7 Common eCommerce Website Mistakes You Should Avoid

Should you start your own eCommerce store?

Building your own online store is considered the simplest way to reach and stay connected with your target customers, considering you don’t have to set up a brick and mortar shop and wait for customers to walk in, that is if they do. There are so many ways to execute business virtually but starting an eCommerce platform is considered the best. However, it is easier said than done. Some of the worst eCommerce mistakes if not rectified on time, can stop your shop before it even takes off.

1. Your product descriptions are matching the ones used by your competitors

Are you seeking help from your suppliers to get product descriptions? If yes, then this could be one of the most common eCommerce mistakes. This is because your suppliers are probably giving your competitors the exact copy of your product description. It could bring down the ranking of your eCommerce website. It surely isn’t acceptable to search engines, which will see identical product information on several online shops while crawling the web. This will confuse the search engines and ruin your website’s rankings.

If your product descriptions are similar to those of your competitors’ and these companies have rankings stronger than yours, you will find it difficult to outdo them. Search engines like Google compare the content on your web page with the content of your competitors. Hence, if your content describing the product is alike, but your competitors have more links directing to their site, you are in grave business trouble.

2. Duplication of title pages

Duplication of content, product, prototypes and services are few huge challenges in an eCommerce business setting, and mistakes like this will count as eCommerce website mistakes. Each page on it should have a unique page title. You can find your web page title at the top of the browsing window. Page titles also appear in search results right above your URL.

It is the pages titles which clarify what your page is about to search engines and your prospective customers. If multiple page titles are similar, search engines find it tough to recognize which page to suggest if their titles are similar. So they end up selecting neither.

3. Poor quality of product images on your website

One of the most common eCommerce design mistakes that you need to avoid in your website is uploading poor quality images. High Definition (HD) images with exceptional clarity are the driving force for any eCommerce website. Pixelated images of products on your website can have a negative impact on your brand.

You will have to invest in a professional photographer to boost the quality of images on your eCommerce website. They will know how to shoot good photos for your website as they have a better understanding of product lighting, editing, and background.
To attract potential customers to your website, you will need to implement additional features like the magnifying image feature on your product page, so that customers have the option to enlarge the image and have a glimpse of tinier details with relative ease

4. Non-responsive webpage design

In today’s day and age, many of your customers use multiple gadgets to access the internet. Hence, you should build your website keeping that in mind. A responsive web design makes your eCommerce store accessible on all electronic devices with small, medium, and large screen sizes. A non-responsive webpage is the worst eCommerce mistake that anybody can make. Let me tell you that this is one of the top 5 eCommerce mistakes one can come across.

5. Slow loading page

Ideally the average time for any website to load a page should not be more than 2 seconds. Anything beyond this is a waste of time. Customers are always on the move. Any delay in loading a webpage will drive them to your competitor’s website. Therefore, you need to be extra careful and watchful of your website’s performance.

A lot of factors determine the page speed and performance of your website, such as internet speed, cache components, content on the page, hosting server etc. Off all these factors, the most influential factor is web design – which requires a lot of rework if it is not designed keeping the page speed on mind. So, if you want to avert this eCommerce website mistake, you will need to ensure that your homepage loads faster than other pages. And yes, Google ranks your website based on its speed.

6. Outdated technology implemented in your website

Gone are the days when developers used flash content on a website to make it look attractive. Although flash content looks chic, using outdated technology can cause major eCommerce troubles with search engine crawling and indexing.

Similarly, using an older version of HTML or XHTML code can also hamper the performance of your website. It not only affects search engine results but also slows down page loading time. Hence, it is vital that you tell your developers to use the state-of-the-art web design techniques to keep up with the competition.

7. Having poor or no SEO

SEO eCommerce mistakes are very common. To increase potential leads and brand awareness, you must take significant efforts to expand your online business globally. Likewise, expanding eCommerce website globally is a huge challenge and a cumbersome task. To successfully channel your business strategies to global destinations, you will have to implement the concept of SEO.

This on page (and off-page) optimization lets your eCommerce website to trend in search engines of not only your location, but also globally. In this way, you will be in a position to sell the same product or service in different countries and languages. One of the common SEO eCommerce mistakes is not effectively implementing the different SEO techniques.

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7 Common eCommerce Website Mistakes You Should Avoid