- The bulk of the budget is for creating, not advertising
- First, development, and then promotion
- The main thing is that it was a good design
- Do it as a competitor
- Do it so that we like our director
- For what overpay our system administrator will do everything
- Unique content is not necessary, we will take on the website of the supplier
- Savings on hosting
- Not enough ice magnets
- Do not take into account regional featuresНе враховувати регіональні особливості
1. The bulk of the budget is for creating, not advertising
Many of the cases with which I managed to come across in my practice were as follows. Entrepreneurs wanted to advertise, and they were surprised that the budget for promotion may be more than a month than the site is fully charged. They thought that the main thing was to make a site (how to open a retail store), and traffic would go by itself. But there they were not waiting for a pleasant surprise. So, first, find out how much SEO, contextual advertising, SMM, or other kind of advertising for your online store will cost, and then the cost of developing it.
2. First, development, and then promotion
This is probably the most common and dangerous mistake for entrepreneurs who want to open their store. In our experience, when the development was completed and the time has come for advertising, and especially for SEO promotion. Often it turned out that upgrading such a store was more expensive than making a new one! They were in shock from such a situation and did not take into account at the stage of development of structure, functionality, convenience, speed and other moments. It will be necessary to either seriously complete it or it happened, and that is what to do new. Remember the correct order, the first promotion, and then the development!
3. The main thing is that it was a good design
I have personally seen hundreds of beautiful sites that can not sell anything at all, and that's just about commercial sites. The most beautiful and spectacular sites can be made on the technology of flash (from the English version), but they are not suitable for promotion in search engines. And for online stores this is usually the main traffic channel! Hence the conclusion
There are more important things than design beauty!
Namely:
- Usability — ease of use;
- functional for SEO and other advertising channels;
- tools for filling and managing;
- automation of business processes;
- integration with external accounting systems, CRM, etc.
4. Do it both on the Rosette
Most entrepreneurs want to balance on the best and it is logical. But that does not mean that big online stores are right for you. There are a number of reasons for this. The first thing to do such a store is and the appropriate budget. It is unlikely that many have such money. Second, if you have a specialized store (most entrepreneurs are), then the store should be the same. It's best to choose 10-20 top stores from your niche and see how they are made. By the third, you can not afford such advertisements for budgets and channels as large e-commerce projects. For example, advertise on TV immediately.
5. Do it so that we like our director
This is also a very gross mistake. The owner of the company, or the director or any other company representative under the project.Could ask you to make them a store or site in their order. Well, when it comes to edits to take into account the specifics of a business, as the owner or the entrepreneur knows nobody else as their business. But there are others when you are asked to make a site for them. And what happens next, sometimes the stage of promotion, and then the customer asks why and why does the site not sell? And then it's often necessary to return to the recommendations given by the company's developer, because they themselves are experts in this field, and therefore it is better to rely on their experience and skills.
6. For what overpay our system administrator will do everything
Medium and large companies have system administrators (slang — sysadmins), sometimes even entire IT departments. To not order an online store from another company because we have our own «programmer» — as they often think about them, they will do everything themselves. Indeed, a good «sysadmin» can do. But will he be able to make a project that will sell well? That's the question. Therefore, if it is not a website directory, or a site of a manufacturing company, which did for just because it is so accepted that it was. It is worthwhile to entrust this business to people or even freelancers who are well aware of this. There are cases when sites are designed not to work against the pro, companies, if they are not made good, it will undermine brand credibility. Does a serious company have any site?
7. Unique content is not needed. Take the supplier site
Without ignoring the essence of online advertising, customers rarely know that «content is king.» And the uniqueness of texts, photos, videos and other compulsory quality content is very important for both search engines and users.
8. Savings on hosting
Every entrepreneur, business owner or company representative takes care of costs. It's just like the extra cost of stealing your profit.
But there is another side of the medal.
At one of our projects, which was hosted by the «economy» segment, we were convinced that this savings would result in loss of orders and, consequently, profits. Hosting often «hangs», the site on it worked slowly, and technical support could not solve the problem.
Here are simple calculations.
If you earn from the order 200 UAH. And you will lose 2-3 orders per week then in a year you will lose 52 weeks * 200 UAH. = 10 400 UAH / year.
For such money you can pay a few good hosting. And that's not all, as cheap hosting is usually slow hosting, and google loves fast sites, so you lose position in search engines, and accordingly money.
How to choose hosting for an online store?
9. Not enough ice magnets (contact forms)
This is one of those mistakes when the site is beautiful, it is convenient and that's how to contact you is not clear.
Below is an example of good and poorly presented contact details.
Bad examples:
Good options:
If it is difficult to find the opportunity to order a product or contact a company on a site, you can lose 30-50%.
How to avoid this?
- the contacts should be in a prominent place (the header of the site);
- there must be several types of them (phone, mail, messenger, callback);
- quick order or callback.
- Others.
How to improve the conversion in an online store, we talked about in our article 20 lafhakes to increase sales in your online store
10. Do not take into account regional features
Such a mistake was on our own experience when the online store «MebliHit» was developed.
We came up responsibly and examined the internet market before designing. As the number of Russian queries proved, and then the Russian share was more than 70%, it was 2012. All major stores started with the Russian version of the site. So we decided to do it.
That was a big mistake. Since the company was locally located in Lviv, this statistic was against us. Here more than 70% were looking for the ukrainian language. We spent time and money because we did not take this into account. At first it was necessary to do exactly the ukrainian version of the site!
There are many examples of large companies that have entered the markets of other countries and failed to take into account their mentality suffered a crash. Therefore, it is very important to take into account the mentality and features of the region in which you are going to open and advertise your online store.
Conclusion
Hopefully our material will help you avoid the mistakes that we and our customers have encountered. It is better to learn from strangers' mistakes than on their own.
Share your comments with your mistakes and «fails» when developing your online store.