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Truth be told, the advent of the online store must single-handedly be responsible for a few million people turning entrepreneurs worldwide. An online store rids you of all that ails physical stores, while allowing you to reach the entire connected world with your products off a personal computer. But setting up an online store is the easy bit, running it successfully is a different ball game. If you want to get on this bandwagon and ride it well, remember these must-avoid mistakes.

1. Not displaying contact information
Physical or online, stores that customers want to shop at are those which they trust. When running an online store, it is very easy to bypass not providing your contact details. And by contact details, I do not mean just your e-mail address. Be professional and provide your customers with your company address and phone numbers. This builds trust. If you work out of home or are mobile, set up a post box address with your good old local post office. Make the change and you will invariably see your order numbers spike considerably.

2. Hiding vital links
Review where and how all the vital links on your website will be displayed. Are you sure that links like the shopping cart, product search and customer care are accessible from every page? The aforementioned three are important to the shopping experience. Make them difficult or time consuming to find and your customer will probably fade away. For example, customers always want to know how much they are about to shop for… if the cart is visible to them, then they may stop or move on as they wish. But if not, they might end up shopping too much and trash the cart later.

3. Selling random stuff
Unfortunately, the Chaos theory and the online store do not go well together. When you decided to get into this business, you must have thought of a central theme for the store. Stick to it and do not go selling random items because they became hot. Provided you did your research right, you would know your customer base and the market you are creating. Stay with them and they will stay with you. Just think, would you buy aquariums from a site which also sells bridal wear? Selling random items is akin to a backyard sale. It’s like the “All Must Go” cheap experience.

4. Not tracking order conversion
First know what a conversion rate is. It is, at the base level, the number of visitors to your website that are converted to buyers. It is vital that you track the order conversion of your products. If the product you are promoting is not going off the shelves, you are wasting inventory space. Dump it and move on. Research and see why it did not sell and whether it is just with your store or in general.

5. Failing to refresh
You must have noticed how quickly the world moved away from your neighborhood kirana store once the fancy marts and supermarkets came in. Why? Because they got bored and wanted somewhere new to shop. Your online store might meet the same fate if you do not review and refresh your site periodically. Are there any out-of-stock items on display? When was the last time you offered discounts? Are you missing out on a festive opportunity? Do you need any more product categories? Ask yourself these questions and reinvent your store from time to time.

6. Running a heavy site
Most online store owners are often tempted to make the website better to look at. So they end up adding more flash, exciting icons, sounds, etc. But while they may make your store more fun to look at, it may not be the same when it comes to browsing your store. You must always assume that your customer has the most basic of PCs and connections. If it takes 10 seconds to load just your homepage, you have lost him anyway. Try not to load up your site with heavy flash, photos and other such things. Remember that online stores depend on interaction design and not web design.

7. Not keeping in touch
Physical or online, store owners have to always count on repeat business. As such it is important that you manage to capture the buyer’s contact details, at least the e-mail address, to keep in touch with him. This will help you not only tap the same customer when you add products of the same genre to your inventory, but tap possible customers across his network. If he keeps hearing from you, it’s more than likely that he will recommend you over others when it comes to buying products that you stack.

8. Not displaying all costs
Like many others, you must hate it when that 25 percent tax shows up on your dinner bill without prior knowledge. It makes you think you are being hoodwinked. But what if you always knew that there would be a surcharge, thanks to it being clearly mentioned in the menu? You would be much more at ease with what you order and pay then. In the same way, if your shipping fees and additional taxes are not well displayed on the product page itself, you can lose the customer at the payment stage. He has an option to walk away, unlike you at the restaurant.

9. Having no clear refund policy
When shopping online, most customers have a mortal fear that the thing they order will turn out to be sub-standard or not what they had ordered. While you may know that that’s not the case, your customer will still need some reassurance. And that would come in the form of a refund policy. Fix your policy and display it prominently enough for the customer to trust you and your store. The best refund policy to go with is the one where the customer gets his cash back if he is not satisfied with the product over a week or two.

10. Ignoring security
When customers shop at your online store, they usually do it with the most private of their information—credit card numbers and passwords, account numbers, identification numbers. If they do not believe that this information will be secure with you, they will never shop. Period. Not in this country, and not abroad. Make sure you have all the security standards in place for online transactions and use a secure payment service. More importantly, let your customers know loud and clear that you are using them, and that their information is safe with you.

©Entrepreneur April 2010

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mistakes, online, selling, store