What mistakes should you avoid when setting up your own online shop?

What should you watch out for when taking your first steps in e-commerce? What should you focus on to improve your website’s visibility? We’ll show you how to avoid common mistakes and grow your online shop.

Neglecting User Experience

Many owners of websites at the start of their business do not realise how important usability combined with an interesting design is. The homepage and the graphic design must capture the interest of your potential customer. You have just less than 5 seconds, to convince them to stay on the website.

Users often struggle to find the owner’s contact details or the sales office. You cannot let them become frustrated because there is no phone number displayed in a prominent place.

There’s nothing more annoying than 404 errors popping up. Make sure that every redirect points to a valid and existing URL.

Users have limited trust in brands that they do not know, therefore ensure that your website is properly secured. The lack of SSL certificates will result in the loss of potential customers. If before the address of the website visitors do not see the padlock icon, they will leave the page and will not make a purchase in your shop.

Not very appealing descriptions of products

Product descriptions are a vital part of your online shop. Customers are unable to see or touch the products, and as a result, they tend to be more wary. Errors in product descriptions or inaccurate representations often lead to customers abandoning their purchase.

Short descriptions may not be sufficient, as the text blocks are too large to be sufficient, as too large blocks of text discourage users. Remember, to find the golden middle ground.

The biggest mistake is copying descriptions from other manufacturers or misrepresentations regarding the products. Duplicating content has a negative impact on the search engine optimisation of your website, whilst omissions usually result in the return of goods and a lack of satisfaction on the part of the customer.

A counterintuitive shopping basket

The most common reason for abandoned shopping trolleys is errors found in them are.

An overly long checkout process and a multi-step shopping basket often do not go hand in hand with a good user experience. Your customer gets frustrated whilst shopping and, as a result, abandons the product and looks for a similar one from a competitor.

Users are put off also by the information about additional costs (e.g. postage) disclosed at the final stage of the shopping basket.

Unattractive delivery and payment methods are another mistake that negatively affects conversion rates.

Finally, bear in mind that not every potential customer wants to register on your website. Provide an option that allows them to make a purchase without having to log in.

Terms and conditions that are unlawful

Every online shop must have terms and conditions. Please ensure that the rules set out in them do not conflict with the law in force in Poland.

Often owners of online shops include in their terms and conditions a clause, which prevents the return of products. This is contrary to consumer law. Furthermore the customer may return the product even if they have opened already its original packaging. In addition, as well as the parcel return parcel, the customer does not incur any additional costs.

For errors in product descriptions or misrepresentations in photographs lies solely with the owner of the shop. Is also liable for any possible damage to the product during transport.

The shop is also liable for the loss of customer data. Although this provision is obvious, often shop owners turn their backs on from responsibility for such situations.

Failure to utilise the potential of the “About us” subpage

When you launch your business and embark on your e-commerce journey, nobody knows your brand. So you need to let users get to know you. Show yourself in the best possible light on the ‘About Us’ page. It’s a big mistake not to make the most of its potential.

“About Us” is where you can include information about your team, describe your brand’s mission, history and philosophy. Without this information, you won’t be able to build customer trust in your company.

No landing page and specified CTA

Customers need to know how to navigate your website. A CTA button that’s hard to spot can be a huge mistake and have a negative impact on conversion rates. Its colour matters too. Avoid red buttons, as they are often associated with warnings or danger. Instead, use a neutral colour that is consistent with the overall design of the website.

The absence of a landing page may cause < a6> your potential customer doesn’t stay long on the website. A landing page is the first page, which the user lands on after interacting with an advert. You can on it feature current promotions, sales or new arrivals. Make the most of its potential in advertising campaigns, branding initiatives, to collect personal data from customers and present the product. This way you’ll encourage the user to stay in your shop.

Errors related to SEO

A common SEO mistake is forgetting the noindex meta tag. What is it? It is added to the HTML code when a page is updated. This prevents the site from appearing in search engine results. Unfortunately, due to an oversight, after updating the page, website owners forget to remove the noindex tag, meaning the page remains invisible.

The above-mentioned copying descriptions of products from manufacturers or failure to use them keywords, has also a negative impact on SEO.

Meta tags are an area where you can easily make mistakes. Firstly, every website displayed in a search engine has its own preview with a description – meta description. This is information about the content of the subpage, which contains no more than 120 characters, including spaces.

Optimising images for SEO, i.e. the so-called alt tags. Search engines cannot see images; to them, they are merely a string of code. It is therefore important to add an alternative description to each image – one that includes the most important keyword or key phrase.

No tracking of website users

There are many tools available for monitoring websites. Installing one of them will make it easier to track traffic on your site and analyse your customers’ behaviour. You’ll have access to statistics that will help you run an effective online marketing campaign. Examples of analytics tools include: Google Analytics, Alexa, Matomo, SimilarWeb and Semstorm. However, failing to use them is a common mistake amongst online shop owners.

Mistakes are inevitable when you’re just starting out in e-commerce. You’ll learn everything in time. Gain knowledge, learn, read specialist articles, take advice from experts, and don’t forget that you learn from your own mistakes.