3 BIG Mistakes E-Commerce Start-ups Make
Have a product or service you think people would want to buy? Setting up an e-commerce store to sell products and services online is one of the hottest new ways to be able to work at home or supplement your income from your job.
Services like Shopify make it super-easy for non-technical people to sell products online, without a huge set-up time or cost.
But for people new to e-commerce, there are some common mistakes made that can make it hard to get sales going.
1. Bad Photography
Shoppers are visual and visitors to your store will be quick to leave if they are greeted with dark, out-of-focus pictures when they come to your front page. If you’re selling products, invest in a small studio set-up. The 12”x12” DUCLUS Portable Photo Studio Booth Box is great for small products and is available on Amazon for under $40. If you’re shooting larger products, the EMART 8.5 x 10 ft Backdrop Studio Lighting Kit is under $195 and will help you get professional results, even when shooting with a phone.
If you’re selling services and you need professional looking photos of people, places or things, there are several affordable stock photography services that let you buy beautiful photos to use on your site for a few dollars. Envato Elements lets you subscribe for only $15 a month for access to thousands of beautiful shots. Shutterstock is a bit more expensive, but lets you buy credits to spend only on the photos you need and offers a selection of millions of photos and illustrations.
Read How to Find Stock Photography that Doesn’t Look Stock here.
2. Ignoring the power of other sales channels like ETSY and EBAY
Having your own e-commerce site is the easiest way to manage your inventory and sales. Shopify add-ons let you sync your products with other sales channels like Etsy or Ebay, exposing your products to millions of shoppers through searches or ads.
Etsy and Ebay also spend money to advertise products on Google Ads so you can tap into their ad dollars to get your listed products to appear in searches without you spending a dime on Google ads.
You’ll need to make sure your products are properly synced and use the right meta tags to appear in searches. Check out our Sales Channel Booster if you’re looking for an easy way to boost your e-commerce site with the power of other sales channels.
3. Missing critical information
Tools like Shopify and WooCommerce make it faster and easier to set up an e-commerce site than ever before. But many people skim over important parts of their set-up like shipping links, sales tax info and inventory control that may doom their site to failure.
Download our E-Commerce Essentials Checklist for some tips on information you need before you start and critical elements you won’t want to leave out of your e-commerce start-up.