Long gone is the time when having your own business was a luxury only few could afford. Nowadays, anyone can start a successful online business with little effort. However, many are cautious about starting one because of the fear of failure. Luckily, nowadays, there’s plenty of information available on the outskirts of the Internet. So, you can easily learn from the mistakes others have gone through. Thus, we’ve gathered the wrong steps to starting an ecommerce business and what you should avoid.

Starting an ecommerce business can be one of the most convenient and lucrative ways to create an additional income source. Moreover, along the way, it can grow into something much bigger and even become your primary source of income! Its many advantages can help you achieve the dream of living the life you’ve always wanted.

After all, starting an online business almost has no risks and doesn’t require large investments. In addition, once you conquer certain goals, you can expand it and grow in whatever direction you want.

And with Sellvia, we’ve made sure that anyone can create their own dream business. You will get all the benefits and features an online business needs to grow and succeed.

Thus, starting an online business is now more accessible than ever! And you can take it in any direction you desire.

In addition, do you know how many Americans shop online? By 2023, the number of online shoppers is expected to reach 300 million. That’s 91% of the current population!

Still, most ecommerce businesses fail because they don’t follow standard business principles. To successfully reach these buyers, you have to be well aware of what mistakes you need to avoid.

So, let’s see how Sellvia allows you to create an ecommerce business and establish financial freedom and independence.

Steps to avoid when starting an ecommerce business: not coming up with a business plan

When you have committed to starting an online business, you need to come up with a business plan.

And even though many elements of your business will change and develop over time, if you cannot highlight the crucial elements at the beginning of your business journey, you can easily get lost along the way.

A business plan is a crucial part of creating a successful business and standing out from the crowd of competitors. A strategic business plan creates the momentum, allowing you to take your business toward success.

Think about the big picture, because many entrepreneurs don’t. Later on, they have troubles with understanding the market, financials, business model, or logistics. Moreover, that lack of understanding can cost time, money and lots of effort if things go wrong.

If you avoid the commonly made mistake, you can identify the unknowns and spot the gaps you need to fill.

However, launching a business with Sellvia, you get almost everything already done for you. All that’s left for you to do is focus on online store promotion and attracting new customers. 

Steps to avoid when starting an ecommerce business: not working on your discipline

Creating an online business with Sellvia allows you to become your own boss. However, while being your own boss is a great way to work, you need to have personal discipline to get the work done.

Learn how to manage yourself and find ways to be productive and efficient. You may even have to dress like you’re going to the office, or put in a few extra hours of work after hours. Remember, if you aren’t working on a consistent schedule, then you are not giving yourself the opportunity to succeed.

Create a schedule that is right for you and try sticking to it. The more disciplined you are with your time, the more effort you will input into your business, meaning you will have more chances of creating a proper online business.

Steps to avoid when starting an ecommerce business: ignoring the competition

 

Anyone can start an online business, which means you can have potentially more competitors. And to beat the competition, you must carefully study them.

Answering the following questions can help you a lot in this: What are they doing wrong? What are they not doing at all? Are their prices too high? Are their products of the same quality as yours?

Once you understand your competition’s strengths and weaknesses, you can get a better idea of what kind of service to offer to your customers. Focus your attention on what you can improve and do differently to better satisfy your customers’ needs.

Steps to avoid when starting an ecommerce business: taking too much time to launch

Timing is everything, especially in business. When you see an excellent online business opportunity, you shouldn’t waste your time and get right into researching the market, the competition, and the aspects of creating an online business. Though, be sure to not waste too much time to not waste your window of opportunity. And on another note, the longer you wait to launch your business, the longer it will take to make money.

So, in short, don’t let yourself fall into the analysis paralysis trap, where you can stall yourself in over-thinking or worrying about getting everything to perfection. Otherwise, you can lose your opportunity.

A Sellvia-powered online store is ready to make sales from day 1! Once you’ve specified the details, Sellvia specialists hand the ready online store to you in no time. Once you receive it, you can start promoting instantly! 

Steps to avoid when starting an ecommerce business: launching a business you aren’t passionate about

Often people start an ecommerce business not only because they want to make money, but because they are passionate about their product or service.

Starting and running a business requires a certain sense of commitment and dedication. And even when profits aren’t high, you must stay invested at all times. And sometimes, when you’re not invested in your business, or doing something you’re not passionate about, it can be noticeable in many of its areas.

So, to avoid this, focus on a specific product niche that is close to what you’re passionate about. Knowing everything about your products will show you are a professional in this field and generate more trust from your customers. And on top of that, the more you enjoy your business, the more successful it will be.

No matter what your passion is, we are sure you will find products that align with your interests. The Sellvia catalog is filled with hundreds of thousands bestselling products from various categories. So, finding your passion has never been so easy! 

Steps to avoid when starting an ecommerce business: thinking that everything is one size fits all 

Every business is unique and has its own history. And just because a product or specific strategy has worked for one company, doesn’t mean that it will work for another.

If you have the opportunity, then you must test your product out using minimum financial resources. Once you’ve tested out the products, you can have an understanding in what direction to take your business.

However, starting an ecommerce business with Sellvia, you don’t have to waste your time on testing anything! Our marketing specialist have already done everything for you. They’ve dedicated their time on testing and picking every single product in the catalog. All, so you get only the best possible and in-demand products. Steps to avoid when starting an ecommerce business: not optimizing your website

Many first-time entrepreneurs don’t care to optimize their websites for consumers, which leads to a low number of sales.

Today’s consumers want a website that loads up fast. In fact, 47% of consumers expect a website to load up in 2 seconds or fewer. If your website is too slow, no matter how good your product or service is, your potential customers will click away instantly.

Once you’ve optimized your website to load up quickly, you need to add a call to action (CTA) on every page. A CTA is a message to the consumer to take action immediately. For example, use CTAs such as “Call now”, “Find out more”, “Buy now”, etc.

If your website doesn’t include a CTA, you will miss opportunities for a sale.

Having a great website doesn’t exactly translate into having a great business. Make sure it drives your business and convinces customers to answer the CTA.

Sellvia provides anyone with the opportunity to start an online business absolutely for free! You will get everything you need, from a top-notch website, optimised for a user-friendly experience, to hot products, and all the tools you need to promote them. 

Steps to avoid when starting an ecommerce business: lacking responsive user experience design

If you’re looking to have a successful ecommerce business, then having a responsive website is a must-have.

If there are certain elements of your website that glitch, can’t be clicked, or don’t work at all, you’re going to lose customers and sales.

Your user experience design needs to be clear and aligned with your brand.

This might come as a surprise, but many ecommerce business owners forget that the way a potential customer engages with your website can make or break the sale.

Today’s online shoppers are impatient, so a few missclicks or broken links can turn into lost customers and sales. To avoid these mistakes, you need to make sure you have a modern user-friendly website.

Steps to avoid when starting an ecommerce business: not optimizing product copywriting

One of the most useful and, overlooked skills in the ecommerce industry is copywriting.

Of course, product images, photos, and videos also play a crucial role on an ecommerce website. Nevertheless, having copywriting skills can help you go a long way.

Copywriting on an ecommerce website includes:

• Product descriptions
• Names of products
• Dimensions
• Branding of the product
• Features and benefits

Copywriting can help you in not losing out on numerous potential customers.

We understand how important each element of an online store is and that’s why we’ve provided every product in the Sellvia catalog with a unique product description that you can seamlessly import to your online store. That’s not all! There are ready-to-go marketing materials for products that will help you boost your sales.

Steps to avoid when starting an ecommerce business: not having credible reviews

Depending on the reviews, and how credible they seem, can make or break your ecommerce business.

Would you trust an online store or even purchase a product from it if it didn’t have any reviews?

Many online consumers won’t decide to purchase something online without seeing any social proof that the product is real.

Many ecommerce businesses tend to post fake reviews to boost their trustworthiness. However, this can cause the opposite result of what you want to achieve.

This is not only unethical, but is quite ineffective. So, here are a few ways you can understand that an ecommerce business is using fake reviews:

• Every review has a five-star rating, and there are only good things about the product
• There are no responds to the reviews
• There are a lot of reviews posted on the same date

Not to mention that the modern customer can clearly see and define a fake review from a real one.

The moral is don’t fake reviews on your website. It is a sure way to lead your business down the road to failure.

Instead, try to rely on quality reviews that will bring in more customers.

Steps to avoid when starting an ecommerce business: making a complicated shopping cart structure

The importance of a simple and effective cart structure in your ecommerce store cannot be overlooked.

You can’t imagine how many customers abandon their carts because of the many choices a buyer has to make after placing an order.

As a result, optimizing your cart structure and payment layout will help you to retain your customers. The key is to make the purchasing as easy as possible, so the customers won’t get confused and leave.

Steps to avoid when starting an ecommerce business: not devoting time to online marketing

Even though you might have a high-quality ecommerce website, this doesn’t mean that customers will come running to it.

How do you think online brands find their customers? Exactly, they use various online marketing methods to pinpoint and connect with their audience. Not only does this help improve the trust between customer and brand, but it creates a sort of relationship between them.

Why is it important to use online marketing? Well, because it works!

So, you need to come up with a marketing strategy of who you want to reach and how you are going to do it.

Steps to avoid when starting an ecommerce business: not defining a target audience

Defining your target audience is one of the most important steps in starting an ecommerce business.

It will allow you to focus on a specific group of people, understand their interests, preferences, and needs. As a result, you’ll be able to come up with a unique product offering that this target audience will be interested in.

Every product in your online store should serve some kind of purpose and meaning to your target audience.

Have you ever come across an online store that sells some kind of random, totally useless products?

Well, to tell you the truth, there are many ecommerce entrepreneurs who dropship products that nobody wants. And it’s all because at the beginning of their way, they’ve failed to define their target audience.

Start every aspect of product design and sales with your target customer in mind.

Our Sellvia experts will help you at every step of your online store creation and even management! So, finding and reaching your target audience won’t be a challenge. 

Steps to avoid when starting an ecommerce business: not knowing what your customers want

Moving on from the previous point, how do you keep your target customer in mind? How do you know what they want? What will make them want to shop with you instead of your competitors?

This is where customer research comes in.

Put your efforts into analyzing what your competitors are doing in terms of advertising to find out what attracts the customers in. Make sure to look at their social media and see what the customers are saying and asking for.

On top of that, if you happen to be an expert in an industry, or at the very least, a fan, you have a major advantage. You will already know what elements of the competitors’ websites grab the visitors’ attention and how to improve them.

Steps to avoid when starting an ecommerce business: ignoring customer service

An often-overlooked part of an ecommerce business is excellent customer service.

Let’s say, for example, your customer wants to make a return. Does your website contain a page dedicated to refunds and returns? Is it crystal clear how they can do it?

If they want to contact you with an issue on a product’s functionality, is there somewhere they can leave a message?

Dedication to making good customer service is the best way to boost your sales, improve customer satisfaction, and increase your success rate. However, a poor one can end your ecommerce business altogether.

Steps to avoid when starting an ecommerce business: lacking unique value

Any business, whether it’s a brick-and-mortar one or an ecommerce store, needs to have some kind of unique value to its target audience.

Your ecommerce business is no exception.

And often, ecommerce business owners make a mistake forgetting to define this unique value and stand out from the crowd.

Unique value can be as simple as a money-back guarantee or free shipping. However, these features are now becoming expected from online stores. So, keep that in mind.

Being an ecommerce business owner, it is best to always think of new ways to make your brand more valuable compared to your competitors.

Final thoughts on what steps to avoid when starting an ecommerce business

Running an ecommerce business can be challenging. However, by avoiding these crucial mistakes, you can jumpstart your ecommerce journey and create your dream online store.

By avoiding these worst steps to starting an ecommerce business and subscribing to Sellvia, you can easily do what you’ve always wanted. Become your own boss, organize your working hours however you want, work from anywhere, and allow your passion to become your source of income.

We’ve already created all the tools for you to achieve your lifelong dreams of becoming financially independent. All that’s left for you to do is take it and start building your business! After all, you can try it completely for free. So, why not try your luck?

Even if you already have a regular job, or income source, you can devote only a couple of hours per day to your business. When it gets on track and starts bringing in new customers and generate sales, you can gradually devote more and more of your time to it.

If you’re still worried about something, rest assured that there’s nothing to worry about. After all, once you subscribe to Sellvia, you get a personalized manager that will help you at each step of the way. So even if you’ve never had prior experience in ecommerce, you can still launch your online store. And if at some point in your life you’ve considered starting an ecommerce business, think of this as your chance to finally do it.

Hopefully, by now, you have a much better idea of what it is you should do and shouldn’t starting an ecommerce business. And with Sellvia, we make sure to provide you with everything you need to launch, manage, and grow your online store.