According to Failory, “9 out of 10 startups fail, and 2 out of 10 new businesses fail in the first year of operations.”
1- Poor market research
The Egyptian market is one of the most diverse and fast markets in the Middle East. Hence, studying the market well is the first thing you need to do to explore if there’s a need for your product or service and is that need profitable or is limited and not promising?
Is your product/service unique in filling a market need, or is it similar to other products/services already established in the market?
Do you have your target customer persona, or do you not know who you are targeting?
Suppose you decide to go for it without doing market research beforehand. In that case, you are putting your business at considerable risk for failure.
2- Launching too many products
When you are starting, you need to launch your Minimal Viable Product: This is your core product that the market truly needs.
If you launch too many products, you are just adding to an already packed market, giving already spoiled-with-choice customers more choices to not choose from.
Starting with selling your top products will set you apart from the competition and make it easier for your customers to select and purchase your products quickly.
3- No marketing strategy
When starting a new business, you need to establish a solid marketing strategy, from choosing the right social media platforms to defining your brand’s visual identity, voice, content calendar, and collaborations. We wrote a complete guide on building a successful social media presence for your business and how to gain traction from different social media platforms.
4- Wrong eCommerce platform
Before listing your product on multi-vendor platforms like Amazon, Noon, or Jumia, you need to consider if your product fits on these platforms or not? Would you check these platforms if you were looking for your product?
If your answer is no, you need to find other platforms or perhaps create your store!
A few downfalls to listing on a multi-vendor platform:
- They require a percentage of your sales
- You can’t control how your products are viewed
- The platform could disappear any day
- You don’t have any data on your customers
That is why we recommend that you build your own eCommerce store. Here at Road9 Media, we helped many new and established businesses build their own eCommerce stores with advanced designs and features, incorporating every service and solution your store could need to convert your customers easily. Learn more about our work by checking out our portfolio.
5- Outdated design
If you decide to build your own eCommerce store, using an outdated design is the shortest way to sink your store’s user experience and decrease your sales. According to an article, “88% of online shoppers are less likely to return to a site because of bad user experience. 94% of users create their first impression of a website based on web design alone.”
Also, according to an article by Oberlo, “The share of mobile eCommerce sales in total eCommerce sales has increased a whopping 39.1 percent from its 52.4 percent market share in 2016 to the current 72.9 percent market share. In other words, nearly three out of every four dollars spent on online purchases today is done so through a mobile device.”
So not having a mobile-friendly design will lead to you losing customers.
Knowing how vital web design is, clients from all over the world sought us out to design or redesign their websites so that they can continue converting customers.
6- Slow website
According to an article by Fastspring, “Even a 100-millisecond delay in website load time can hurt conversion rates by 7%. A two-second delay increases bounce rates by 103% More than half (53%) of mobile site visitors will leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load.”
So, you need to make sure that your eCommerce store is fast so that your customers can get in and get out quickly.
7- Not offering multiple Payment gateways
According to an article, “A survey by YouGov found that 40% of online consumers felt more comfortable buying from a store with multiple payment methods than from stores that offered just one option.”
You can ensure that your customers choose their trusted payment gateway and pay through it by offering more than one payment option. Otherwise, you risk having a lot of deserted, full carts at checkout.
8- Long shipping time
The whole point of shopping online is to save time. That includes receiving the product fast; however, receiving an item a week later is a buzzkill, especially if that item can be bought and received faster. You can no longer consider fast shipping a perk because now it’s the norm. If it’s not applied in your store, it’s costing you customers.
9- Unreactive customer service
How often did you need help with your order, and did the customer service agents take days to get back to you?
Did you ever make a second purchase from that company? Chances are you didn’t because you didn’t have a good experience with that company.
Hiring customer service agents and empowering them with tools to help your customers and ensure that they received their orders and that they are happy with them is key to creating that trusting relationship with your customers. This relationship will instigate your customers to keep shopping from your store; without it, you’ll be left with many bad reviews, hindering your sales even more!
10- Not checking your store’s performance and marketing reports
How can you improve your sales when you don’t know what’s working and what’s not?
Without reading your store’s performance reports, you won’t be able to fix what’s costing you customers and focus on increasing your sales.
The same thing goes with your analytical marketing reports. Without suitable marketing campaigns, your store is losing customers.
So, you need to keep reading the reports and work on the areas that need improvement to keep your store up and running.
We know how hard it is to start your eCommerce store in Egypt; we offer a full-scale service to help you build, launch, and scale your store quickly. If you need to book a consultation, our experts are here to help you.
