The FIVE Biggest Mistakes To Avoid When Starting An Online Business

When you think of starting an online business, what comes to mind? Build a beautiful website? learn some of the tactics from the expert? Or create a powerful ad?

Yes that's right, but that’s not important, starting an online business begins with filling a need and building credibility, if you ignore it, that will be very dangerous for your business especially when you just start, there are a lot of mistakes that you can get into, especially when you’re new to eCommerce and don’t have much experience.

So I decide to do a lot of research and find out the five biggest mistakes that are over 80% small business make, they ‘re repeated in many different posts with different interpretations,

But they all talk about the same problems, and if you know them, that will help you go ahead of 80% remaining

Now let start 

NOT HAVING A PLAN

Many People think it's just only for big business, because they do not know if their business is going to be there or not, and they think they just to start, when their business grows they will find out what to do next, but that's not true, you have to build a plan before you start. 

You don’t need a formal 20-page business plan to successfully plan a business, but you still need a plan. A business plan will help you know what's working and not, divide available funds to reach specific business goals.

For example, if you sell fitness machines and you’ve identified 20-year old males as your target audience, a marketing approach built on social media marketing like facebook, twitter and Instagram might be more effective than using magazine ads.

Your marketing plan will help you understand the amount you’ll need to spend, how many people you can reach, and how many potential customers you’ll have to convert to generating a profit. 

FAILURE TO DO RESEARCH TO SEE WHO IS YOUR CUSTOMER

This mistake will lead to identifying the unimportant problem and target wrong audience, Imagine if you created a great product, spend an amount of money to promote it but no one buys, How do you feel?

Simply because it's not their problem, Remember customers are buying for themselves, not for you

Take the time to do research to identify who you are trying to reach, what are their important problems and the actual gap in the market before you take things further.

NOT DIFFERENT ENOUGH

You have no idea what your competitors are doing with their marketing, that’s a mistake. In most markets, customers have different options to choose from. Your business needs to be distinctive. 

If your business has competition and you then realize that your business idea isn’t unique. You have to ask the reason why people should do business with you instead of your competitors.

If you can not create a different product, you could change the way of marketing, like Guy Kawasaki explain in the book The Art of the Start: “Most of the new companies use the same terms to describe their product or service. 

It's as if they all believe that their prospective customers have been living on a desert island and have never before heard a product or service referred to as "high-quality," "robust," "easy-to-use," "fast," or "safe." [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through The Art of the Start link.]

A better way to distinguish your product is to offer concrete proof points so that people can deduce its unique qualities.

Find unique language or offer scientific proof points, and don't be tempted to think that you have the only product described with such overfamiliar adjectives as intuitive, secure, fast, and scalable.

BUYING A BUNCH OF LITTLE STUFF

When you have a business, you need a some of the promotional tools, that will help your business look more professional and more attractive, right? Yes, but you don’t want to go overboard. 

In most of the market, maybe except for the fashion industry, your customer just care about: Can you solve their problems and how do you solve it?.

So instead of spending a lot of money and focus on things like how your business cards look or the design of your logo, founders are wasting valuable time and money. You should concentrate on your content that will help your business go to the next level.

But don’t make me wrong, you should still buy some promotional items because it’s also a factor to attract your customer, but keep the quantities and your budget on the small side.

Here is my suggest

·         Business cards

·         Marketing materials

·         A cheap giveaway item

NEGLECTING GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE ON THE SITE

Businesses lose as much as $41 billion a year from bad customer service, don’t let yours join those notorious ranks, you’re selling on the web and rarely meet face-to-face, that’s the reason why customer service becomes more important. 

A good customer service will help you educated potential customers to realize the benefits of your product, that help you know to reason the ones who ask for refunds or buy your product but don’t use it and why the people who tell you they won’t buy, and find out why.

You should establish your contact info which displayed on your site, so your customers can always reach you with feedback, questions or complaints. 

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