5 Deadly Online Sales Mistakes

More and more brands everyday are getting onboard with ecommerce and with good reason. According to results from the Study of Online confidence, 96% of Spaniards are as or more confident to shop online than 5 years ago. In fact, 20 million Spaniards purchased a product or service online during the year 2015. This is great news for companies who are going digital!

If you have an online store, however, it is possible that you are missing out on sales opportunities without even knowing it. There are a lot of factors that influence ecommerce success, and it can be difficult to have them all under control from the beginning. For this reason, for you to profit from your business from the word go, I would like to tell you about the 5 deadly online sales mistakes.

5 ways to lose sales: don’t fall into these traps!

Mistake #1: thinking clients will come of their own accord

If your strategy consists in waiting for your clients to find you on Google… you can keep waiting. It will take at least 3 to 6 months from the moment you open your online store until search engines begin to show you in their results, and the competition is very high. If you don’t want to lose online sales, you need to have a digital marketing plan to make yourself known from the first day:

• To profit from your ecommerce from the beginning, I recommend an in-depth investigation of all social ads and SEM options. Thanks to all the targeting possibilities offered by platforms nowadays, it will be fairly easy for you to reach out to precisely the right audience, paying only for the clicks you receive.

• Another good ecommerce strategy is betting on social media marketing. Thanks to options like Twitter’s “Buy Now” button, it is becoming increasingly easy to sell directly on these networks and increase conversions. They are also a great way to generate quality leads and build up your potential client base.
• You can (and should) also invest long-term in a good content marketing strategy.
• No matter which option you choose, you marketing plan should always include the KPIs you will be using to measure your progress.

Mistake #2: Not answering your users quickly (48h max)

For your ecommerce to be successful, you should take your users’ consumption habits on the internet into account. If someone is interested in buying your product, you can be almost certain that they will have compared different places where they can purchase the product to see which one they prefer. If they ask you a specific question about your product or delivery, you’ve almost got them! But that also usually means they are excited to buy the product or/and in a rush, so if you take too long to answer they will most likely decide to purchase from someone else.

The same thing happens when a user asks you about an incident in their purchase request. Speed is key here, for the client not only to feel satisfied with your service and complete their purchase, but to turn them into a loyal and returning customer. Acquiring new clients is much more costly than maintaining those you already have, so be sure to pay attention!

Mistake #3: To force instead of attract (Inbound Marketing)

As human beings, we are the very embodiment of contradiction, and tend to be quite averse to being told what we must or must not do. Many people do not like at all having to register on an infinite amount of pages, especially if they fear we might send them Spam, so make it as easy as possible for them to get the information they need and even finalize a purchase without having to create an account. (In fact, so as to not lose online sales, the simpler the process of buying from your ecommerce, the better.)

There is, however, an exception to this rule: the cases in which you are aiming to obtain leads by offering quality content in exchange for filling in a form. This is an very valid strategy, but remember that before using it you need to gain your potential user’s trust. And do not hesitate to inform them about your emailing policy, to give them some peace of mind.

Mistake #4: Having mistakes on your website

The only thing your users know about you is what they see: your website. If it is full of mistakes or errors, it will not transmit any kind of trust and will very easily lose you a great amount of online sales. So do not forget to run your website through a checklist every now and again and check up on whether or not you are having any of the following problems:

• Your website is too slow or the server crashes. Horrible! If your page takes ages to load or respond or, even worse, crashes halfway through a purchase, the most likely is that your visitors will abandon ship and not return. If you have these kinds of problems, get some technical help to fix them ASAP.

• Your links are faulty or do not redirect to where they should. A fatal mistake for user experience that can also harm your SEO. Be sure to review all your page’s links from time to time and fix whichever ones may be experiencing problems.

• You don’t have any conversion or visitor pixels. In order to optimize your results, you need to know what is going on at every and any moment in time. Not having conversion pixels on your page is like working with your hands tied behind your back. Fix it right away!

• Your metadescriptions and photos are tacky and/or identical to your competition’s. If your want to become your sector’s favorite ecommerce option, you will have to stand out from the crowd, so it is worth investing time and effort in maintaining your metadescriptions and images. As you already know, first impressions are key.

• The H1s, H2s, H3s, H4s and other SEO matters are not properly defined. SEO is a long-term investment but is crucial for the future of your ecommerce.

Mistake #5: Not being responsive.

Did you know that mobile traffic has already overtaken that from desktop? There is still a certain amount of resistance towards online purchasing from smartphones, but these devices are used frequently in the investigation and comparison phases. So, if you do not want to lose online sales, your website should be able to be viewed in perfection from desktops, smartphones and tablets alike. And the same goes for your email marketing templates.

These are all of my recommendations so far, but if you would like some help in avoiding these deadly mistakes, remember that we are always available here at Cyberclick to help you out and avoid losing online sales! :)