I was looking through Alignable to find a few potential partners for product and model photography and came across someone selling products. Since building e-commerce and multi-vendor marketplace stores is what I do almost exclusively now, I took a peek.
Sigh.
Here’s a list of the things I ran across in the 5 minutes of checking local retail businesses out:
- 404 Not Found. When I clicked on the link to take me to their website, it wasn’t found on the server. Out of business? Maybe. Statistics consistently say that 20% of new businesses fail in the first year, and another 45% within 5 years. But it could also be that: the website wasn’t set up properly in the back end or the URL is incorrect.
- No SSL or Incorrectly set up SSL. If you’re selling ANYTHING online you simply MUST have SSL set up…this protects your customers when they enter their information into your shopping cart! Not only will people run from your site and go elsewhere when they see it’s not secure, but if someone does happen to purchase through your unsecure site, they run the risk of having their data stolen. Want that for your customers? Adding an SSL certificate to your website is free and easy for a web designer. If they didn’t do it on your E-COMMERCE site, they’re a terrible web designer, period.
- Failing to identify who you are and what you do “above the fold.” When I go to a website and I can’t identify in an instant who they are and what they do, I’m outta there…and so is nearly everyone else.
Even better, have a call to action above the fold.
- Having No Website or online presence at all! I still see tons of people/businesses trying to be a business on a social media platform only…that’s fine except for two things: what if that platform goes down? All of your blood, sweat, and tears building your customer base goes away. And yes, huge platforms can tank literally overnight. This is related to the next point:
- Having your business website on a hosted platform. I wrote a whole article about why I think it’s a bad idea to build a BUSINESS on a hosted platform. Businesses need control over their business. Period.
- Not Responsive. Most people are accessing websites, including shopping sites, from their mobile phones and their tablets. Having a website that doesn’t perform well on these devices is a great way to ensure that your business won’t be growing much. And, Google doesn’t like it.
- Outdated Design. Yeah, it doesn’t look good. One of the things you need to do online is inspire confidence in the visitors to your site. If it looks like you put it up in the 90’s or the 00’s and haven’t touched it since, that’s not going to cut it. It shows a couple of things: 1. you’re not responding to your own customer base; 2. you’re not concerned with how you look online or how you’re perceived.
- Using a .biz or a .info domain. This goes with inspiring confidence in your visitors. Right or wrong, either of these domains just come across as kind of schlocky. If you can’t get a .com domain, the next best thing is a .net. If you’re an organization, definitely get a .org. Anything else and you’re going to have an uphill battle to look legitimate online, which is KEY to getting sales.
- Running a business solely from Facebook. Yes, it’s easy and it’s free. I get it. But it’s very similar to building your house on your neighbor’s property: you may think it’s yours, but it’s not. And actually, Facebook’s Terms of Service are far more restrictive than the hosted platforms, too. Not only that, but your business could disappear with no warning because someone thought you’d broken some rule, and getting it back could prove impossible. This happened to a business friend of mine (who also has a brick and mortar shop and who had violated none of Facebook’s TOS). The last I heard, he still hadn’t gotten his business page back up and it’s been about 2 years now.
When it comes down to it, building an online business is about serving your customer base: responding to their needs and providing solutions to their problems.
