7 Painful E-Commerce Challenges Ultimate Small Businesses Face
Are you a growing e-commerce business facing a lot of challenges in your journey? Here are some of the biggest e-commerce challenges small businesses face and how to overcome them.
As per estimations, 95% of the total purchases will be made online by the year 2024. With this complete shift towards e-commerce, many businesses today are looking forward to setting up their online store.
However, there are several e-commerce challenges that small businesses face. Are you also dealing with some of these challenges? What can you do to overcome these? In this blog, we are going to discuss it in detail. So, let us proceed to our discussion.
Major E-Commerce Challenges Small Businesses Face
The world is shifting online. Today, if you are not having an omnipresent approach, you might miss the opportunity to grow and make profits.
As someone who is new in the e-commerce world or is still figuring out how to set up their online business store, there are different obstacles in the journey. Some of these challenges are:
Limited Resources
One of the earliest e-commerce challenges that small businesses face is related to limited resources, especially funds. Being an entrepreneur who is looking forward to establishing their own business online, managing funds and resources needs to be done effectively.
Having limited resources poses different kinds of challenges such as difficulty in hiring, getting good software, advertising, managing inventory, shipping, and even providing the best customer service.
However, there is a solution for this too. Create a priority list and utilize your resources accordingly. For marketing purposes, you can use free online platforms like social media and YouTube. Also, automate repetitive tasks that can also be done without too much human interference. In this manner, you can easily manage limited resources.
Choice of the Right Platform
The second biggest challenge that small businesses face, especially if they are looking forward to establishing their online presence is the platform to choose. Today, there is a diverse range of platforms that we can use for creating our online e-commerce store.
However, the choice of the right platform among all the available ones is not at all an easy task. For this, you can keep some points in consideration. These are:
- Perform thorough research for some of the best available platforms and see which one is ideal for your business type.
- Keeping the budget into consideration, which platform offers you the best and the most comprehensive services?
- Finally, consider factors like integration, personalization, and analytics before finalizing.
Building Online Presence and Brand Value
When providing a digital presence to your business, one thing always comes to mind for every individual. How to build a brand that people love and give it a phenomenal online presence? Isn’t it?
For this, there are different aspects that you need to keep in consideration which are going to help you in the long run. Harness the power of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and grow your brand organically.
Choose a logo or a brand identity that catches immediate attention and is easy to remember. With the use of social media platforms, you can ensure free promotion of your brand. In addition, providing quality content such as blogs, videos, etc. on the online space is yet another aspect you can keep in consideration.
Tough Competition
Do you know with whom are you going to compete? Well, the brands you are going to compete with are already well-established. These brands have enough resources, manpower, and popularity.
However, there are some aspects, keeping in mind, you can create your own identity in the space. What is your unique selling point (USP)? Identifying these aspects and then working to promote them to the audience will help you.
You have to convince the audience, through your marketing skills and quality, as to what makes you different from others. If done successfully, your brand is going to create its own space and identity, even in tough competition.
Fulfillment and Inventory Management
Inventory management and fulfillment can be seen as the powerhouse of the whole operation process. For small businesses, managing their inventory and fulfillment comes up as one of the biggest e-commerce challenges.
Order fulfillment and inventory management, both play a crucial role in the overall success of the e-commerce business. For this, you can collaborate with top e-commerce business management platforms like Zopoxo. With our complete warehouse analytics reports, we help you keep track of inventory.
Customer Retention
Customer acquisition and retention are one of the most important aspects of running a successful e-commerce business. Moreover, a successful customer retention campaign opens doors for the massive success of your business.
Many small e-commerce businesses start well but eventually are not able to retail customers and hence close. What can be the solution for this? What can be done to retain customers?
With targeted marketing campaigns, you can identify your potential customers, understand their preferences, and then deliver them accordingly. With personalized marketing campaigns, such as messages, you can grab their attention to give a chance to your brand.
Furthermore, provide them with exciting offers, and good customer service, and even implement loyalty programs to reward customers. With these strategies, your e-commerce business is going to ensure customer acquisition and retention.
Cybersecurity
These days, lack of cybersecurity is one of the biggest threats to any e-commerce business. One needs to implement strong measures for cyber security not only just to protect the data of the company but also to safeguard customer’s essential information.
What can be done here? Several measures can be taken such as transferring your site to HTTPS, regular updates to the website, backing up data, and more.
Additional Tip: When your customers are logging in to your website, make sure they use strong passwords.
Way Forward
As a small business that is looking forward to establishing itself in an e-commerce platform, there will be several e-commerce challenges that you will be facing. However, with the right planning and approach, and following these mentioned tips, you can easily sail through. With Zopoxo, your e-commerce journey will be smooth and profitable. Get in touch to know more!