LONDON – Due to advancements in technology and the internet essentially taking over the world in recent years, starting an online business is more viable than ever before. In fact, there are believed to be more than 1 million e-commerce businesses in the USA and Canada alone, and that number is only expected to grow.
Unfortunately, running a business (whether online or not) is not always an easy task and there are a number of things to watch out for. With that in mind, this article is going to look at a few mistakes people make when running an online company, mistakes that you can hopefully avoid.
Not Doing Their Homework
Before you even start your online company, you need to do a lot of planning and homework. You need to figure out what kind of product or service you want to sell, who the competitors are in the space and come up with some goals. Also, in order to have a successful business, you need customers.
You need to identify a target market, see if people are open to the idea of your company and more. If you start a business without doing this type of homework and research, your business could fail before it even gets off the ground. Many companies fail within their first few years, so if you want to be different you need to put in the work before the company even exists.
Not Automating Everything You Can
With many online businesses being run by only one or a few people, there is often a lot on the business owners plate. They will have to often handle everything from marketing, accounting, content creation, SEO, running social media and more. This means most people who run online businesses are incredibly busy and will take any sort of advantage they can get.
One thing online business owners should certainly look into is automation. They are numerous different functions within your business that can be automated to save you a lot of time, energy and money. For example, you can use automatic log monitoring software to help catch and stop downtime, and schedule and send automatic invoices to get paid faster.
Not Optimizing Their Content or Website
While it would be lovely if customers just magically found your website and started purchasing products, that isn’t how it works. You will need to utilize SEO (search engine optimization) to bring organic traffic to your site. SEO is all about trying to rank high on Google for certain terms so that your customers will be able to find you easier.
In addition to SEO, it can be valuable to market your website or company traditionally through ads as well. Any way that you can get your target market to find you and become interested in your product or service, is a win.
Undervaluing What They Have to Offer
When just starting out and trying to get market share in your space, many companies will underprice their product or service in order to get customers interested. However, before you do this, you should put a lot of thought into it.
If you price your product too low, customers won’t be super receptive if you try and increase it in the future. Also, be sure to price your products with integrity, as offering something at the lowest price possible might lead people to think you don’t believe in the product. Make it affordable for everyone, but don’t cut your price down to almost nothing just to get customers.
If you can avoid these mistakes when running an online business, you could be well on your way to success. Of course, these aren’t the only mistakes people make, but they are among the most common and harmful.
