Top Ecommerce Challenges To Come Across Now
With a wide-spread much advancement in technology and digitization, businesses have transformed their mode of operation. Most e-commerce companies now offer multiple goods and services on a single platform, accessible through your mobile or desktop. Customers can sit back at their homes, sip a cup of coffee in their pajamas, and make purchases.
However, a global shift took place in 2020 towards the digital sector. With so many people stuck at home, they have adopted this lifestyle and made themselves comfortable with online shopping. Experts have predicted that 95% of purchases will be made on online platforms by 2040. Another statistic shows that e-commerce sales have surpassed the projections of $600 billion by 2019.
Apart from all those revenues and the easy-purchase approach, there are some unique e-commerce challenges faced by the companies. Not every e-commerce company is making progress like Amazon, as 85% of their sellers stay profitable. There can be challenges varying from small to big for the e-commerce companies that stand between you and your success.
Here are some top e-commerce challenges that you will come across now, but for your e-commerce progress, the solutions are discussed too.
- Digital Or Online Identity Verification
Firstly, use automation in your website to detect any fake email or phone numbers. Also, use this automation to verify their zip codes with the city/state.
For visitors opting for cash on delivery, you can make calls to them to validate and verify their given address of delivery.
Update your website with an automated verification link system at the time of sign-in by your customer. You can send this link to your customers via SMS or email.
- Customer Experience
- Customer Retention
- Competition And Its Analysis
You have to find out their strategies to generate leads, customer engagement, types of products for sale, etc.
You have to stand out from the competition by improving your website performance and enhancing your user experience.
You have to offer products and services that are relevant to the preference of your customers. You can remove the items that have become outdated.
About 61% of customers in the US make purchases based on the recommendations on blog posts. You can use these stats for your e-commerce benefits. Use compelling blogs to promote your business and brand.
You can spend more time investing in promotional offers to enhance your website presence, which attracts more customers.
Lastly, focus on your customer's experience and customer loyalty to maintain your client base and boost your revenue.
- Abandoning Of Shopping Cart Items
You can improve and enhance your checkout design on the website with a few easy-to-follow steps and no signs of bugs.
Try to redesign your website with no unnecessary form-filling procedure. You can incorporate chatbots and live chat to reduce your number of shopping cart abandonment.
You can combine the live chat feature along with your visitor's segmentation to reach out to your website visitors in their key stages of navigation and keep them engaged to make purchases.
You can set a team with the use of visual tools to address the concerns of your customers while proceeding with the checkout. You can help your customers to create an account by initiating a co-browsing session.
- Refund Policies And Return of Products
- Technological Advancement for Ecommerce
If there is a visitor on your e-commerce website who signs up, you will have to be certain about the authenticity of that visitor. You have to confirm that the visitor is a legit person who wants to make a purchase and not any AI, fraud, or bot. This will help your e-commerce business to avoid fraudulent activities that lead to potential losses in cases of cash on delivery. You can prevent such fraud with the online identity verification of the person who wants to buy. There are various ways to incorporate the verification of information of your website visitor, such as the use of artificial intelligence, one-time-password, two-factor authentication, etc.
So, overcome this e-commerce challenge and avail your service to authentic customers.
With so much interconnection of technology, customers can make purchases from your e-commerce business through multiple touchpoints. The visitors can visit your e-commerce website, send you messages on social media platforms, communicate with your chatbots, and purchase from your store.
If you want to outrun your competitors, then adopting the omni-channel strategy for your e-commerce is essential. With up-to-date technology and audience engagement tools, your e-commerce business can serve the purpose of your customers through all platforms and channels.
The solution for this strategy is quite simple.
You have to determine the primary channels that most visitors prefer for your e-commerce business. You will have to optimize, integrate and upgrade those channels with personalized communication mediums for your channels. You must ensure a team of customer support services to communicate with your customers over their preferred e-commerce channels such as phone, email, in-app messaging, etc.
You can use tools like users' profiles to keep track of your customers' conversations and respond to their queries contextually. In addition, you can clear call-to-action on your website for knowing your customer's desired actions.
So, with retail personalization, you will improve your customer experience overall e-commerce channels and enjoy better outcomes.
Customer loyalty for your e-commerce website is significant. If you want to acquire new customers for making purchases from your online website, it will cost you five times more than acquiring your current customer. Moreover, the success rate of making sales to your existing customer is far more than making sales to a new customer.
The most motivating statistic is that a simple 5% boost in your customer retention can increase your revenue from 25% to 95%. So, you know how crucial it is to maintain your customer loyalty or retention for your e-commerce business. But how to do so? Well, the solution can be in the form of different methods.
As said by Shep Hyken, 'Customer service is what you and your e-commerce business provide. Customer loyalty is what you get from that service.'
First, you have to prioritize keeping your customers satisfied and happy with your website experience. You can optimize your website, make it mobile-friendly, upgrade AI, incorporate easy navigation panels, use chatbots, and so on.
You will have to provide excellent customer service even after your product purchase. You can be involved with their reviews about the product and assist with any issues 24/7.
You can use social media, emails, blog posts, and messaging to stay in touch with your customer. Moreover, you can allow gift cards, special coupons, or discounts for your new products or sales promotions for being a loyal customer. These loyalty programs will help you to maintain retention for the long run.
Having online competitors is one of the biggest challenges of e-commerce businesses. You will find other e-commerce companies to offer the same products and services as you, but how do you differentiate yourself from them? Despite so many competitions, Amazon made 44% of the overall e-commerce sale in the US in 2017. If they can, why can't you? Well, the solution is a quite simple analysis of your competitor's strategy.
Whether you are a large-scale or small-sized e-commerce company, shopping cart abandonment remains one of the biggest challenges in this industry. The average worldwide rate for cart abandonment in e-commerce is about 75.6%. Slow-loading of sites and registration prompts for transactions have increased cart abandonment by 75%. One of the primary reasons for this abandonment is the monotonous and big-filled process for checkout. If your e-commerce website is facing similar issues, you will need an effective solution.
According to the latest stats from Invespcro, about 92% of customers will buy again if your e-commerce product return policy is easy, whereas 79% of customers prefer websites with a free return shipping policy.
'About 60% or more online shoppers prefer to check for the website's return policy prior to making any purchase', stated ComScore.
So, if your e-commerce business has a no return or refund policy, you will need to work on it. These claims can make your potential customers nervous about making purchase decisions. Most customers want the liberty to make mistakes without costing them. So, what can be the solution then?
You will have to make a strategy for your return and refund policy. For instance, you can have a return policy for your product till 25 days from your customer's purchase. These measures can help you to establish customer satisfaction with flexible refund and return policies. They will trust your brand and make further purchases.
Lack of upgrades in e-commerce technology can be a big challenge for you and many other businesses. It is important to keep your e-commerce channels and website updated with the latest technology and artificial intelligence to boost your revenue and growth.
AI brand analytics and data visualization will help you overcome the multiple risks facing your e-commerce business. The best solution to these challenges is redesigning your website with a visual AI platform from top agencies. You can use tools like image recognition and AI based data analytics and BI to gather customer intelligence and prosper your business growth.
So, look out for these challenges in your e-commerce business, get ready to mitigate risks with a capable brand analytics solution like Wersel, and get a step closer to your e-commerce success.
