6 Ecommerce Pitfalls to Avoid
Supplements have become extremely popular to sell online within the last few years and for good reason. Many more people are turning to the web to get their supply of supplements. After all the web is a convenient place for consumers to do research, read reviews and find just about any supplement they could ever want.
With so many supplement companies out there selling online you want to set yourself apart but for those new to ecommerce it can be easy to stand out in the wrong way.
Here are six ecommerce pitfalls to avoid.
1. Bad Website Design
The design of your website is one of the biggest factors that customers take into account when determining trustworthiness. It’s also a reflection of your brand. Your brand and trustworthiness are both extremely critical for a successful ecommerce supplement business.
It is essential that you are able to communicate your trustworthiness to customers because of the nature of supplements to begin with. When you’re asking a customer to just trust that you’re providing them a safe product you need to give them a reason to trust you.
If your website looks cheap then there’s a good chance visitors to your site will think that your supplements are just as bad in quality as your website.
The other factor is that your website should reflect your brand. There is a lot of competition in the supplement industry and branding and design are one of the few things that can set you apart from the rest. Creating a well designed website and overall brand can really draw customers in.
Moral of the story: invest in a well designed website. Hire are professional if you need to. Your website design really isn’t a place to scrimp and save money.
2. Poor Site Navigation
Developing an easy to use website navigation is key to creating a website that is welcoming. There’s no need to get creative here or reinvent the wheel. It’s all about keeping things simple and easy to get to.
When you think about your ecommerce website like an actual store it seems obvious that you should have a simple, well-organized navigation. If you had a physical store location that was messy, poorly labeled and disorganized customers would have a terrible experience. They might even just turn right back around without even shopping.
Make sure that visitors to your site can easily access crucial information. Ensuring that there is a path to every page will help with this. Pages that you want all visitors to have access to should be connected somehow to the navigation. Free floating pages are a recipe for disaster.
3. Sub-Par Product Pages
Running an ecommerce business can be complicated. There are so many things to get done that it can seem like the best solution is to just do the bare minimum. While this is tempting doing the bare minimum won’t help you find the kind of success that you’re looking for.
Many it’s product pages that feel the brunt of this bare minimum mentality. Skimpy product descriptions, low-quality images and a lack of info can hurt your ecommerce site in a number of ways.
Creating high-quality product pages on the other hand can make a big difference in the success of your online business. When you put time and effort into beefing up your product pages you can expect to see improved search traffic and a higher conversion rate. Be sure to provide all the answers and information that you can.
Just be careful about making any kinds of crazy claims. The supplement industry is regulated to what you can and can’t say about supplements. It’s important that you study this and make sure that you don’t cross the line.
4. Lack of Shipping Options
In the era of Amazon people expect shipping options and it’s something that all ecommerce business owners simply have to deal with. Amazon Prime opened a Pandora’s box for all of ecommerce. Because of a customer’s ability to ship just about anything for free in two days they pretty much expect that everywhere.
While you don’t NEED to offer free two-day shipping to compete it’s something you’re going to have to keep in mind as you determine what shipping options you’re going to offer. It’s pretty standard now to offer at least a few different shipping options.
Things get even more competitive in the supplement industry. Unless you’ve truly differentiated yourself from your competition a potential customer might jump ship for better shipping if they can find the same or similar product elsewhere.
5. Non-Mobile Friendly Site
Another modern standard of ecommerce is having a mobile friendly website. A major portion of all ecommerce purchases are now made on mobile. People are shopping and buying on mobile now more than ever. For some, their phones are their computers, it is their link to the world wide web.
Customers do not have the patience for non-mobile friendly ecommerce stores. Images not sizing correctly, poorly designed pages, buttons that are too small to click, these are all major turn offs that will have visitors turning to run for the hills.
Checking the mobile friendliness of your ecommerce store is easy. Google offers a free mobile friendly website test that you can check out here. It’s also a good idea to double check any changes you make to the site on your mobile phone to make sure everything looks ok.
6. Crappy Products
One of the worst pitfalls that you can give into is selling crappy products. Right now there are a lot of ecommerce business out there that think they can sell anything and turn a profit. While this might work for a little while it’s a terrible long term strategy.
Selling supplements online has become hugely popular but some sellers seek out the cheapest product possible because they think they can turn a better profit that way. While this might work for some people for some times, eventually customers get wise to the poor quality and sales dry up. Hocking crappy supplements online also gives the industry a bad rep making it harder for everyone.
When you invest a little more in a good-quality supplements retaining customers and gaining new customers becomes much easier. Great supplements keep existing customers coming back again and again. In addition happy customers leave good reviews and good reviews draw in more new customers.
The question is where do you find good-quality supplements to sell?
At Quality Supplement Manufacturing, we’ve got your back! We’re a one-stop-shop for all your supplement manufacturing needs. We specialize in custom supplement manufacturing but we also offer over 100 private label supplements for you to choose from.
We’re a GMP certified, FDA registered facility and we pride ourselves on creating top quality supplements and meeting market and customer demands.
