10 Mistakes in Creating an Ecommerce Strategy for a Business

14 min read

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.

Sell online

With Ecwid Ecommerce, you can easily sell anywhere, to anyone — across the internet and around the world.

Get started

Preparing to Launch

Apr 16, 2024

About the author

Anastasia Prokofieva is a content writer at Ecwid. She writes about online marketing and promotion to make entrepreneurs’ daily routine easier and more rewarding. She also has a soft spot for cats, chocolate, and making kombucha at home.