The e-commerce industry has really grown over the years. Despite the growing popularity of e-commerce and online shopping, there are still some challenges that they have to deal with on a regular basis—and not just because of marketplace competition.

Here’s our list of 10 most common e-commerce challenges and how to resolve them effectively.

Increasing Website Traffic

How do you increase traffic to your website? Search engine optimization is a great place to start. You can optimize your site by following these steps. Use keywords in your URL, title tags, meta descriptions, and page content for best results.

You may also want to consider social media marketing or pay-per-click advertising as additional strategies for driving traffic to your website.

Generating Sales

Creating an effective strategy for generating sales is a tricky business. Even though there are plenty of strategies, finding the one that works best for your business will have you do some research.

Here are some of the most common challenges that ecommerce companies face when it comes to generating sales, along with some ideas on how you can resolve them.

Maintaining sufficient inventory: Ensuring you have enough inventory is one of the most prevalent e-commerce concerns. It will affect your profits if you run out of products to sell.

 Effective inventory management for any online store plays a vital role, but it can be difficult with the amount of products and variations that are available. Therefore, you can keep your inventory organized by type, size, color and material. You can also use an excel spreadsheet or other organizational tool to keep track of orders and items in stock.

Using inventory management software can be a great step. Upgrading to an inventory management software can help you save time and money, which will allow you to focus on what’s important – growing your business.

 Low conversion rates: Low conversion rate is another challenge for ecommerce owners. Conversion rate simply refers to the ratio of site visitors who make a purchase compared to those who leave without buying anything. Conversion rates vary from industry to industry, but generally range from 2% – 5%. This can be due to a number of reasons like a bad website, poor shipping provider, or just because they’re not sure what they want. Take steps as soon as you notice this problem by figuring out how you can change it. 

Show Off Customer Testimonials and Trust Signals: One of the best ways to generate sales is by leveraging customer testimonials. If you have happy customers, ask them for testimonials that you can post on your site and share on social media. This way, potential customers will be able to see how satisfied other people are with your product or service. For example, if you sell baby food, post a customer review of how much they like the taste of your baby food and how their child seems healthier since they started eating it.

Building Customer Loyalty

Lack of customer loyalty is a common challenge for many e-commerce businesses. The key to building customer loyalty is by constantly interacting with the customer and providing them with personalized information, specifically tailored to their interests. This means communicating via email, social media, or sending text messages on a regular basis. Providing customers with exclusive promotions will in turn increase their loyalty towards the store.

Retaining Customers

Retaining customers should be your number one priority as an e-commerce business owner. Because it will have a positive impact on your business. To retain customers you need to put yourself in their shoes and think about what. They want out of their experience while shopping online at your store.

You can introduce the ecommerce trends such as Buy Now Pay Later, Loyalty Program, and Gift Cards to urge the customers to shop again.

Creating a User-friendly Website

Making a user-friendly website sounds simple, but often the simple things are more complicated than it meets the eye. Brands can work on their website to make it more user-friendly. 

There are certain things that you can do to make your website more user-friendly;

• Give personalized options for customers while they browse through various products. 
•  Make sure your website loads quickly. 
•   Use customer testimonials on your home page, or with different product categories.
• Give visitors an idea of what your website is by adding drop-down menus for easier navigation.
•  Provide high quality images of products on each product page so shoppers know exactly what they are getting before they buy it.

High shopping cart abandonment rate

Shopping cart abandonment rates can go up to 69.82%, depending on the type of product. This is a huge concern for e-commerce businesses. As it means that more than half of their potential customers are walking away before they make a purchase. 

There are many factors that contribute to shopping cart abandonment. But there are also some things you can do about it.

The Checkout Process is Too Long: When it comes to shopping cart abandonment, long checkout process is creating problems. This means that customers are presented with too many steps or forms to fill out when they attempt to make a purchase. Long checkout processes can be intimidating for customers. And many may abandon their carts in frustration or due to lack of time. In order to eliminate this problem, you need to make sure that your payment form is as streamlined as possible. You can remove any unnecessary fields and only collect information that is absolutely necessary.

Extra Costs are Added at Checkout: Extra fees being applied at checkout are leading to shopping cart abandonment. From shipping and handling fees to taxes, customers can become frustrated. If they suddenly find themselves facing additional costs at the final stage of the checkout process. By reducing hidden costs and offering discounts, you can make your checkout process smoother. And ultimately lower your shopping cart abandonment rate.

There are Not Enough Payment Options: Inadequate payment process is another reason for shopping cart abandonment. If customers are unable to find an option that works for them, they will quickly abandon their carts and seek out other retailers. As such, it’s important to ensure that your checkout process provides enough options for customers to choose from.

Handling Returns

Returns are part of doing business online. Even the best merchants will have a percentage of returns that needs to be dealt with. The key is to make sure you’re handling them efficiently in order to keep your customers happy. Below are some of the most common reasons people return items and how you can solve them.

·       The wrong product was shipped – Check your inventory before shipping out an order. If your team is incapable of solving this issue, you have to  integrate a third party shipping company to ensure that your customers get what they ordered online.

·       There is something wrong with my purchase – Make it easy for shoppers to contact customer service if they encounter any issue.

• Customers receive faulty product: If a customer receives a faulty product, it should be replaced as early as possible. The business should set up a quality check department if the problem persists.

Lack of an Effective Payment Gateway

Absence of a strong payment gateway is the most frequent issue e-commerce companies deal with. As a result, the client may quit their shopping if they encounter a faulty payment. The simplest approach to prevent this problem is to do your homework and. Learn what payment channels work best for you. You should also look into adding more payment options. So that you don’t turn away potential buyers who prefer a different type of payment method.

RapidCents is a versatile payment gateway that can easily fit into any type of business. Read more about the flexibility of using RapidCents payment gateway here. 

Providing Excellent Customer Service

A good customer service strategy is an essential part of running a successful ecommerce business. It can make a world of difference for a customer being satisfied with their purchase or not. It’s important that you keep in mind the following for providing excellent customer service:

·       Be responsive: If a customer has a question, answer it quickly. If you don’t have an answer, give them an estimated time frame for. How long it will take for you to get back to them.

·       Resolve issues quickly: The longer customers wait for a solution, the more frustrated they are likely to become.

• Make wait times shorter: Putting customers on hold for a long time is not a good idea. Therefore, you should work on making the wait times shorter so that customers can reach you quickly.

Fraud Protection Tool

Fraud is a pervasive problem for e-commerce companies. The most common type of fraud is credit card fraud, in which fraudsters may use stolen credit cards. Or provide false billing information.

For instance, you can use RapidCents fraud protection tool that alerts you when potentially fraudulent activity occurs on your website. And lets you prevent the transaction before it goes through.

Secure Online Payments with RapidCents

E-commerce can be a difficult business to get started in. The list of 10 common e-commerce challenges and their corresponding solutions should help. You get your new e-commerce business up and running smoothly.

While you fine tune your online business, RapidCents will take care of your online payment gateway. We make sure that all your transactions are secure and provide your customers with an uninterrupted shopping experience.

Have a chat with us to know more.