Currently e-Commerce business is booming in India at a tremendous rate. Due to enormous opportunities and advantages people are changing their preferences and coming up with an e-commerce business than doing a traditional retail business. Cyber world provides unlimited marketing and business opportunities and it takes very less amount of investment to start an e-commerce business as compared to a full-fledged retail business outlet. In spite of tremendous opportunities, new age entrepreneurs are bound to make mistakes. Some of the mistakes can easily hamper the business way before its successful implementation.

According to me, below are the seven most common mistakes that can kill your e-Commerce business:

• Failing to define your target audience clearly: Understanding of an appropriate target audience is a must to make any business successful. There is a lot of investment of time, money and energy behind determining the right target audience. Failure on this front leads to loss of time & money and efforts will get utilized on the wrong target audience.

• Underestimating your organizational requirements: It is a common belief that e-commerce business can run on its own without employing more than two employees or having diverse departments. Businesses that hope to increase its scale in the market needs to soon think about how to adopt techniques that will help them in expanding. One should put time and efforts in content creation, creative development, technology, web operations, and digital marketing. These divisions will not only improve your business but also establish it in the market. Companies that fail to realize the importance of organizational requirements ends up being unsuccessful.

• Ignoring the value and importance of user experience: A lot of businesses lose their customers by ignoring their overall experience and judgement when they fail to leave an impact on them through their user experience. Unique user experience is a must in an e-Commerce business. If your user experience is poor, you cannot expect people to return to your website again. A user’s personal experience plays a vital role in determining the success of your business. If small details like the navigation or search buttons, listings, etc. are not optimized for the best user experience, you will lose out on your customers.

Keep a lot of options open for your customers, as that helps them in prioritizing their needs as per their budget

• Not giving importance to the website/mobile app layout: A major way an e-commerce business can establish itself into the minds of its audience is through a well-created and attractive website/app layout. It is the first thing that forms a brand image in the minds of your target audience. By forming the right theme, color scheme, buttons, icons, etc. the task of forming a good impression on the minds of your audience can be achieved. But a lot of businesses ignore this step and head right towards sales. This practice can hamper your business.

• Ignoring SEO Tactics: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most critical steps to ensure easy accessibility of your E-commerce site by your target audience. If a business ignores the importance of SEO tactics, it may fail to get an online recognition. An appropriate SEO tactic can provide easy navigation and a satisfactory experience. This method can help in putting your company website amongst well ranked websites on the leading search engines which can ensure overall business success.

• Improper use of paid promotions/online advertisements: In today’s era of digital marketing paid promotions/online advertisements makes a lot of difference in making an e-Commerce business a successful venture. Improper use of paid promotions/online advertisements not only leads to wastage of money but it also ends up reaching to the incorrect audience. In an e-Commerce business, one should do proper planning and choose an appropriate platform/channel for online advertisements/promotions. Improper use of paid promotions will not give an appropriate ROI (Return on Investment) and desired results.

• Forceful Registrations: As an e-Commerce platform, one needs to keep in mind that you cannot force customers to register on your platform as this will only annoy them. Hassle free and consumer friendly websites tend to give a boost to your sales as well as brand image. Keep a lot of options open for your customers, as that helps them in prioritizing their needs keeping their budget in mind. Making your platform least complicated should be your utmost priority.