5 Mistakes to Avoid When Promoting Your Online Store

Promoting an online store can be an exhausting and frustrating activity considering the significant effort that a business must make nowadays to make itself visible. 

It is not the same internet from 10 years ago when only a handful of companies had an online presence. Instead, you’ll find yourself competing with top rivals who may have a higher budget and more years in business.

However, this does not mean that you cannot successfully promote your online store. Since most of the literature points to what you SHOULD do, the following article highlights 5 things store owners SHOULD NOT do when promoting their online businesses.

#1 – Trying to learn by yourself

Getting anything done by yourself will always be more difficult than letting someone teach you. This applies to bowling, investing, and building an online store in the same way.

To trim the length of your learning curve, store owners can rely on forums where more experienced and successful entrepreneurs share their journey when building a Shopify store or e-commerce business.

Their anecdotes will usually help you in avoiding costly and frustrating mistakes.

#2 – Spending too much on paid advertising

Paid advertising can be a great tool to ramp up your sales. However, money must be invested wisely as it often takes time to grab a hold of what kind of ads work and which audience is the one that converts the most.

New store owners tend to make the mistake of pouring thousands of dollars into paid ads without first getting to know their buyer persona. 

For most businesses, it takes time to understand the kind of audience that is interested in their product. For this reason, it is often a better idea to first drive organic traffic to your store to get to know your prospective buyers first before spending a lot of money in a/b testing via paid ads.

#3 – Lack of a customer retention strategy

According to data from Shopify, most well-established e-commerce businesses generate over 60% of their sales from existing customers. This statistic emphasizes the importance of having a customer retention strategy.

Most beginners tend to focus on customer acquisition during the early stages of the business and that makes sense as the company needs to generate money from somewhere. 

However, investing in customer acquisition without first conceiving a customer retention strategy will reduce the chances of building a sustainable store. The reason for this is that those who buy the first time will not have any incentive to come back.

#4 – Poor product descriptions

Product descriptions are the e-commerce version of an elevator pitch. Your customer has now clicked on the product and is actively considering the possibility of buying it and your product description can make all the difference if it carefully explains every single detail the customer wants and need to know to complete his purchase.

Since you won’t have the opportunity to talk to your online customers most of the time, your product descriptions must be as detailed and accurate as possible. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and imagine what kind of questions they may have.

How long will it take to get the product? Is there a warranty? Is this company reliable? Does this product fit my need?

Those are some of the question marks that will come to mind for consumers and your product description must address those doubts to increase the odds of converting each prospective customer.

#5 – Fully dehumanizing the customer’s experience

Automation is great for online businesses. It reduces costs, improves the customer’s experience, and it expedites the checkout process. However, automation should not lead to the dehumanization of your store.

For some customers, having access to someone who can clarify their doubts is as important as the price of the item. In fact, they may refuse to buy it despite the discount if nobody is willing to help them during the process.

Neil Patel, a well-known digital marketing guru, says that any website that has a conversion rate lower than 2% should consider adding a live chat feature to increase conversions immediately.

Bottom line

You have probably come across a lot of articles that talk about what you should do when building an online store. Since this article focused on what you SHOULD not do, we expect that you can learn from these typical mistakes to avoid them and increase the odds of successfully promoting your online store.