7 Biggest Mistakes Ecommerce, Shopify and Drop shipping Store Owners Make

 

In this video, we’re gonna talk about this 7 biggest mistake that online store owners ecommerce entrepreneurs make and this kills me when I see someone do it I’ve consulted it for a lot of different ecommerce stores and over and over again I see these mistakes.

1. Not Niched down
2. Header/Logo Too Big
3. Product Page Sucks
4. Bad About Us and Other Pages
5. Poor Navigation
6. Bad Photos
7. No USP

1. Not Niched Down enough – probably is my guess I mean I obviously don’t know your store but let me take a stab in the dark you probably not niche down enough. So what do I mean most people that come to me their target demographic is women 35 to 55 now you might be thinking yeah that’s a good niche that’s pretty niche down No then they say okay well what about moms 35 to 55 mmm still way too broad then they might say okay well upper middle class moms to getting warmer but not good enough. So I’ll say something like it should be upper middle class vegan yoga moms that own a pair of Lululemon pants that’s what I’m talking about it needs to be that specific maybe even a little bit more specific the reason it’s. So powerful is when you know that much information about who your target customer is and makes it a lot easier to make your entire website perfect for them make your entire Instagram page or Facebook make all the content on your website perfect for that specific niche of people you want to have thousand true fans you want one thousand people that are part of your tribe that just absolutely love your product love your company and if you go for women 35 to 55 no one’s gonna love your company they’re just gonna think it’s okay but if you go to for yoga vegan moms that Lulu Lemon they’re gonna love your product because it’s. So specific to them where it needs to resonate with those. So when you’re thinking about who my product is for I have two exercises for you one is think about if you had only one person in the world that you could sell to what would that person look like what would they do for fun what kind of magazines would they read it’s called creating an avatar then the second thing would be who are your 1000,1000 true fans you only had to pick 1000, 1000 people they could buy from you that would just shout from the rooftops about how great your brand is who would those people be. So here’s a quick example of not being niche down enough. So this website right here well who’s it for let’s look at the shop and we can see they sell glasses and watches and shoes and phone cases and maybe jewelry or maybe that’s other shoes that’s a lot of different things for a lot of different people as well as automatic night light and this and that who’s this target demographic this is a this is a store for everyone and if you’re going to be a store for everyone you need to still have an itch like if you look at Macy’s for instance Macy’s still has people like they still have a vibe of who they’re going after you might say based on the homepage this is going after Millennials but then when you go to the shop page it’s not really congruent with that because you know Millennials don’t necessarily want these kind of watches or just Winnie the Pooh automatic nightlight. So this is the exact opposite we want this is not pitched down enough a good example of a company I do think is niche down enough let’s go to DIF eyewear they are also for Millennials and their eyewear and look at they got the you know even that pop up was kind of funny these styles are definitely all the people are millennial type people the whole vibe is for Millennials. So bad not niche down enough good niche down enough.
2. Header/Logo Too Big – I’m going to show you an example of what I mean by this but usually most people don’t care about your brand in fact I think when you’re first starting out nobody cares about your brand unless you’re Nike or one of these giant companies no one cares about your brand they want to buy your product and you need to make it as easy as possible for them when you take up too much space on your header in your logo you’re taking the weight space that could be used to sell your prospective customers taking away space that can be used to persuade someone to actually make a purchase and that’s dangerous that’s obviously not what you want to be doing here’s a quick example of a logo that is too big we got this logo right here also look at this logo right here too big it takes up too much space let’s contrast that with a famous brand Nike this is a pretty important brand and even their logo is tiny up in the corner it doesn’t take up that much space it’s. So much better if we were to look at this let’s go ahead and let’s delete that logo and let’s say we could even have put it up here look at how much more space that creates. So you can actually see the welcome message let’s refresh it just. So you can see the difference look at that you don’t need this is the most important real estate of your website this top area don’t fill it up with a giant logo nobody cares about your brand care about what makes you special in what you’re selling.

3. Product Page Sucks – your product page sucks. So let’s go in and let’s dissect a poor product page and I’ll give you some tips on how you can fix it some common problems are the Add to Cart button thing below the fold you have bad photos all your products have bad photos which make people not want to buy it people want to buy something where there’s a really nice photo and they can imagine owning it that’s basically what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to show someone what it would be like to own your product and if it’s a poorly done photo they’re gonna have this concept of your product bringing some something negative to their life rather than something positive to their life. So you want good quality photos it’s worth spending the money to hire someone to take actual good quality photos you’ve probably have bad descriptions most new online store owners I know their descriptions for their products are boring you want to tell people the benefits not technically why it’s good for them but the benefits what I mean by this is don’t say it has a inch long blade say it has a longer than average blade which is perfect for chopping fruits and vegetables whatever it is tell me why I care about it how it’s gonna benefit my life don’t tell me about the technical aspects of it this is an example of a product page that is pretty bad. So first off the first image is just this color swatch that’s no good the pictures themselves aren’t very good the good thing is the Add to Cart button is above the fold day bed fitted twin size cover antique filled with black probably not the best product name that’s you know it’s not the worst either once again one of the issues is the logo being too big takes up all this space that said we were to get rid of that really quick well this this whole thing should be moved up. So that you can see that there’s a description and the description is it’s alright it’s not that great this is better than some people I’ve seen that only have one sentence or two but there’s no reviews there’s nothing special there. So let’s take a look at a a good product page we have Nike they’re pretty good those images are amazing they’ve they’ve got a bunch of different colors you can easily switch between they have all the sizes and everything you need makes it very simple to Add to Cart button right there top of that they have a reviews they have a little message about free shipping in returns more info all this information plus some more stuff down here about people looks like that posted it use hashtag Nike just to show part of the group part of the the group effect that happens when people like your product on top of that one thing I like to do is look at Amazon because Amazon is the king they have more data than anybody else in ecommerce and you look at what they’re doing here okay. So they have a bunch of images that’s key. So a lot of good quality images are also a video if you can do it different colors very simple bullet points now this is something that not all brands do but I think is really great is having bullet points instead of a description in their description they have more videos they have little things a CNBC gear patrol review.com much much better product page try to get closer to Amazon look at all this look at everything they’re doing they have a lot of data and they’re making a good quality product page try to copy Amazon whenever possible number four your about Us page and other supporting pages are probably really boring this is your chance to build trust and make a statement what do I mean by this when someone goes to you about Us page they want to know about you they’re trying to buy from your company they’re not trying to buy from Best Buy something they’re not trying to buy from some giant company some faceless company they want to know more about you tell them your story tell them about your kids tell them about why you started this how you got interested in this and then people are gonna be much more likely to buy especially right now in this generation this age what we like to do is we like to buy from other people people that are similar to us we don’t really enjoy buying from giant corporations anymore that’s that was a phase that’s very much passed this is the age of entrepreneurship and we enjoy supporting entrepreneurs. So be proud don’t try to fake like you’re some giant company you’re not you’re an individual and be proud about that.

4. Bad About Us and Other Pages – there’s no excuse for it. So here’s an example of a fairly bad about Us page at least this person took the time to write a little bit about themselves but it’s mostly just text that’s no good if someone’s going to your batters pages because they want to buy from you let’s look at a better one now beardbrand has a pretty good one they got the three entrepreneurs right there the beardbrand story it tells the full story it’s got some cool images that’s added touch they got images of all the different founders more conversations about the community at the vision tells you why you would want to buy from them let’s do another example here’s B dancewear my company that I own with my mom. So for this one what I did I had a whole bunch of our story I wrote and this doesn’t take very long I had a picture done and a video and I think if you can add a video to your about Us page even if you just film with your phone that is awesome once someone clicks on your about Us page which for us to be up here they’re probably very interested in buying this is your chance to connect with them as a human and convince them to buy.

5. Poor Navigation -. So let me show you an example of what I mean by this but the the key to this is you want it to take as few clicks as possible for someone to get to checkout I use this example all the time but there’s a reason that candy is right before checkout and the reason is cuz no one goes to the store but it’s such an easy thing to take the candy bar and put it on the conveyor belt they make it easy as possible for you which makes you more likely to buy now if they put the candy and they hit it and it was you had to go all over the place just to find it your chances of buying it would probably be pretty low because you know you really don’t need that candy but when they make it easy for you you purchase it. So this needs to be the same thing on your website you want to make it as easy as possible for people to buy from you I see a lot of people that have on their navigation bar they’ll have shop and then a drop-down that goes to all their different categories why just put all your categories up there. So I’ll show you a quick example of that as well and what I mean about poor navigation versus veteran avocation or navigation is a killer when it comes to online stores the worst thing in the world for me is when someone has a shop button where you can’t buy anything without clicking shop it should take as few clicks as possible to get to a product you should get a clicker out and count every time you have to click on something that’s a you know $, loss that’s a certain percentage of people that are can I buy from your store. So this example shop we get here and then finally down here it looks like they have some of the stuff but you have to there’s. So many different things in. So many different categories it’s kind of hard to figure out what’s going on if I want to get to a specific product I’m lost this is there’s different things and I’m not really sure okay. So sunglasses okay I got a click here and then I can kind of go through that’s just not very good navigation let’s look at another one here this one you have to click on catalog and then you go through and their term is products you just got to go through all these different products manually no way am I ever going to go through all of those let’s look at some companies that do a good job once again Nike Macy’s if you look at those people they do a good job come here I’m a man. So I’m gonna go to men and look at shoes clothing accessories and then from here I can I can very simply say I want running shoes and then from here I can probably narrow it down look I can narrow it down to basketball and narrow it down over there or I can just scroll through it’s very clean another example I look at my website be dancer again if someone wants a pair of shorts high waist and shorts cool what fabric do you want I even put next to it most popular because like her just to make it very simple for people to learn how to purchase on top of that if they click on just shorts we give them the three different examples and a video explaining what what the different examples are let’s say they were to click on booty shorts we give them the different types of fabric and I put in the middle lycra most popular I want to make it as easy as possible for people to navigate and purchase from me. So count every time someone has to click that’s a sale loss. So for me they only have to click one time and then Add to Cart and they’re pretty much done. So you want to do that as much as you can make is easy as possible navigation ask your mom ask your grandma if they can navigate the website if your grandmother cannot navigate the website keep iterating until she can make it as simple as possible.

6. You’re selling too many things on your website – part of niching down is only selling a select few products and really putting all your attention and all your focus on those products when you have a whole wide range of things you’re too scattered your tension isn’t focused on any one thing and people come to your store and they don’t know what of what to buy and anytime you confuse someone it’s a bad thing when they’re trying to pull out their wallet you want to make it as black and white as possible. So I got a quick story about this to explain what I mean I went to a Chinese medicine doctor just because I was curious I was gonna check it out and at the time I was suffering from some pain and like some like back pain and he diagnosed me and he pulled out this stuff he’s like oh okay well this is the perfect like tea for you and I was getting ready I was pulling out my wallet when he said also I have this for you also I have this other item for you and by the time it was done the total came to $ rather than pay that $ I just walked away and I said you know what let me think about this and come back later if he would have said to me this tea is all you need this is perfect for you I would have bought it because he had this solution your store should be the same thing your store should say hey I know what you want this is perfect for you when you give too many options you actually confuse people and they may not make a purchase of anything. So let’s look again at this website you can see there’s there’s. So many options and I mentioned it earlier in the video you’re just not sure what to pick do you want sunglasses you mate or regular glasses that looks like they have to you may come here or you might go to the website that specializes in glasses you know when you go to this website you’re gonna get good quality glasses because that’s what they do that’s what they specialize in the other example I might give is if you’re gonna go to someone that’s gonna do woodworking for you you want to buy some furniture are you gonna go the guy that kind of dabbles in a lot of different things are you gonna go to the guy but that’s all these cells is wood based furniture he makes it everyday that’s the guy that’s an expert and. So when I look at these two websites I think to myself this is kind of the person that has a bunch of random things and this is the expert and if I’m gonna be spending my money I’d rather be spending it here for something that I think is higher quality.

7. USP you have no USP what do I mean by that no unique selling proposition what makes you special yeah I know that you sell nail polish for instance but what makes your nail polish special and answers nothing you have no chance now let’s say you did sell net nail polish but you’d want to do is target it down maybe you have the best nail polish and you have interesting colors and it’s perfect for women that are to and maybe even go more specifically net Asian women that are to that are interested in some kind of specific topic and then the colors reflect that topic in some kind of a way that’s what I’m talking about what makes your company unique why would someone want to buy from you as opposed to any of the other thousands of companies why would someone want to buy from you instead of from Amazon that’s what you got to think about and part of that is your story your about Us page and this is all about what makes you special your store needs to have a unique selling point. So this is an example of a store that does not have unique selling point what’s unique about this they saw glasses watches you know phone cases shoes all these different things nothing here is that unique you can buy it anywhere now let’s take a look at one of the sites that I created the dance clothing site that I’ve mentioned already in this video the thing that’s unique about it is plus colors if you are a dancer and you want a lot of color let me show you all the color options look at all these color options we have other websites other options just they don’t have that the same amount of options and colors that we have. So that is what makes us special and if there’s not something about your website your online store that makes you special you’re probably going to fail if it’s the same stuff they can buy everywhere else they’re gonna go on Amazon. So ask yourself this question why would someone buy from your website instead of Amazon and if you can’t answer that then you’re probably not in a very good position. So these are the top seven mistakes I see especially new ecommerce store entrepreneurs making if you enjoyed this video make sure you click that subscribe button down below I have a lot of great videos just like this one on everything you can imagine about e-commerce. So click Subscribe you get those videos for free top of that you can get the online store success pack by clicking up here I got different marketing ideas I got checklist for starting your business a guide on how to hire a virtual assistant all for free all you got to do is click up here and if you have any questions on anything I went over or ecommerce related leave it in the comments down below and I will answer it as soon as possible thank you. So much for watching this video up good luck on your journey I hope this helped and like I said feel free to reach out to me if you have any problems thank you. So much