Ecommerce Challenges Faced by Startups Companies : A Solution

The ecommerce industry has been booming in recent years. It is the key growth engine for any business. However it is not easy every time to start this type of business when you don’t know about the ecommerce challenges that will come across while starting a new business. This blog will explain the ecommerce challenges faced by new startups

Main Ecommerce Challenges

Ecommerce startups face many ecommerce challenges but they are divided into 3 main categories.

1. Technical Challenges

Technical challenges include websites and online stores. Startups need to design a user-friendly website or online store. The website should be mobile and desktop responsive. It should be secure or strong enough to hold the traffic. The buying process should be smooth so the buyer will not leave the cart without checkout.

2. Operational Challenges

Operational challenges include order fulfillment, shipment, and return process. As a startup to build customer faith in your brand, you have to serve customers with the committed time. They have to make sure that you process the order efficiently and quickly. Not only with order but you should also make the return process smooth so that customers will stick with you. If the customer suffers in return shipment then you will lose customers faith in your brand.

3. Financial Challenge

Financial challenges include elements like marketing, pricing, and capital raising. Startups must locate investors or other funding sources. Additionally, they must develop a marketing strategy and set prices that will draw clients while still turning a profit.

Other Challenges Faced by ecommerce startups

Other ecommerce challenges faced by startups in their beginning stage are defined below.

1. Acquiring New Customers

One of the important and biggest ecommerce challenges faced by startups is acquiring new customers. This process is difficult because you are competing with those who have already established their presence. They have a huge and loyal customer base. You have to put extra efforts to build your customer base and a loyal audience pool for yourself.

You can acquire new customers with various techniques to overcome with ecommerce challenges like,
Using social media platforms to reach out to potential audiences and can create brand awareness campaigns to reach out to the huge audiences.
Offering discount coupons and gift vouchers is another way to attract customers to your brand.
You can run targeted marketing campaign to attract customers
Make sure your online store and website is user friendly so people can smoothly shop.

2. Data Security

Data security is the biggest ecommerce challenges faced nowadays. Building data security is critical for ecommerce companies. The excessive use of ecommerce portals also raises concerns regarding data security. Hackers steal important information and threaten host servers and introduce viruses.

They can steal credit and debit cards or payment information from your portal. Several users have lost trust from ecommerce stores due to this security issue. To maintain your brand reputation and customers’ trust you have to make sure that your website is secure to handle customers’ private data on it. Make your website secure with HTTPS protocol, use credible or trusted third party payment gateways. Make your website strong enough to be safe from cyber crimes or hackers.

3. Converting Users into customers

One of the biggest ecommerce challenges is converting users into customers. Driving users, getting clicks and a lot of impressions is not a big deal , but getting potential customers is. People are coming but not buying anything ,why is it so? Are you not targeting the potential customer or something else that is harming your sales.
The biggest step you need to take here is to understand what your potential customers want from you. Is your ecommerce site user friendly or not? Always try to think from a customer’s perspective then only you can identify where you are lacking.

4. Maintaining Stock

Another ecommerce challenge is appropriate stock. Managing stock level is another biggest ecommerce challenges for startups. Successfully handling customers’ demands you must have a sufficient amount of stock. Your stock should be an adequate amount so that it does not leave you in financial burden.
For a startup it is necessary to look towards stock more because you are new in the market and don’t have a previous sales record to manage it. In this case you can look after your competitor & manage stock accordingly. If your product is new then you have to do market research about your product demand and manage your inventory accordingly. You can also use inventory management softwares to manage stock levels. It gives you a real time update of stock and gives the remainder when to stock or what to stock.

5. Customer Support

This is the biggest ecommerce challenge for startups. Handling customers’ queries is not an easy task especially when you are not prepared. There are few methods which you can use to reduce customers queries or can handle them effectively.
To handle customer’s queries you must have a dedicated knowledgeable customer support team who are very well familiar with your product and know minute details of it.
You can add FAQs section to your site so that you can reduce the number of queries and customers get answers to their queries there only.
Make sure that your contact details are clearly mentioned on their website and easily accessible so that customers can easily be in touch with you.

Final Thoughts

These are some major ecommerce challenges faced by startups or even an established company too. What you have to do is to do a complete research in each and every aspect of e-commerce as mentioned above. We have mentioned about ecommerce challenges to the best of our knowledge. I hope this will help you to run your business smoothly and help you overcome your ecommerce challenges in starting your business.

To spread awareness about your brand or grow sales you can use various strategies like SMS marketing, Email Marketing, affiliate marketing etc. To run your ecommerce business tension free you can also opt for our ecommerce services .