10 common mistakes people make when starting an online business

Today, we turn our attention to the common mistakes and the traps we often fall into when starting new businesses.
Here are some points to keep in mind when you start out so you can achieve sustainability of your digital project faster and smoother:

1. Lack of knowledge about digital marketing and its tools

Digital marketing is a living, breathing organism – there is something new every month. It uses a huge range of tools and platforms and luckily many of them are free and extremely useful for any type of business. There are also a wide range of online trainings that can help you get to know your way around.

Here is a list of some useful sources:

Digital Garage – https://learndigital.withgoogle.com/digitalengarazh
Google Analytics – https://analytics.google.com/analytics/academy/
Google Academy for Ads – https://landing.google.com/academyforads/
Facebook Ads – https://www.facebook.com/business/learn

2. Wrong choice of partner

If you are planning to start an online business, the most important things to have is 1)a well-built and optimized website that responds quickly to your users’ needs and 2)for you – to have a CRM system that allows easy management of orders and inquiries. You can always trust in proven platforms like WordPress, Magento, OpenCart, etc., as well as partner with a developer to create your site from the ground up.

3. Unrealistic expectations

Anyone can create a website and expect the orders to come rolling in right away, but things are not quite happening this way. Starting an online business requires users to become familiar with your brand/service/product. You must first generate a critical mass of traffic to the site to see how users respond to what you are offering and interact with it. You will need to run ads on different channels and do not expect them to start bringing sales your way immediately. After all, before placing that order online, each of us checks the comments and reviews for the site, whether there is any business information, and more.

4. Lack of USP

The unique selling proposition is especially important when starting a business. What is that different and special thing you are offering to users that distinguish you from the other existing stores? What will be your competitive advantage? Why choose you over proven sites with a large selection of products? Think about this before launching your marketing campaign, as it would play a key role in communication and allow you to “steal” clients.

5. You do not know your customers well

When building a site, choosing product designs or even the color of the logo, you need to know who your shoppers will be. Write down exactly what your “ideal” customer would look like and you can even give him a name. Point your thinking into making the right type of people like your work and make sure the design of your site is the right design for them.

6. Lack of strategy at the start

The initial traffic to each new site is usually paid. After all, no one knows you yet and writing your domain directly is unlikely. Don’t expect to have a profit and great direct traffic from the get-go. This will take time.
A major mistake with startup businesses is the limited budget and the desire for orders raining down. Paid traffic requires you to plan a specific budget to run your campaigns. Here, we recommend that you come up with a clear strategy for how you will grow your business in 6 months, rather than go with “Let’s see how the first month will go and then decide if we will continue”.

7. Unclear user path to purchase

Imagine you start running campaigns, invest funds into a budget, bring in a lot of traffic to the site, but see users leave it right away… Most probably this is due to a poorly built homepage that does not meet visitors’ expectations and does not convey them into taking the action you want them to take.

8. You are not familiar with good SEO practices

When managing a site, it is advisable to get acquainted with what element of your site is important to be indexed better by the search engines and have more organic traffic, as well as what do words like meta titles and descriptions mean and how they should be filled in.

9. You do not accept specialists’ advice

When you approach a digital agency or a marketer, they are the specialists who should help you in your endeavor and in improving your performance and results. Listening and trying to assist them is vital.

10. Daily changes to campaigns

Your ad campaigns need some time to collect statistics. We do not recommend daily changes. If you are in doubt about a message or image, do beta testing for 3-4 days before pausing one of them.

Surely this is NOT a guide to how to run a successful online business, but it is a list of things that might help you get started. If you need any help or advice, feel free to email us.