E-commerce has opened millions of job opportunities around the world due to the ability of commercial activities to provide their products and services via the Internet, which has contributed to increasing the spread of sales to larger segments of potential customers within various local and global markets.
In addition to all the commercial and economic advantages of e-commerce , it is not without problems and challenges that start from simple problems such as organizing the sales process, to major problems such as the disruption and closure of the online store.
In this article, we review the most prominent problems and challenges that online stores face in our current era and the best solutions that will make you stand firm in the face of these challenges. We will also discuss the important role that WooCommerce plays in addressing the challenges of online stores in general.
1. Empty the shopping cart inside online stores
One of the most prominent problems or challenges of online stores is the phenomenon of emptying the basket, which causes a decline in sales of stores of various specializations and types.
The phenomenon of emptying the basket means that the customer enters the online store and adds some products to the shopping cart. When he reaches the stage of completing the order, he empties the basket or leaves the store without confirming the purchase.
The role of WooCommerce in addressing the problem of emptying the basket
When you use WooCommerce to run your online store, you have many suggested solutions to address the phenomenon of emptying the cart of purchases. One of the most common reasons for emptying the basket of purchases, for example, is the lack of the appropriate payment method for customers. Therefore, installing all appropriate payment methods for visitors to your online store may help reduce the rate of emptying the basket of purchases.
In the article How to Reduce the Rate of Basket Empty of Purchases, you will find practical and proven solutions to address the problem of emptying the basket and thus protect your online store from losing more sales.
2. Security challenges and hacking operations for electronic stores
The security situation of the online store is a major challenge to maintaining your electronic commerce as it moves towards success and continuous development. Therefore, protecting the online store from exposure to sabotage attacks such as disabling one of the components of the store or disabling the entire store. Also, the theft of customer data within the store is one of the most famous challenges of electronic stores.
Preparing WooCommerce to address security vulnerabilities within the online store
WooCommerce has a good degree of protection and security that helps launch online stores in a safe and reliable manner, but sabotage attempts by others are almost constant.
There are many practical solutions proposed to protect the online store from any hacking or data loss. For example, making a backup copy of the online store helps you be able to return all of the store’s data in the event of a hack or data loss.
We advise you to review the guide to securing WooCommerce from security vulnerabilities and risks so that you are always ready to secure your online store and preserve it from disruption, thus halting sales, which is what no owner of electronic stores of all types wants.
3. Customer confidence in the online store and its impact on sales
One of the most prominent challenges and problems of online stores is the level of brand trust, as there are many trust factors that customers rely on to evaluate the degree of reliability in the online store. For example, when a customer enters the store and waits a long time for the products to start appearing in front of him, this is one of them. There are technical problems that greatly affect the degree of reliability in the online store, and therefore working to solve the technical problems that cause slow loading of the online store will be one of the most important solutions proposed to address this famous challenge.
Proposed solutions to increase the confidence of online store customers
If you use WooCommerce or WordPress in general to run and launch your online store, there are many add-ons that you can install to speed up the site and reduce its loading time for visitors, such as the WP Rocket add-on. Therefore, the shorter the store’s loading time for customers, the higher the reliability, as the period of its stay inside the store increases. The chance of making a purchase increases.
You can review the guide to speeding up your WordPress site to make your online store content appear in front of visitors in a short time.
Appearance in search engines is also one of the important challenges of e-commerce, as competition has become very strong in this field, and if your e-store does not appear in the various search engines, this certainly means losing more customers and sales, in addition to the fact that customers always trust e-stores that They appear in search engines.
If you use WordPress to run an online store, some plugins specialized in this matter, such as the All in One Seo add-on, may help you make your online store and the products within it appear in search engines, thus increasing the level of trust and credibility in the store from customers, which translates into more sales.
Also see 11 practical steps to improve the SEO of the online store and its appearance in search engines in a way that enhances the confidence of visitors and customers in it.
One of the most important factors for visitors’ confidence in the online store is installing an SSL security certificate on the link to the online store, as this has become a necessity, as online stores that do not have an SSL security certificate, most web browsers block their content and alert visitors that the site is not secure, which is a sufficient reason. To leave the visitor, perhaps forever, from the store and never return to it again.
You can benefit from the guide to SSL security certificates and how to ensure their validity on your online store in order to enhance visitors’ confidence and thus increase store sales.
4. Working to raise the level of online store customer satisfaction
Before the purchase process within the store, during the purchase process as well, and even after completing the purchase, all means of support must be provided to reach the highest degree of customer satisfaction within the store, which is one of the challenges of online stores that is considered a measure of the success or failure of electronic stores in our current era.
Working to raise the level of online store customer satisfaction when purchasing, as well as trying the products themselves, in addition to real technical support, are all factors that help increase the probability of the customer returning again and making more orders within the online store.
The most important suggestions for raising the level of customer satisfaction within the store
Activating live chat between you and the customers of the online store is one of the competitive measures because it is not available in most large and giant online stores. Therefore, providing the customer with the opportunity to chat live and in real time with technical support will contribute to raising the customer’s degree of satisfaction, which leads to increasing the probability of purchasing products and thus Increase sales and profits.
Learn how to activate live chat on your WordPress site through a package of WordPress plugins that are compatible with WooCommerce.
In addition to live chat, there is also email communication with your customers to follow up on important updates for them. For example, by default, WooCommerce sends an e-mail message to the customer after he completes the order, as the message contains the details of the order he made within the store and his invoice.
Work to improve the experience of email messages for store customers in order to maintain the strength of the ongoing relationship between you and customers, which maintains their level of satisfaction.
One of the factors in increasing customer satisfaction is designing 404 error pages in a way that reduces the exit rate of visitors to the online store, as the customer goes to this error page if he types a link address that is not available in the online store or enters a link to a product that has been deleted by the store management, in In this case, the error page must be designed in a way that helps him return to browsing the rest of the pages and other products of the online store and purchasing the required products.
One of the solutions that reduces online store problems is product pricing. For example, when you set product prices based on the type of visitors , this procedure will be one of the practices that helps store visitors from each country, for example, to see the prices of products in their local currency, and this leads to visitors being very satisfied with the online store browsing experience.
5. Keeping up with technology and its updates related to e-commerce
With the beginning of the emergence of electronic stores, the customer would enter the online store, create an order for the product, then wait for it to arrive and pay its price hand to hand. With the development of technological solutions related to the availability and provision of online payments, the customer has become able to complete the order and pay the price while in his place. Therefore, following up on technology updates related to e-commerce is one of the most important challenges that strongly affects the degree of success of e-stores.
Examples of some technological solutions that have contributed to enhancing the success of e-commerce.
If you use WordPress, specifically WooCommerce, to manage and operate your online store, it is important that you follow WooCommerce add-ons to manage your store like a professional, as add-ons are constantly being provided that are capable of providing smart solutions for e-store owners to improve the experience of visitors within the store, which is reflected in an increase in… Sales increased significantly.
One of the most famous technologies that help speed up online stores and online websites in general is CDN services , which have become one of the smart solutions for storing the files and content of the website on servers close to where visitors are located, and thus quickly opening the store for them, which works to increase their confidence in the store and thus increase their opportunities. the sales.
Among the technology solutions related to e-commerce are e-mail marketing programs and add-ons that have proven effective in creating fully targeted marketing campaigns, which is reflected in the success of your e-store. Therefore, we advise you to pay attention to activating email marketing within your store if you want to create additional sales and marketing channels that will double your sales and enhance your presence in front of a larger number of clients and customers.
Using social media platforms as a marketing and sales channel to double online store sales. Social media platforms have become a completely suitable place for marketing all types of products and services, as most people on the planet are present and interact on a daily basis within these platforms, which makes them one of the technological solutions to keep pace with the challenges of e-commerce as it is one of the smart marketing methods.
In the article How to Start Selling Clothes Online, we talked about the important role of marketing through social media platforms and its impact on increasing sales of online stores.
The most prominent smart technological solutions to keep pace with the challenges of online stores are the famous CRM customer relationship management systems.
Store customer relationship management (CRM) programs are among the most prominent technological solutions, as they help you divide your customers into customized segments, in addition to identifying the preferences of each customer, and thus you can provide a completely appropriate shopping experience for each of your store’s customers, and thus increase in-store sales.
Another technological solution that solves many of the problems of online stores is analyzing the data and behavior of online store visitors. A tool such as the Google Analytics statistics tool can help e-store owners analyze visitors’ behavior and know the most important pages or products that store visitors are interested in, thus working to provide continuous and better savings, as well as identifying products that visitors do not like and do not spend a lot of time on. Browse them, and thus those products can be replaced with others that are more relevant to the type of visitors to the online store. Analyzing the data and behavior of online store visitors is one of the quick solutions to the problem of poor store sales by providing more suitable products to customers and visitors.
Conclusion
Anything successful must face many challenges and ongoing problems, but modern technological solutions have become able to help those working in the field of e-commerce confront and respond to these challenges, and even provide smart and innovative solutions. Therefore, be constantly aware of the most prominent e-commerce problems, even if you do not suffer from them within your own store, to benefit from the experiences of others and continuously improve your business success plans.
