Even with the global expansion of e-commerce, security breaches, shipment delays, difficulties identifying customers, and creating winning marketing campaigns remain major hurdles for both small and well-known enterprises. Check the scope of e-commerce industry in India.
All e-commerce companies are impacted by these problems, which emphasizes the need for effective solutions to get past them and guarantee long-term success in the competitive online industry.
Therefore, Let us explore the 10 critical challenges faced by e-commerce businesses with efficient solutions to them, which will help us to navigate through the complexities of the e-commerce world.
Top E-commerce Industry Challenges and Their Solutions
Online Identity Verification
To prevent fraudulent accounts or bots, it’s essential to confirm that visitors to your e-commerce website are actual customers. Your company may suffer greatly from these dishonest organisations, particularly if you make cash-on-delivery (COD) purchases.
You risk suffering large financial losses if you don’t recognize and eliminate these dangers, jeopardizing your business’s profitability and operational integrity. You must act immediately to safeguard your business.
Solution
Make sure that the information provided by online shoppers is accurate. Upon a customer’s registration, always send them a verification link. An automated call could even be placed to the customer with COD purchases, asking them to confirm the delivery address. Know some of the best mobile apps to manage trade and payments of ecommerce sellers.
Providing a Multichannel Client Experience
Efficiently providing an omnichannel customer experience is one of the main challenges that an online retailer faces. Consumers anticipate being able to contact your brand via a variety of channels, including your website, phone, email, social media accounts, store, and more. Here are some crucial roles of technology in e-commerce industry.
Solution
Utilize customer experience technologies to engage consumers through their preferred channels (such as phone, email, live chat, video call, online help centers, or in-app messaging). Use past interactions to guide discussions. CX platforms’ unified view features can provide this capability.
Beating Out the Fierce Competition
One of the most competitive industries is e-commerce. Variations in a variety of factors, including prices, services, supply chain operations, and more, can have a significant impact on the competition. One of the hardest things about e-commerce is growing and retaining a customer base.
Solution
When developing your strategy, it is wise to start with competitor analysis. This enables you to recognize your competitors’ advantages and disadvantages and modify your approach accordingly. Stay aware of upgrades in products and services brought by competitors.
The Requirement to Update Sales Strategies
Reaching out to modern customers’ expectations is one of the most important customer service challenges among e-commerce issues and challenges. Many businesses lack the essential understanding of consumer behavior and purchasing patterns. As an e-commerce entrepreneur, you need to change your sales strategies frequently according to market conditions.
Solution
Think about listing your goods on well-known websites like eBay and Amazon. Due to the large buyer base that these e-commerce sites already have, marketing and pitching your product—as well as determining what works and what doesn’t—becomes somewhat easier.
E-commerce businesses can recognize and interact with visitors based on a variety of factors, including their location, browsing habits, referral page, past interactions, and customer journey.
Abandonment of Shopping Carts
One major issue faced by e-commerce businesses is shopping cart abandonment, and e-commerce giants are not exempt from it. For example, when retail giant Nordstrom opened an online store, they lost a lot of money on potential online sales due to abandoned carts. Customers were leaving in the middle of their purchases due to the laborious and glitchy checkout process.
Solution
Use a user-friendly checkout process to make it simple. Don’t let lengthy forms and challenging payment procedures prevent you from winning over those prospective clients. To prevent users from becoming lost, make sure that every component of your website’s or app’s navigation system functions as intended.
Preserving Client Loyalty
Your business will inevitably fail if you lack the trust and loyalty of your customers. But it takes a lot of work to get and keep customers. One reason e-commerce companies struggle to gain the trust and loyalty of their customers is that buyers and sellers frequently are unable to see or communicate with one another. As a result, interactions become less personal.
Solution
First, make sure that every step of your customer service process, from online ordering to shipping, is efficient. Additionally, consider producing worthwhile content. Place a higher focus on customer service than on profit, requesting genuine feedback from clients to improve loyalty initiatives.
The Hassle of Returning and Refunding a Product
According to a UPS survey, majority of American shoppers would prefer to shop at stores that allow hassle-free returns, and 60% of consumers in the country check return policies before making a purchase. However, when a product is returned, the company loses a lot of business in terms of shipments and reputation.
In this instance, shipping and refunding expenses have always been a concern for sellers in e-commerce.
Solution
Use simple language. These policies must be comprehensible to all, irrespective of cultural background or educational attainment. Offer a variety of payment and shipping options. Also, train your employees well to service customers properly with return policies.
The Battle to Compete on Price
Online retailers usually compete on price, even though customers value customer experience above all else. Small and medium-sized e-commerce enterprises are especially impacted by price competition since their rivals can frequently offer goods at lower prices.
Giant e-commerce business players like Amazon and Flipkart, which sell products at lower prices, often challenge new market entrants.
Solution
Identify your niche market and serve them with your unique products and services to effectively reduce the price competition with e-commerce giants. Change your pricing strategy based on the market demands and circumstances to stay competitive in a world where price matters a lot.
Competing with Manufacturers
Numerous internet retailers purchase goods in bulk from producers or wholesalers and resell them online. This is the fundamental e-commerce business model. However, product manufacturers have begun selling directly to consumers as well, partly because e-commerce has a low entry barrier, which increases the competition.
For instance, ABC Garments sells both directly to customers via its website and to your online marketplace.
Solution
Manufacturers who are less likely to sell directly to consumers should be given preference. Also, Limit the manufacturer’s ability to sell the product directly to consumers by stipulating this in the agreement. You can use this method to work with smaller manufacturers, though not all of them will be able to.
The Increased Need for Information Security
Security breaches can create nightmare situations. Websites may be infected with viruses or spam posts made by fraudsters. These people might be able to obtain private information about your clients’ payment card information, phone numbers, and other details. With more than 15 billion data record breaches in 2019, information security is one of the biggest challenges in e-business.
Solution
Use SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) and FTPS (File Transfer Protocol Secure) to improve your cybersecurity. Also, make sure to use standard verification methods and seek the expert help of cybersecurity professionals for better security.
Key Takeaway
Outstanding strategies and implementing them on time are necessary to survive the challenges faced by e-commerce. Be ready to tackle any e-commerce issue that may arise and concentrate on creating a customer-focused culture. By doing this, you can find out what makes your customers tick and provide them with an online shopping experience they won’t soon forget, in addition to addressing customer service issues.
With these basic challenges to e-commerce, financial constraints are another usual challenge faced by e-commerce businesses. For this, Indifi can be your best companion, providing easy and quick loans to e-commerce professionals without collateral. Contact them today for hassle-free loans.
FAQs
- What are the challenges faced by B2C e-commerce?
Many companies are facing challenges in implementing e commerce such as fighting for customers’ attention in the fiercely competitive B2C e-commerce business. Other challenges include data security, handling returns and refunds, promising cybersecurity, and much more.
2. Do I need technical skills to run an eCommerce business?
Successful eCommerce requires a technical understanding of web design and user experience (UX/UI), web development and programming, database management, search engine optimization (SEO), and cybersecurity, among other things.
3. What are the other abilities needed to solve e-commerce problems?
Other skills include digital marketing, data analysis, inventory control, and customer relationship management. By mastering these skills, people can increase customer satisfaction, drive traffic, maximize conversions, and prosper in the e-commerce industry.