What are the obstacles to e-commerce?

What are the obstacles to e-commerce? E-commerce is one of the fastest growing businesses in recent years. The e-commerce market is expected to reach $6.54 trillion in sales in 2023, double the sales of 2019. However, e-commerce has challenges it must deal with to reach this future. Al-Lami’, what are the obstacles facing e-commerce? How do entrepreneurs overcome it? We talk about all these details in the following lines on the website Trianvo.

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What are the obstacles to e-commerce - What are the problems of e-commerce?

We will mention in the following lines the obstacles to e-commerce in detail:

Abandon cart

Online stores are customer-oriented businesses, and their added value includes seeking his satisfaction in all aspects, to maintain him and ensure his loyalty. But the customer remains one of the most important challenges of e-commerce. Simply because they may abandon their purchases at the last minute, as the shopping cart abandonment rate reaches about 70%. Why is this happening?

There are several reasons for a customer to abandon his shopping cart after filling it, the most important of which are the high prices of shipping fees and the requirement to register an account before the purchase process. In addition to the complexity of the payment process. Lack of available payment methods, inefficient return policy, and other reasons make the purchasing process not smooth enough.

By addressing these reasons, you will be able to reduce purchase abandonment to a minimum. For example, you can overcome the high shipping cost by contracting with a shipping company with good service and appropriate prices that suit the customer. Facilitating the purchasing process by allowing the customer to complete purchases without the need to create an account on the site.

The difficulty of targeting the optimal customer is one of the obstacles to e-commerce

Targeting the ideal customer segment is one of the hurdles E-Commerce faced by many stores. However, customer problems can be reduced, by studying the market and potential customers well. After studying the target market and competing companies. The target customer segment can be identified, upon which the ideal buyer persona will be built in the store.

By creating that character with all its details and interests, it is easy to prepare a successful marketing plan targeting the target customer segment through various marketing strategies. Whether improving your store's visibility in search engines, content marketing, or paid advertising campaigns. You can hire a professional digital marketer through the Independent platform, the largest Arab platform for freelance work, to prepare a successful marketing plan for you and conduct effective marketing campaigns.

Lack of customer loyalty is one of the obstacles to e-commerce

After you reach your ideal customer, you can lose them at any time, whether they are attracted to another competitor, had a bad experience in your store, or something else. Therefore, you should always look for the best ways to help you retain customers and increase their loyalty. Always provide excellent customer service, always listen to customers, and solve their problems.

Also, you can set up customer loyalty programs to always encourage customers to be loyal to your online store. While setting up a customer loyalty program, make sure that it is worthy of customer trust. So that it protects his data and privacy. 85% of customers look for privacy protection before enrolling in any program. The software should also be user-friendly, easy to understand and provide customers with attractive discounts.

There are factors that may cause the program to fail, such as a long wait for the customer to access the rewards. When a customer needs a lot of time to get points or rewards for the program. He will not deal with the store. The program will turn from a point of attraction into a point of weakness. It is also preferable to choose prizes and rewards that all customers receive based on their importance, so that they are valuable in the eyes of everyone.

The supplier becoming a competitor is one of the obstacles to e-commerce

Climbing the value chain is the term by which suppliers gain sufficient experience and knowledge of ways to reach the end customer, to sell their products to them directly, bypassing their main customer. Sometimes, some suppliers switch to selling to the end customer to make more profits, because they will sell at a piece price and not wholesale, as in the case of selling to your store.

Solve this problem from the beginning, as it targets suppliers and factories whose strategy does not include direct sales to the customer. They are factories that do not have warehouses or sales outlets, and are often small or medium factories. Therefore, there will be competition between your store and other stores that buy from the same supplier, which is acceptable competition, unlike the first case.

In any competitive situation, you should analyze your position through SWOT analysis or other analysis methods. To know the points through which you can overcome your competitors, and support the weaknesses through which your competitors may overcome them. Taking into account that innovation and always providing everything new to the customer are things that help your store succeed and excel.

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Poor shipping and delivery service - one of the factors that limit the spread of e-commerce?

In the beginning of your online store, you might start by using your own dropshipper. But as the volume of orders increases and the frequency of operations increases, this will require a large staff of freight forwarders, which is difficult to provide at a startup. The solution here may be to resort to third-party logistics services to store, package and ship the products to you, or you can just resort to a shipping company.

Choosing the right shipping company is not easy. However, the most important thing to pay attention to when choosing a company is the availability of a system to track orders through the GPS feature, and ensure its accuracy. Delaying the product for the customer and exposing him to a bad experience means losing it forever, and these are the most important obstacles to e-commerce.