So Do You know of the 5 E-commerce Myths You Absolutely Shouldn’t Believe???
(1) E-commerce is awesome – I can do what I like and be my own boss.
Your customers, not you, decide when you work and how.
Online customers expect your online store to be always on. If they order a product at 11 PM and have questions about delivery, you’d better be there and answer it quickly if you don’t want to lose their business. If you sell overseas, be ready to hire a sales manager who will assist your customers while you’re asleep.
(2) All I need to do is put my products on my site – Google will do the rest.
Google is definitely popular and important, but it’s hardly the only way people look for products to buy online. If you focus solely on Google, you’ll miss a good portion of your potential audience.
Open Alexa’s Top Sites for your country, and you will see where most people spend their time online. Your task is to find ways to reach people on all of those super-popular sites.
(3) My e-commerce store needs a totally cool, unique design that stands out, or I won’t succeed.
If a customer can see a product’s photo, description, and price, and that’s what she’s looking for, she doesn’t really care about the rest of the design.
Awesome designs costs a lot of money. When you’re just starting out, it’s wiser to invest that money in essentials like stock or advertising.
(4) Lots of people visit my e-commerce store, but only a few actually buy anything. My products must be really bad 🙁
The average conversion rate is about 2% for everyone. That’s normal.
Only if your conversion rate is significantly lower should you look into raising it by improving your online store. Sometimes just getting rid of conversion killers can double your conversion rate.
(5) No way can I get lots of customers without a huge marketing budget – I shouldn’t even bother starting without one.
Luckily, the Internet provides lots of opportunities for you to get customers without spending thousands of dollars. Instead of using paid ads to push your product on people who don’t even need it, you can reverse the process: make people want to come to your site for something cool. This is called inbound marketing. If your site has some really awesome content, they will find you, buy your products, and then tell all of their friends about it, bringing you even more customers.
