Challenges in the E-commerce industry

Online shopping has gained popularity worldwide mainly due to the convenience it offers. It is easier and quicker to buy products right at your home’s comfort than it is to visit brick-and-mortar stores. Online stores make it possible for a shopper to compare items without spending much time having to walk around through the streets to the supermarket and around the supermarket shelves. In addition, online stores also allow a client to read client reviews and know whether the particular products meet their expectations. You can also use review sites to know which online store is good to shop from. For example, you can visit the review site Britainreviews.co.uk and look at software solutions companies online reviews. Avoid the negatively reviewed companies, and this way, you’ll get a dependable software solution company. Some of the challenge facing the e-commerce industry are discussed below.

Lack of online verification for clients

In online stores, the authenticity of new clients is always questionable. When a new client signs up, e-commerce sites only have the phone number and address of the client and no other way to recognise them. If the new client is a scam-client and makes an order to a fake address, this would cause considerable losses to the company. It is difficult to trace such a client, especially if the number they provided was also fake. Therefore, an e-commerce site must ensure safety by taking all necessary and possible steps to ensure that they avoid such risks. They should have measures in place that detects fake numbers, bogus orders and invalid zip code. For example, they can call a client once an order is made to verify the order.

Dependence on google for traffic

Worldwide, Google is the search engine leader and controls the visibility of websites. Over 50{16df11c990dc3facfe1c942736d698a51296c1c27fed91b902e4b6b29896f772} of e-commerce shops typically depend on traffic from google. Though there are other competing search engines, Google remains the leading search engine. Thus, when google adjusts the rule of the game, this typically has a significant effect on online shops. To ensure some form of immunity to changes that may have adverse effects, online stores should aim at having different channels to acquire traffic and thus will not be entirely dependent on google for tractions and visibility.

Lack of the ability to attract the peaceful client to your product

One of the major mistakes that entrepreneurs make is first creating a product and then searching for clients. This should not be the case; instead, the market should guide in product development. The entrepreneurs should look for a starving market and get feedback from this market. This way, you will not struggle to sell your products once it’s ready. The easiest way to attract perfect clients to consume your products is simply by offering them what they require and not what you think they want. This eradicates hard selling and ensures that selling is a fun experience.

Security and privacy

In recent years, data breaches have increased, and e-commerce websites are highly prone to these breaches. Specifically, online shoppers are concerned about their security and data privacy while using these sites. Most of these breaches often result from how the online stores use third- and fourth parties to provide certain functionality on their website. Such functionality includes processing of payments, offering product reviews and checkout services. To offer these services, these parties require access to the client’s data. The overall effects being a decrease in transparency in the manner in which information is utilised and stored. There exist regulations such as the GDPR to aid in the protection of personal data. These regulations require that sites first ask the consent of a client prior to sharing any of their data with third and fourth parties. This helps the secure management of client’s data.

Returns

Statistics indicate that most clients typically seek to understand the return policy of a site prior to deciding whether or not they will buy from the specific site. In the EU, regulations require that e-commerce sites entitle their clients to return or cancel a purchase within 14 days. These returns cost e-commerce stores lots of money, and to cushion themselves from these losses, e-commerce sites tend not to include clear return terms in their return policies. At times they might be tempted to pass the cost of returns to the clients to reduce the cost incurred by them. This often leads to client frustrations, dissatisfactions and can drive away traffic from your site. Overall the e-commerce revenues will decrease.

In conclusion, this article sheds lights on the problems that e-commerce sites face.