INEVO has worked with over 100 online stores over the last 10 years.
One of the things we like to do internally is divide success stories - concrete strategies and tips on how we have helped online stores. But it is not always as simple.
In many cases, the conversations are as follows:
Steven: "Hey, Even, how much has sales increased since we started working with this customer?"
Even: “It’s hard to say. There was something wrong with the tracking configuration when we started."
You would think that in 2024 all online stores have set up the right tracking. But they don't.
Our experience is that Most online stores have problems with tracking.
The impact is uncertainty:
- around the number of measured transactions
- on the marketing channels most active in sales
- how to allocate advertising to increase profits
In fact, tracking problems are one of the most common errors we see at online shops. Therefore, it is often one of the first things we take care of in our 90-day onboarding plan with new customers.
It is useful to know which market channels produce the best yield. And we like to measure how our involvement affects the results!
Let's continue to discuss common errors at online stores. What other errors do we see with new customers?
I sent the question to some of the e-commerce experts in INEVOSo let's say that this is the same thing as that.
Here are 8 of the most common defects we see at online stores.
So we start with one of our own. OMA'is, Frida.
«"The first mistake I have to make: spending a lot of money on marketing that drives traffic to a bad website. It doesn't matter that you have a good strategy, a good campaign plan and well-designed ads... ... when users leave the site on arrival because they don't understand what you're selling or don't find what they're looking for. Or worse - because they don't understand how to buy”»
All the paid marketing drives people to your website.
If your website is down priority, there is no need to spend money on marketing.
Too many companies come to us to get help with paid searches, social media advertising and e-mail marketing without giving their own website priority.
That is why INEVO is working in a comprehensive manner with digital marketing by also offering support in terms of: development and design to improve websites.
A website that converts 0% will not improve with more paid traffic.
Niclas points out a similar error.
«Enterprises often start at a wrong end. Making a perfect ad helps a little if the foundation is not in place. An example: You have created a perfect advertising setup based on “best practice” in Meta without the landing side reflecting the message in the ad. Or something is wrong with the UX that makes the customer not understand what to do. My tip is to start at the right end. Start by looking for friction points. Where does the customer get problems, what does the customer not act? Or how pleased the customer with the experience she last traded. There is as much information as you can use to improve the landing pages as you send customers to. It's about more than just listening to the customer, following best practice and removing obvious friction points in the customer journey.»
One thing is to work with the website yourself and make up a mind about what you think works. There is something else to start asking customers for input and feedback -- you know, those who actually buy from you.
This can be done in the form of surveys, NPS, pop-ups on the website with a simple question (e.g. "What prevented you from completing the purchase?") or even by looking at customer service matters.
Of course, there's a lot you can do yourself-- especially when you sit in the customer's place.
As Even highlights below.
«Not being his customer with himself. There is a lot of focus on testing in online shops (even though most people are miserable about it), and testing projects are often complicated. But there's one thing you can do that's very simple, and that's often ignored. Be your own customer! Try to sit in the customer's place and pretend that you need one of your products. Try to find it on Google, buy it in your store and evaluate the entire process from the customer's perspective. Was it easy to find the product on Google? Was it easy to find it on your website? Did the product side have all the information needed to make a purchase decision? Did the box work well on the mobile phone, and do you have payment options that the customer likes? Was the delivery as fast as expected? How was the unboxing experience? You can learn a lot from this simple exercise. I recommend you do this every six months, since things always change...»
This error is easy to fix.
Go to Google right now, search for your brand name and then try to buy a product.
Check things like:
- Does your adverts show the correct information?
- Are you on the right product page?
- Is the product correctly displayed?
- Is the product description clear?
- What happens when you add the product to the box?
- Can you complete the payment with the payment method you prefer?
- You get an e-mail confirmation as soon as you pay?
Notes for each step how you think it can be improved.
Small things here can make a big difference-- and then you're ready to launch advertising campaigns.
But there are two errors you have to avoid first:
Setting too high targets and for small advertising budgets, as Vele and Nora mention below.
«From a purely technical point of view - do not optimise for the right goals when advertising. Setting ‘traffic’ as a target in a campaign rather than ‘sale’ makes a huge difference in results. Do you want to change? You can easily do it in Google and Meta with a few clicks.»
When you set traffic targets, you optimize for visits.
But visitors do not pay the bills. If the business's objectives are sales growth and profitability, it makes sense to have promotion targets set to "placing on the market". Now your campaigns are optimized for increased sales.
But it doesn't matter if the budgets are too small.
There's another error we see often.
«A bad many actors do in online commerce is spending too little money on campaigns they have spent time planning." Small budgets make you less visible, and it becomes harder to get good numbers to optimize with. Most of your competitors are likely to also take your advertising places. In most cases, investing a little extra money in a campaign will give you more sales and a higher ROAS (Return on Ad Hand).»
So when you think about campaigns, you should also think about budgets!
Are you unsure how much to use? It's just asking.
We give you advice based on market factors, ad costs from similar companies and average cost per click. Sometimes it can be 5-10% more than competitors can lead to much more sales.
But don't spend too much time discussing and thinking about what to do.
This leads to an act of negligence!
«I have been sitting in long internal meetings with customers who have planned to edit everything from the website to change the text on certain pages that they believe are important for the online store. It's great that people want to make changes, but there's two things I often see are the wrong use of resources. It tends to take a long time to plan internal changes that online shops consider important, but they do not necessarily know what effect they have. So instead of just implementing and then adjusting, there's a lot of internal time spent planning before something happens. And that's this that leads to point 2. Online commerce companies look at what they think needs to be adjusted instead of looking at actual data. When they work with their own brand, it is often difficult to see what is actually the friction points in their presence on the web. And then you often look at things that people in the internal mind think will make a difference, because it's important to them. A common mistake I see is that people spend too much time planning, and in planning you often look at the wrong things (not data-driven). When implemented after a long period, it does not have a major impact...»
Planning is important.
But too much planning is at the expense of implementation.
You end up wasting too much time discussing and analysing instead of starting, collecting data and improving.
KP agrees.
«I think the most common mistake most e-commerce companies do in marketing is that they spend too much time analysing and prioritising instead of implementing as a hell. Businesses that implement at high pace learn faster. You don't need consultants to tell you what to do. Or as Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, says, "Our success in Amazon is a function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week, per day.»
Hannah sees a similar development in paid searches.
The advertising platforms have so much data that many accounts can be optimized on their own using artificial intelligence. But it's another mistake, in our opinion.
As Hannah describes in detail here:
«Over the last few years, the rules of play for advertisers have become more similar and the list to get started with effective campaigns in channels like Google Ads and Meta is lower than ever. Where detailed and advanced settings were required in the past to achieve effective advertising, promotion types such as Advantage+ and Performance Max make it easier for more advertisers to achieve relatively good results. In practice, systems have become so good that the channels themselves can take care of almost all aspects of campaign setup and optimization for you (if you leave it). Unlike before, the average advertiser can most likely achieve some efficiency only by being present. It may therefore be tempting for many busy marketers to set up the campaigns to then let Google and Meta do the rest of the job. One more time we see, and one of the biggest mistakes that I have in my life is just this: too many online stores say they are satisfied with a standardised setup and allow advertising systems to do a lot of the job. This means that those who actually work on analysing insight, collecting and using first party data, regularly testing and optimising their campaigns have a huge competitive advantage.»
So make sure that you have experts test and optimise the campaigns, instead of letting them run themselves.
Finally, Sebastian shares one of the biggest errors he's seen in the last 12 months.
That's something we all see.
Lack of focus on existing customers.
«One of the biggest errors online shops make in 2024 is underestimating lifetime value by focusing primarily on attracting new customers and ignoring the value of caring for existing relationships. By focusing on LTV you will prevent customer failure, increase node loyalty and, not least, collect as much money from each customer as possible. Underestimation of LTV will lead to loss of opportunities to build long-term and profitable customer relationships, which is crucial to focus on in 2024.»
It is much easier to sell to existing customers than to obtain new ones.
You also have a lot of data about existing customers that you can use for new email campaigns, retreating ads and more sales.
So don't ignore existing customers. They're your best source of growth.
Conclusion
It is a common denominator for all these e-commerce errors.
Following the default configuration or “best practice”So let's say that this is the same thing as that.
You cannot expect to grow in online commerce by having a developed website, AI-driven paid search campaigns and poorly configured tracking. And you don't win by discussing internally.
You have to challenge yourself and your team and implement like hell!
You also have to think - and act - as your customers.
So if you want to succeed, you should avoid these online trading errors:
- Allocs enough ad crowns
- Have a solid foundation for the site
- Accessing site tracking of web commerce
- Set (and follow up) the right business objectives
- Do not let artificial intelligence control your accounts for paid searches
- Less time for planning, more time for implementation
- Act like - and talk to - your own customers
- Focus on existing customers and life-time value (LTV)
The good news is we can help you avoid them.
Work with one of our e-commerce experts
We currently have only 1-2 places left for online stores that want to work with us in 2024.
If you want to increase the turnover and cooperate with one of the e-commerce experts mentioned in this article, you can contact us today. We're agreeing a meeting to learn more about you and share market trends, insight and how we can help you increase your e-commerce revenue.
Ready to cooperate with INEVO?
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