Last Updated on: 8th November 2024, 10:08 am
Ecommerce is a popular online business and is expected to become universal. There is a tremendous scope of growth for online sellers, however, it does bring a lot of challenges. Especially when everyone is rushing online, it becomes difficult to move ahead of the crowd or during the off-season.
Top 11 Challenges Faced by Ecommerce Startup:
Here are the challenges every eCommerce startup shall face.
1. Strong market competition:-
There are too many eCommerce places dominating in every niche. The primary challenge of an eCommerce startup is finding a product that is in large demand among the public. But with a limited number of sellers.
2. High advertising cost:
To highlight their own eCommerce store, newcomers spend a lot on advertisements. Acquiring new customers turns out to impose a burden on their pockets.
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3. Logistics and supply:
It is difficult to find a reliable logistics service in the region, especially in small countries. Again, logistics and supply are pricey for startups.
4. Technologically advanced:
It is about changing a mindset right you are not a selling company. You are really now a technological company right it’s the 21st century.
You need to be technologically advanced right you cannot be in e-commerce and not have known good websites it’s you cannot be not available on social media you need to be present you need to have a good technological background.
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Changing the mindset right off of you knowing how to run the business is the key here. A lot of companies still are in let’s say real word are not digitalized right if you’re not digitalized.
You really missed out you know half of the population is online and shopping online right.
So that’s a huge market so it’s changing this mindset. It is the key.
5. Understanding the Market:
The topic of positioning and so what are you standing for in the market. And once you have this and I think it’s a lot about execution and that’s of course a broader topic. Let’s say very clear on what do you want to do yourself and what actually is done by a supply of you and so I think here you need to be you need to find the best set up for your business and then it’s let’s say connect these individual pieces seamlessly together to be fast to be cost-efficient and you’ll be able to have a good quality for your customers.
6. Customer Loyalty:
Customer loyalty is the biggest challenge and this goes back to again the impersonality of the internet. The anonymity of the Internet just like the retailers don’t necessarily know their customers. The customers don’t know their retailers
Moreover, a lot of people work on brand personality so your brand has to become a personality.
You have to sort of have one voice in everything you do and everything you speak with and you also just need to really work on customer engagement.
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Read moreMoreover, only 1% of website traffic converts so you’ve got to keep that 1% because that 99% who haven’t converted. Don’t worry about them keeping that 1% who converts so customer loyalty gets them coming back.
Email marketing is a great way to get people to email marketing is a great way to get customers.
Further, engage it’s a great way to lead nurture so that fighting that impersonality internet. It is the biggest challenge Again here it’s always going to revolve around the customer.
7. Satisfy Customers:
So how is the best way that you can satisfy your customer? That’s always going to be the bottom line reach the things of their interest like that.
So that’s probably the most challenging thing is being able to even predict what they want before they even know it. So that’s definitely the biggest challenge.
8. Stay Ahead of Big Players:
So as in every fast-growing industry, you are under constant pressure to develop and grow.
So there are the big guys like Amazon who are pushing for better and better logistics services, faster delivery times, easier returns and you have to stay ahead of that and it’s not only for logistics.
Moreover, you have to have better pictures better product descriptions better ways to reach your customers via marketing constant pressure.
9. Connecting with Customers:
The biggest challenges ultimately are connecting your customers to the products and that encompasses a lot but ultimately what’s the biggest challenge. Here, it is to make sure that you’re speaking their language when they come in.
And they want to look for something or they’re just browsing that you’re able to connect with what they want.
Without much work this could be through better search this could be through personalization. This could be through sort of push marketing like email newsletters and all that you want to learn as much as you can about your customers in aggregates and your customers individually as well.
So that you’re providing them essentially a conversation they come into the store. And they feel like it’s very tailored to them.
10. Returns & Logistics:
Returns and logistics are probably two of the biggest challenges.
Because consumer behavior has really changed people want to have free returns.
People know that they want this thing now so they just buy that and have it delivered. Fifteen minutes later they go into the same website.
They want to have something else and they order that and then they or the next thing right which means that the basket sizes are generally in the whole business or shrinking. But the cost for sending out the packages is the same.
Hence there is a big challenge there to create bigger basket sizes and decrease the number of returns.
11. Complexity:
It’s the complexity across all of the levels starting from the logistics part the pricing is competitive in that of course you know requires so much efficiency in in in in all on all levels and then it’s only not only about efficiency but then again as you need an experience you need a customer experience.
So how do you create an experience when you always need to be efficient and that country may contradict in one way or the other.
However, the main complexity is, it is super complex on all levels, and getting this or orchestrated with different that’s saying or to go orthogonal goals. It s something that’s really hard to manage.
Final Words:
There is not only one biggest challenge there are a lot of different challenges you have to be aware of when you start with it and you have to build up processes because processes and the analog world can be the same but most of them are not a problem. Moreover, it works perfectly in the digital world.
So processes are really a big challenge for some companies and you have to take them into account.
You have to get your complete company your colleagues on your way into e-commerce with you and now some companies are struggling with product aid or content.
And you have to provide content as well for an even foreign b2b e-commerce shop and accurate content and product data are even more important in the digital world than it was before in the analog world with printed catalogs or something like that.
So there are a lot of challenges you have to be aware. And here’s one of the biggest it is depending on the company where they stand and where they start from you.