7 eCommerce challenges

Foresee Potential Barriers

eCommerce is set to be the fastest-growing global industry in 2023. Yet, businesses find some challenges that delay their eCommerce business, obtain low conversion rates, or lower their commerce operations and performance.

eCommerce challenges that businesses face

Shopping cart abandonment

2021 witnessed around 70% of cart abandonment issues and continues to be one of the biggest problems eCommerce businesses are facing. Various factors come in to play, such as having a long, complicated checkout process, not being mobile friendly, or even unexpected costs.

One way to reduce a complicated checkout process is by enabling a 1-click checkout and redesigning the shopping cart experience. By simplifying the process where customers can have a full view of the details, make their experience run smoother.

Nurturing customer loyalty

Having a well-designed and fully functional website doesn’t guarantee customer loyalty. Customer loyalty is a result of brand integrity and mutual trust between the customer and the brand. Acquiring new customers can be 5x more costly than retaining and nurturing existing ones.

Enabling chat support to proactively reach out and engage with buyers at their different journeys can somehow replace face-to-face interactions that are found in stores. Through engagement and great customer service, brands can maintain customer satisfaction throughout the buyer journey. Another tactic is to consider loyalty programs. By rewarding returning visitors with points or discounts, brands can foster loyalty.

Product returns and refunds

Inconvenient return policies can discourage customers, especially when the process is unclear or complicated. Almost 89% of online shoppers have made a return at one point during their shopping experience. For that, brands need to consider a suitable return and refund policy that doesn’t damage their business and gives customers a peace of mind.

For starters, having the ability to return and get refunded for items is important. The next step is being transparent about those policies and providing options that customers can be comfortable with.

Order Fulfillment & Shipping

Shipping errors, whether sending out the wrong item or shipping less or more items, badly affects customer trust and relationship. Moreso, affecting company profits and product losses. It’s all about having a reliable order fulfillment tool that identifies the right item for the right order, no matter the number of warehouses and order complexities.

Another challenge is shipping expectations. Customers expect their orders to arrive within the expected time frame, especially customers that pay a premium to receive next day delivery. In addition, customers demand free shipping, or at least the lowest cost available.

Delivering an omnichannel experience

Connecting the online and offline worlds allows customers to choose whenever and wherever they buy. Businesses need to ensure uniformity across all channels, in terms of products, customers, shipments, marketing, and other operations. With an omnichannel customer view, marketing teams can optimize their personalization strategies based on buyer journey and type.

With mobile commerce increasing to 72.9% of all eCommerce, consumers are heavily dependent on mobile now more than ever. They expect no compromise in their overall experience when making a purchase. Successful eCommerce stores need not only be mobile friendly and compatible, but instead focused on developing mobile-first.

Inflexible technology

One thing organizations need to ask themselves: “is our digital commerce platform future-proof?”. Customer expectations are evolving as quickly as the technology underpinning digital commerce. If your organization struggles with managing product content, inflexible UX components, inability to personalize, and a lack of data, it’s a strong sign your existing system was not designed to operate in the era of accelerating change.

5 things to consider when selecting a digital commerce platform are: flexibility, scalability, content deliverability, multichannel capability, and business model capacity.

Inadequate analytics or martech platforms

Businesses are constantly evaluating their strategies to develop new tactics that keep up with market expectations and fast-changing industries. With a properly installed and configured marketing technology ecosystem, valuable resources can spend less time on the tech and more time on the content. Having the right tools to collect and analyze massive amounts of data helps implement data-driven tactics.

Investing in martech platforms, such a customer data platform allows brands to gain a 360-degree view of the customer to better engage and connect with new and existing customers more effectively.

At XCentium, we provide services and capabilities around best-in-industry technology to suit your business needs and deliver unique experiences. No matter your business model - B2C, B2B, or B2B2C, we make sure our clients don’t miss opportunities or hold back their growth by leveraging agile, scalable, and enterprise-level digital platforms.  

If you have any questions about digital commerce, please don’t hesitate to reach out for a no-cost, no-commitment consultation and a member of our team will contact you shortly.