5 Ecommerce Mistakes Small Businesses Make

Building a small business web site is by no means easy. However, there are gaps that many novices make that are clearly avoidable. Here is a list of five all too common errors that newbies make when putting together new web sites.

1. Making decisions on the fly without testing them first. Developing a web site can seem like a heady and urgent process. But if you don’t take the time to highlight the weaknesses of your web site before you start marketing it, you may lose the initial heat you get from your Pay Per Click and SEO ad campaigns. What’s more, the costly “lock in” decisions you make may make it more difficult to recoup an ROI on your work.

2. Failing to provide adequate service to your clients. If your customers don’t have feedback forums, IM chat, toll free hotlines, or email help available to them, they may abandon your web site and / or even tell their friends and associates not to use your services. While you don’t have to spend a small fortune remedying every customer concern that comes through the pipeline, you should keep an eye on trends and actively solicit customer criticism as well as praise. When angry or jilted customers get adept responses from top web site management, they can be transformed into allies.

3. Failing to update content. The Internet is a mobile and flexible medium. Repeat customers want to be dazzled not just by a smartly put together web site but also by a web site that’s up to the minute with information, catalog items, and special sales tailored to the season. Stale content can also give the impression that you’ve abandoned your web venture or you’ve given up on certain security measures.

4. Creating hard to download web site features. Just because you have a funny flash video or a really clever picture that encapsulates some aspect of your business doesn’t mean that you need to post these features on your homepage. Set up separate landing pages for your ancillary multimedia features, so that your primary homepage loads quickly. Otherwise, many customers will leave your web site before it finishes loading.

5. Improper preparation for long-term expansion. You want your web site to grow and expand into new markets. But if you build your web site without upwardly mobile flexibility in mind, you may have to scuttle large parts of your ecommerce operation to adapt to a surge in client orders and new catalog inclusions. Create a vision and an architecture that encourages growth rather than encourages the status quo.

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