Many brick and mortar businesses want to develop their own e-commerce webstore. However, it is possible that they make multiple mistakes. There are some basic areas that we need to consider before start selling something. When creating our website, it is possible that we forget specific competitive advantages and unique selling point. It is possible that our product isn’t exclusive enough and it is actually not as competitive compared to what the competition is offering to consumers. One big mistake is not giving people a reason to buy products from us. This is an essential factor if we want to be more competitive compared to our competitors.
When developing a website, we should know whether there’s really a demand for our product. Products that can be sold relatively easily in the physical store may perform poorly in online sales, because there are so many competitors available. It means that we may need to perform more significant marketing effort when selling our products online. This is one pitfall that we may not be aware of. It will be a big mistake to focus the structure and design of our website for one specific product when it doesn’t really work well in the market. In this case, we should be sure whether our website should be designed for specific products and services.
If we are sure that our product will sell well in the market, it is important for us to add specific supporting features. We should make sure that there is enough supply to meet the overall demands. Often, our sales depend on the availability of supplies in the inventory. Web developers should provide a system that allows consumers to see how many items that is still available. We will be able to find out how much money that’s still tied up in the inventory. We will also know about the overall opportunity costs. This is essential because some of the products in the inventory could lose the overall value if they are not sold immediately.
An offline inventory program could also be integrated with the website. Web developers should know how to integrate external data into the website. This will provide an overall openness of the state of our inventory. Consumers will be able to determine whether they can actually purchase something from our website. Making such integration doesn’t have to be expensive. This can be achieved when the offline and online inventory solutions use the same database platforms. As an example, both systems can be based on MySQL. It means that a query that’s used on offline platforms will provide the same result with the online platform.
Our website should also have proper integration with the payment process. In essence, our payment system should be properly organized. Any payment should be processed quickly so the product shipment won’t be delayed. Good payment solutions will ensure improved satisfactions among consumers and this is an important factor that we need to consider. There are different payment solutions that we can choose, such as PayPal and credit card payments.
