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Top 11 Ecommerce Challenges and Solutions to Troubleshoot Your Online Store

Updated on December 13, 2021

8 Min Read
Ecommerce Challenges

The world of ecommerce has grown at an unprecedented rate over the past few years. Since the pandemic began, businesses  have witnessed the potential of ecommerce.

While the potential is seemingly unparalleled, it’s not all sunshine and roses. There are quite a few ecommerce challenges that businesses face in a rapidly changing economy. If you are running an ecommerce business, you need to be wary of such challenges as well.

11 Ecommerce Challenges with Solutions

If you can anticipate these challenges in advance, you can take steps to mitigate them. Here are 9 ecommerce challenges and how to overcome them.

1. Data Capitalization

Data Capitalization

One of the key ecommerce challenges that businesses face is the integration of their ecommerce arms into the company’s overall hierarchical structure. For that to happen, businesses must adopt solutions that focus primarily on data. This is necessary for managing KPIs and tracking average order values across multiple channels, with ecommerce being one of them.

A setup is required for capturing the data and then applying the findings to get appropriate results. This can help businesses make more informed long-term decisions and avoid other issues in ecommerce management.

The Solution

The ecommerce function needs to be integrated and turned into an important component of the business as a whole. Instead of focusing on this as a separate, compartmentalized function, ecommerce needs to be integrated properly to track the cross-digital performance of the company.

One effective way to do this is to use a POS system that integrates efficiently with your ecommerce platform as well, allowing you to track payments from multiple channels and analyze performance in a more accurate manner. It’s one of the best ways to overcome major ecommerce problems.

2. Increased Customer Expectations

Customer Expectations

Another of the most common ecommerce issues that businesses face is managing customer expectations. As you try to build a reputation for your business and focus on your brand image, it’s incredibly important that you evaluate the overall user experience.

Managing customers’ rising expectations is very important, and for that to happen, it’s imperative that you understand what people like about your brand. You need to double down on the user experience and use relevant design practices that fall in line with your business. This is arguably one of the biggest ecommerce challenges that businesses face. Such challenges of e-business require careful thought and planning.

The Solution

A careful understanding of modern web design trends is necessary if you want to overcome this issue for your ecommerce business. In-depth analysis of existing trends will help you understand what changes you need to make, and help your business adapt accordingly.

3. Logistics Issues

Ecommerce logistics

Overcoming logistics issues is one of the biggest ecommerce challenges that businesses face. As a business owner, you need to make sure that deliveries are made on time. In case there are delays with deliveries or supply chain issues, your business can suffer.

Do you divide your inventory and spread it across different warehouses throughout the country, or do you work with a third-party logistics provider? In case goods aren’t delivered on time to your customers, you will lose considerable goodwill in this domain.

Ecommerce shipping is one of the toughest challenges that you need to focus on as an online business. If you can’t streamline your shipping, you won’t be able to get your business off the ground.

A major ecommerce problem that most e-stores face during the sales frenzy is tracking each order. Unless they have a shipping service with a tracking facility, they aren’t able to provide tracking numbers to their customers. This can be a major turn-off for these customers, as it may cause them to be hesitant after one bad experience. It’s one of the biggest ecommerce problems that you can easily overcome.

The Solution

Depending upon the nature of your business, you need to figure out which shipping method works best for you. For instance, should you work with a fulfilment center, or handle shipping in-house? It’s important to try out a few shipping options to ensure that you are in the clear. Make sure you don’t let shipping cut too deep into your profitability, though!

4. Challenges Associated With Store Agility

Store Agility

How quickly are you able to introduce new features, upload and promote new content, and react to changes in the industry as a whole? It’s important that you adopt an agile business model, because the world of ecommerce continues to evolve. This is one of the more important ecommerce challenges that you are going to face, and it’s not easy to overcome.

Your competition is likely to be moving at breakneck speeds, adopting new policies and jumping on new trends quickly. If you can’t match their pace, you are going to be left behind. That’s not something you want!

The Solution

To overcome such ecommerce challenges, you need to take a more holistic approach towards your business model. Ideally, you need all the parts working smoothly, and that includes your marketing, manufacturing or sourcing division, and logistics. Make sure you are able to adapt to external and internal changes quickly. This requires cohesion between the teams, and a strong organizational culture, so work on building that!

5. Hosting Issues

hosting server

Hosting issues are more common than most ecommerce store owners realize. Hosting is where your ecommerce store lives, so you need to make sure that you select a reliable host. Ideally, you’ll want fast ecommerce web hosting for your website. You also want to make sure that the hosting provider you choose shouldn’t crumble under the increased traffic when you host a sale or a live event.

The Solution

The best way to overcome such ecommerce problems is to choose cloud hosting. Cloudways offers scalable cloud hosting, giving you a choice between 5 IaaS providers. It’s a fantastic solution for businesses that are looking to scale vertically after a while and want a managed solution that doesn’t require them to have much technical knowledge. You can easily overcome online shopping challenges by choosing a good host.

Choose fast, scalable hosting for your ecommerce store.

Go with managed hosting for the best hosting experience!

6. Personalizing Your Ecommerce Store

Personalizing Your Ecommerce Store

Creating a brand identity seems simple enough, but it’s actually one of the toughest ecommerce challenges you are going to face as a business owner. You will want to make sure that you personalize your ecommerce store to reflect your company’s identity and image. This is much easier said than done, however.

It’s not just about creating a unique identity and focusing on how your page looks; you also have to take into account the nature of the relationship that you are building with your customers. For instance, email marketing delivers the highest ROI right now out of all channels. It beats social by 40x when it comes to consumer acquisition, according to Campaign Monitor.

If your emails come off as too spammy, it’s going to put customers off, and you are going to lose important goodwill in the industry. This is just one of the many examples of how personalization as a whole can affect your business.

The Solution

It is imperative that you focus on building a close relationship with your customers to overcome such ecommerce problems. This is only possible when you first decide on the right objectives. What do you want people to think of when they think of your ecommerce store? It’s important that you maintain a consistent tone and brand voice on different channels, including email and social media.

7. Dealing with Competition

Competition

Dealing with competition is one of the inevitable ecommerce problems faced by business owners in this day and age. It’s up to you to figure out how you deal with competition. Some entrepreneurs simply can’t handle or face the pressure that comes with dealing with your direct rivals. While others are able to find opportunities and capitalize on them.

The Solution

There’s really no defined solution for this one. The best way to deal with competition is to thoroughly conduct a SWOT analysis and revisit the same periodically. This allows you to assess yourself and your competition accurately. You must understand that other businesses are likely to be at a different stage than yours. This means it’s okay for you to take things slowly, but not let any opportunities pass you by

Instead of worrying about what your competitors are doing, try to come up with innovative ideas for your business. Always keep an eye on your competition, but don’t be afraid to pave your own way. Healthy competition is always beneficial!

8. Devising Growth Strategies

Devising Growth

Devising growth strategies is another tough ecommerce challenge faced by businesses right now. It’s challenging to figure out areas for growth and take advantage of marketing tactics, especially ones that your competition isn’t using. If you are running a small business, it’s going to be difficult to handle day to day operations and also identify areas and opportunities for growth.

The Solution

One of the best ways to deal with such ecommerce problems is to join a few marketing groups and forums. Reddit, for instance, is a fantastic platform, where you can get interesting and engaging information about what other entrepreneurs are doing. This will allow you to come up with different growth strategies that don’t cost a ton of money to execute.

9. Embracing New Technology

New Technology

Embracing the latest technology is not always easy for entrepreneurs. It eventually becomes one of the major ecommerce issues, as entrepreneurs who are well-set in their ways fail to adapt to change. That’s not something you want to do. Of course, it’s important to take a calculated approach, because upgrading to the latest technology might not always be a wise decision.

The Solution

This one’s fairly straightforward. You have to understand whether or not upgrading would be worth the time and money, and it’s important that you weigh the pros and cons first before making your decision. Don’t just jump headfirst into making a decision, as that could cause more problems.

Ecommerce Store NavigationSource: Gap

Can the user see the navigation bar? Gerry McGovern argues the importance of priority navigation in his article. He says that navigation is even more important than search bar. Because that’s what the user will use first to navigate a website in the first place.

The Solution

Navigation bar should be simple, clear, consistent, and concise.

  • Focus on the priority of web pages while making navigation menus
  • Make them clear so the user can get the intent of the page just by reading the navigation menu
  • The design should be simple and unobtrusive

11. Proper Placement of Major Elements

Potential customers will leave an ecommerce store within an instant because of various reasons: such as lack of proper display of prices, shady refund policy, positive reviews of each product on the store, and many others.

The Solution

To keep the customers coming, try to remove all these hindrances. Offer them a smooth experience by taking cues from the best ecommerce stores that exist in your domain.

Use Intrinsic Motivation To Excel

What’s the main reason that drives you? You are going to face challenges at every step of your journey, no matter what you do. It’s up to you to make sure that you learn how to deal with them. As long as you don’t give up and continue to persevere, success will eventually come your way!

Q1. What is a common ecommerce problem?

One of the biggest challenges faced by ecommerce businesses is a security breach. Your information needs to be protected, and it’s imperative that you take steps to protect information pertaining to your business.

Q2. What are the biggest challenges online shops are facing today?

The biggest challenges faced by online shops today include scaling, selecting a good host, and managing logistics.

Share your opinion in the comment section. COMMENT NOW

Share This Article

Najam Ahmed

I work as a digital content producer at Cloudways. Besides that, I love to read, and i love to play the guitar. Fan of all things Arsenal and the Patriots. Occasional gamer. I like to fly drones too. Jack of all trades.

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