments, no matter how big and popular your store is.
The cheapest site or constructor
The second mistake and the second extreme, which rushes beginners – is to make the site as cost-effectively as possible, saving on everything you can.
Usually it is typical of those who have very limited budgets at the start, choosing some free CMS-system without paid and useful additions or even stopping their choice on the budget designer, which managed to read something on the Internet or who advised on any courses to create your own site.
Save – it’s of course good, but to do it wisely, there are things on which to save contraindicated, because in the near future you may face the fact that your chosen solution you do not fit and will have to remake everything on a new, instead of selling and earning.
I do not want to say now that there is no need to use, for example, free CMS-systems, I want to say that they are free, as a rule, only in the “naked” form, ie when there is a basic functionality. Modern online store in addition to the basic functionality is required and additional, which is usually distributed for a fee in the form of plugins and modules.
Also, most of the free CMS basic design templates from the point of view of usability look very awful, and conversion into sales with such leaves much to be desired. In general, by collecting a good site on a free or low-cost solution, the total cost may be higher than you expect.
And it may well turn out that the commercial engine, which has the basic functionality is richer, is already all there, and to deploy the site on its basis is about the same amount. In other words, consider all options, the good thing today is to choose from.
Doing everything on your own, not involving specialists
This is another mistake that is common for novice entrepreneurs who have limited budgets at the start. Often, many try to understand for themselves what kind of CMS-system they choose, trying to screw on the design template, make adjustments, etc.
Sitting days and nights on forums, watching dozens of videos on the Internet, how to make them one way or another, in general, play in webmasters and programmers. A good webmaster or programmer you still do not become, but a lot of time and nerve cells lose. If you want to become an entrepreneur and start earning money on the Internet, then you are absolutely not those skills pumped up…
Today, it is not so expensive to hire a webmaster or programmer, there are a huge number of freelance exchanges, where you can hire people for one-off projects or just for an hour. Specialist will make the work faster and better, because he has already eaten the dog on it, knows where and how to make the right changes, so that somewhere else in the site, something not to break.
If you want to do business, with the hiring of people you will face tightly, whether you want it or not. Therefore, it is better to start getting this skill as soon as possible. And again, do not try to save as much as possible, because the level of the same freelancers is different, and if you choose the cheapest, and the quality will also be cheap, and this does not bring to good usually.
Improvement of poorly studied CMS-system
Frequently it is possible to face that businessmen choose any CMS-system, let even very good and clever, but absolutely do not bother to study its possibilities. And as the store grows up, there are more and more “wanters” for functionality, and the invention of the bike begins.
Begins attracting programmers to write about the same functionality that is already in the database, or is in the form of extensions in the marketplace. Or at all begins sharpening of the skill and inventing of any unique pieces which in reality have very low efficiency, but the owner thinks that it will bring a lot of profit.
As a result, after a while the site engine is so changed that it starts to glitch in some places, or refuses to function properly. Therefore, before you start working on the site, do not be lazy to learn the basic functionality of your CMS-system, and expanded in the form of plugins and modules that can be purchased.
And only after you have understood that in base functionality of the necessary things it is not provided, and also there is no possibility to realise it by means of expansions, only then start to a writing of the ToR for programmers.
Pay little attention to filling the site with goods and content
This error is also common, only it is the next stage after the creation of the site, when you need to fill the site with goods and make information pages “about delivery”, “about payment”, “contacts”, etc. Often entrepreneurs start content on the spot or trust filling freelancers without clear terms of reference (in which key it should be done).
Freelancers, too, do not like to do extra work, so try to do everything as quickly as possible (copy from a competitor and add you). For example, so the table with characteristics and consumer properties of the goods can be copied, but not in the form of properties and characteristics for your CMS, but in the form of text.
Naturally, you will not build filters by such characteristics in the catalogue any more and your potential clients will find it more difficult to search for the goods they need. This naturally affects the usability of the site and the conversion to sales is not the best way.
To then several times not to remake, I recommend that you immediately think through what properties you need to start for the goods, and think about for each product group.
It is also not superfluous to think about how the photos of the goods, descriptions, etc. will be presented, I will not be repeated here, I have already shot a separate video on what to take into account when filling the site content, just review it.