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Ashley Rosa, Freelance BloggerEcommerce marketing is an incredibly complicated skill, and it can be hard to determine exactly what’s contributing to low sales. It’s frustrating to miss your sales targets without an idea of what you can do to improve. This article will cover some of the most common mistakes that prevent ecommerce vendors from making more sales and achieving their goals. Keep in mind that the best tactics are different for each company—what works for one brand may not be as effective for another. 

Poor Mobile Experience 

Many ecommerce websites are tailored to computers, but a growing percentage of online shoppers are browsing stores on a smartphone or tablet. Neglecting this part of your audience will almost certainly have a negative impact on sales. Mobile users expect an even faster experience than those on a desktop or laptop, and they’ll abandon your site quickly if it isn’t well-optimized. It’s critical to make a positive impression on each new user within the first five seconds of their visit. Even the best desktop sites can be confusing and slow on mobile devices. Instead of using one design for all users, you should optimize your mobile site so that it’s easier to use. This process also leads to significantly shorter load times compared to a desktop design. While mobile apps are a greater investment than mobile optimization, they offer even more speed and flexibility compared to websites. Larger businesses or brands with a mobile focus should consider developing an app to increase customer loyalty and increase sales. 

Poor Copy 

Copy is one of the most important elements of any ecommerce website, and issues with your copy will hurt performance on every sales metric. Improving your copy is surprisingly quick and easy, making it a low-cost way to increase sales. The most obvious issues with web copy are easily correctable errors like typos and grammar mistakes. Simply running copy through Grammarly or a similar program will help you identify many of these problems, although there’s no replacement for an experienced editor. After these simple mistakes, your next priority should be limiting text and finding ways to make your website more visually clear. Long sections of copy can be difficult to follow, so try to include images, subheadings, and other alternatives to break up the text and improve the user experience. Finally, you should always consider search engine optimization when writing copy or content for your ecommerce store. Poorly optimized websites and product pages are much harder to find than those that match common search terms. Simply making your brand visible is one of the toughest challenges involved in ecommerce sales, and many marketers underestimate the importance of strong SEO practices. The top search result will almost always achieve significantly more sales than the competition, even if it doesn’t offer a better value. 

No Drip Campaigns 

Email is a great marketing channel for things like newsletters and promotions, but you can also use the platform in a variety of other ways to increase sales. Drip campaigns allow you to configure certain types of emails to send in response to certain triggers, giving you complete control over your email marketing practices. A welcome sequence, for example, targets subscribers who just signed up for your newsletter and are interested in learning more about your brand. The best welcome emails act as a starting point for the customer relationship and keep new leads engaged over a longer period of time. Most customers expect certain drip campaigns including welcome sequences and order confirmation emails, so these should be your first priority as you implement automation into your marketing practices. From there, you can begin experimenting with more sophisticated workflows based on customer behavior and preferences. Cart abandonment workflows are another popular option that can give your sales a substantial boost. These sequences target users who added a product to their cart but left your site before completing the purchase. Most cart abandonment sequences include two or three emails to remind the customer about the item and give them another chance to convert. Some brands also offer an exclusive discount as an additional incentive—it’s better to make a sale at 10% off than to lose a customer. 

Complicated User Experience 

You might think that your products will sell themselves, but friction in the user experience will hurt any marketing campaign. Every ecommerce marketer should keep an eye on their customer experience to make sure their website is easy to use. User experience is obviously a broad term, but there are a few common mistakes that often lead to underwhelming sales. Intrusive popups, for example, are much more likely to turn viewers away than to make a sale. You can improve sales by implementing exit-intent popups rather than displaying them at entry. Complications during checkout are another factor that commonly results in poor sales numbers. Unexpected shipping costs and other fees are some of the top contributors to high site abandonment rates, so it’s critical to be completely transparent about pricing. Every step you add to the checkout process will decrease sales, so you should always be looking for ways to streamline this part of the experience. Similarly, asking for too much information when users subscribe to your newsletter makes this process longer than it needs to be. Every aspect of your website should be designed around speed and convenience. You can learn more about the user experience simply by asking for customer feedback. Users will let you know about issues with your site and points of friction during checkout or sign-up. You should also visit your own site at least once per month in order to go through these processes yourself. Low ecommerce sales can happen for a variety of reasons, but you can often turn things around by making some simple changes. These are a few of the most common marketing errors that reduce sales and hold ecommerce vendors back from reaching their full potential.