Everyone in this world aims to be flawless in his/her work. And yet no one in this world is perfect. When I started my own online store, I made a lot of mistakes myself. But I learnt from my mistakes & made sure that I did not repeat them when I continued with the marketing of my online store. In this post, I will highlight mistakes that people who are newly starting their websites commonly make. This is from my own experience & also with the help of people in my field who have had the same mistakes. In short, these are the things that you may want to try and avoid initially.
1.
1. Entering an overcrowded market – This is one of the most common mistakes made by beginners. When people start out looking for products to sell & researching on which market would be the most profitable, they choose to enter overcrowded and extremely competitive markets because of the money involved in it. For example, when I started my first store, I entered the electronics market, the computer market, to be specific.
I did this because I saw that large amounts of money could be made by selling laptops or other similar electronic items. I fell for the money & started marketing my online store & put in a lot of hard work to promote my online store only to find out that my store stood absolutely no chance compared to some of the other “biggies” that had already been in the market from the past decade or so.
So, in a short time, I was exhausted & really disappointed with my results & started thinking negatively about the whole ecommerce business. Now, this can be very bad because self-confidence is the first & the most important thing that is required for a beginner if he/she wants to succeed in this business. Things can be extremely discouraging at first & is, for most beginners. But you have to continue with what you started out non-stop if you want to succeed.
So anyway, I was forced to say to myself that the market I had entered was the wrong one & drop all plans for that & shift to a new market. Now, I am not saying that you should never enter a competitive market. Just postpone your plans until you are a seasoned and an experienced marketer. For example, right now I am in the same electronics market making a lot of money a couple of years after my failed first attempt. So enter a low-competition market. Succeed there; learn a couple of lessons & move on to other, more competitive markets.
2. 2. Keeping in touch with your customers who visited your web store – Another BIG mistake made by beginners. When a customer buys from you, it is vital, extremely vital, that you get his contact details like e-mail address & keep in touch with him. I can’t stress how important it is to build trust with customers who have previously bought from you.
Doing this not only helps to keep them updated about new niches that you will be starting in the future, but also builds trust. When people trust you, they will buy from you. For example, when you are trying to buy a laptop, why do you buy from Dell or HP & not from the new store that just started? It is because you have heard from your trusted friends talking about how great Dell & HP laptops are & so, you want to buy from them.
So, when you are a beginner, & a customer buys from you, it is important to keep in touch with the customer since when he/she bought from you, he was trusting the legibility & its author, you. If you delivered a great product to him, then he is happy with you & your store & may be willing to purchase more from the products that you recommend or stores that you start. For this purpose, I use services like Aweber to send out weekly newsletters to my precious customers. But be careful not to bombard them with e-mails about your products. This doesn’t help either party.
3. Not checking conversion rates of the products you are promoting – This mistake is unusual in that it is the only one that can be corrected the easiest. When you are selecting products from websites like Doba or others, you must make sure that you also take a look at the conversion rate. What is a conversion rate? Well, it is simply the number of visitors to a website that get converted into buyers.
So, that is why you hear many people on the internet who are in the same field, moaning about how they are not converting very well. Since you can’t foresee how your websites will perform, it would at least be a good idea if you checked out if the products that you choose to promote are converting well or not based on its performance by customers who have promoted it before you.
If the product has good conversion rates, then go ahead & start promoting it. Otherwise, promote it if you believe in it, or else move on to another one.
So make sure you don’t repeat the mistakes above & your online store will perform much better.
No comments:
Post a Comment