10 pitfalls that ordinary people will fall into when starting an e-commerce business

Based on personal experience, the author of this article summarizes the difficulties that ordinary people will encounter in the early stages of transformation and entrepreneurship in e-commerce, as well as the ten pitfalls in operations. The author uses simple real-life examples to more intuitively introduce the countermeasures that should be taken to deal with various pitfalls, and recommends them to novices in e-commerce operations. Let's learn together.

After I wrote the last article "10 pitfalls that ordinary people will make when choosing product categories when transforming into e-commerce entrepreneurs", it caused quite a stir, and many readers added me on WeChat and asked me to continue writing follow-up articles. So today I will continue to talk about:

These are the 10 pitfalls that ordinary people will encounter when starting an e-commerce business.

1. The first pitfall: the name is wrong

Please don't laugh, even though business is so developed and various marketing theories are so abundant, many people still have big problems when naming their stores and brands.

First of all, everyone must understand that your brand and your store are spreading throughout the entire Internet, allowing customers to find you, and to a large extent, they find you through search.

For example, if a customer buys a pair of pants from your store, her best friend sees it and asks: "These pants are so beautiful! Who bought them from?" The customer may send the link to her best friend; another possibility is to directly tell her that this is Taobao/Tmall/JD.com/Pinduoduo XXX brand, you can find it by searching. Then her best friend will search for your brand name.

For example, your customer posts a WeChat Moments with a photo of a tidy desk and a caption: The desk is finally clean! Then his friend comments below and asks: Your water cup is so beautiful, where did you buy it? The customer will reply: You can find it by searching XXXX on Taobao.

There are many such examples.

For example, if an internet celebrity/blogger recommends your product, an ordinary person shows off various products, or the media recommends various good things, they will tell their fans and readers that this is XX brand. Then these people will come and search.

There are also many old customers who may have bought something from you before and want to buy again, but it is too troublesome to look through their shopping records. However, they remember your brand name and can find it by searching. There are many such examples.

Since the spread to traceback is mainly based on search, your brand name should not set too high a threshold for customers.

For example, the names are too long and difficult to remember: Snow Meilan, mncc Mini Xixi, stywoman Bailing, Lollipop No. 11, Di Rui Cashmere Sweater, QUANTUM PHYSIC... It seems that these brands are named to test the memory of customers.

Some names are too complicated. Customers always make mistakes when searching for you, and they feel like throwing their phones. These are mainly English names, such as [LISADENGEE], [Donouement], [Serendipity], etc. These brand names are testing the English level of ordinary people, and they basically give up after entering a few letters.

Some people use rare characters, uncommon characters, easily misrecognized characters, and difficult to type traditional Chinese characters when naming their brands and stores, such as: 孖记, 洛如缇, 陳大爽. You must not consider all customers based on your own knowledge level. You may recognize this character, but there must be customers who do not recognize it and do not know how to search or type it. These will invisibly affect your brand communication.

Some people also use the same brand name, which is very common in the market. For example, Fairy and Little Fairy. Many people use this word to build a brand name, or as part of a brand name. As a result, when customers search, they often find other brands. These will make your communication very troublesome and will increase the loss in the communication process.

2. The second pitfall: spending a lot of time cutting out the logo

Many of my friends who have turned to e-commerce startups used to work as elites in large companies. They may be used to the idea that products from large companies must be high-end. When they start their own businesses, they also bring this mentality with them, which wastes a lot of time and costs.

One of the manifestations is spending a lot of time cutting out the LOGO.

A friend of mine started a new brand. He spent a month just on the LOGO, polished it for more than a dozen times, and hired a designer from a well-known advertising company. Either the color is wrong, or it is not big enough, or it is not round enough, or it is not high-end enough. Anyway, it took a lot of time and energy to polish it. I said, brother, what's the point of polishing the LOGO? Who will look at your LOGO when customers first buy things? Who will buy because your LOGO is good-looking? If you have this time, why not increase traffic, discuss cooperation, work on visuals, and polish the product?

Everyone must understand that when you start doing e-commerce, you can copy some similar solutions on the market for logos, packaging, tone, and fonts. The simpler the better, the easier the better, and the faster the better. In short, you should do it as soon as possible and don't let them take up a lot of time and financial costs. If you succeed, you can optimize it slowly later. If you can't sell it, it's useless to ask Kenya Hara to design it for you.

3. The third pitfall: poor visuals and inability to create visuals that sell products

Everyone says that they have good aesthetics, and no one will admit that they have poor aesthetics. Whether the aesthetics are good or not can be clearly shown through visuals when doing e-commerce.

A friend of mine sells coffee cups. After putting the products on the shelves, he couldn't sell them no matter what he did, even with advertising. There must be no problem with the product selection. Other companies also sell the same products, and their sales are all hundreds or thousands. The price is also no problem. Everyone's price is similar, and they have all hit the floor price.

The first reason is the picture. When searching for coffee cups, you will see that all the brands are competing with each other. Some are in the style of Instagram, some are in the style of Internet celebrities, and some are in the style of Xiaohongshu, which makes people want to click and see. But the visual of my friend's coffee cup is very dark, with a simple background, which makes people have no desire to buy. It's a pity that it can be sold.

Many girls also have this problem when they are making women's clothing. Many girls usually take beautiful photos and have good looks. Then they are often asked by their friends for clothing links. From this, she came up with the idea of ​​making women's clothing and opening a women's clothing Taobao store. In order to save money, she used a white wall and took selfies in the mirror. However, such a visual is not competitive at all in the current market. So girls are also very confused. Why do many friends say that the clothes are beautiful and ask for links when they post on WeChat Moments? But when they open their own stores, they can't sell anything.

There are also some friends who have good aesthetics and high requirements for visuals. But they also can't sell their products. Because the visuals they pursue are flat and creative, not the visuals that sell products. I knew a boss before, who returned from overseas and started selling men's hygiene products. The photos of his products were extremely high-end, and the visuals were very blockbuster-like. As a result, the click-through rate was very poor when they were released. Because in order to pursue a tonality, his product visuals used a ripple-like creative background. If it was made into a poster, it would feel very high-end. But when it was released, the product couldn't even stand out, so how could anyone click in?

Therefore, when doing e-commerce, vision is a very important part. It is the most intuitive embodiment of aesthetics, commercialization, advertising, consumer insights, and product creation.

4. The fourth pitfall: not listing selling points

Every boss who sells goods will say that his product is good, and no one will say that his product is bad. But when you ask him what is good about his product, most bosses can't answer, or the answer is very vague. It is a very important ability to elaborate on your own products, which means that the boss has the ability to constantly break down and think. The most intuitive manifestation of this explanation is the listing of product selling points.

Let's take a humidifier as an example. First of all, you have to have a few core selling points. My humidifier has four core selling points.

• The first core selling point: quiet and non-disturbing
• The second core selling point: large-capacity humidification
• The third core selling point: antibacterial disinfection
• The fourth core selling point: automatic power off and safety protection.

It’s not over yet after the refining. Each core selling point needs to be elaborated in detail by small selling points.

Core selling point 1: Why is it quiet and undisturbed?

It uses the latest low-noise fan, optimizes the workmanship of the water nozzle, and uses intelligent jet adjustment to adopt different jet frequencies in different time periods.

Core selling point 2: Why can it humidify in large capacity?

Adopted……….

After you have finished talking about the core selling points, you should continue to talk about them. The more you say, the better.

Auxiliary selling point 1: Excellent product design, won the Red Dot Award

Auxiliary selling point 2: Ergonomic design, more convenient to add water

Auxiliary selling point three: Applicable in multiple scenarios and portable

Auxiliary selling point 4: …………

After listing all these, which consumer would not be tempted?

Of course, I know that ordinary people can't make small appliances, after all, the investment threshold is very high. But even if you sell a mouse pad, if you can list and explain the selling points so logically, it will definitely make your product stand out. Selling goods, selling goods, the most important thing is to talk about your own products well.

5. The fifth pitfall: being misled by competitor data

Some friends who have just started e-commerce and have little experience will be misled by some data from competitors. For example, if a boss selling beef jerky sees that others sell 20,000+ pieces of beef jerky per month, he will be very envious and wonder why he can't sell 20,000+ pieces. If a boss selling socks sees that others sell 3,000+ or ​​5,000+ pieces per month, he will be very jealous and wonder when he can achieve such sales.

But the reality is that, in many cases, you don’t know what other people’s sales are made of, what channels they come from, and what strategies they use. For example, some snack shops have very high sales, which may come from the low-price sales of various anchors; some small commodities are priced very low, or even sold at a loss, which means that competitors are losing money, or harvesting orders in the market at break-even; and some products, such as some fruits, have very high sales, which may be because Taoke is promoting them and increasing sales at low prices;

I often see new models on the market. Some merchants have put them on the shelves and have monthly sales of 100+. I am not in a hurry at all. I don’t even need to think about it. It must be fake. The goods haven’t been sold in the market yet, but you start to have sales. It’s really a ghost order. Therefore, merchants with high sales have their own unique strategies, and you may not know the specific situation. All you can do is to operate logically based on your current situation.

6. The sixth pitfall: obsession with jargon

Many ordinary people have never been exposed to e-commerce before they start to do it. Then, they will search for a lot of information or ask some experts. Some information, articles, and courses tell them to do this, and some experts tell them to do that. Then they may be confused and start to believe in some things over time.

For example, [enter the pool], whether your product has entered the pool, only by entering the pool can you get traffic, how to enter the pool, etc. For example, [increase], sales must be increased in a way so that the platform can judge that your sales are increasing and give you traffic. For example, [spiral growth], [7-day spiral], [21-day spiral], etc.... These jargons cannot be said to be useless or all wrong. In a sense, they do make sense. But in fact, the essential logic of selling goods and doing e-commerce is actually very simple.

You find a better product, it may be good-looking, cheap, easy to use, and have a high cost-effectiveness ratio. Whether it is a good product comes from your deep insight; you capture a good visual effect so that people are attracted to it and want to click on it; you set the corresponding price, a competitive price, or even an impactful price; then you make a detailed product details page, list your selling points, and demonstrate your selling points; then you do some basic sales, as well as reviews, and buyer shows, to make consumers feel more secure when placing orders; the rest only needs to be promoted with the help of traffic, and it will slowly get done.

Many people fail to promote, have no conversions, and waste money. The essence is that the above links are not done well. In the end, the problem is attributed to the lack of black technology and the lack of fancy operations.

I have always believed that the essence of selling goods is always simple.

7. The seventh pitfall: lack of awareness of explosive product impact in the early stage

Last month, a friend of mine opened a store selling men's handbags with an average customer spending of 300 yuan. He couldn't sell anything and came to talk to me. I said, "Don't talk about how difficult this category is. Just think about it. You are a newly opened store with no visual, rating, sales, or reviews. Which customer would dare to come into the store and buy your 300 yuan stuff?"

The lack of awareness of the impact of hot products in the early stage is the most common problem for many friends when they first start e-commerce. What is a hot product? It is the best product I can get on the current market, and it is not much worse than the best product of the same kind on the market. I don’t make money from this product, or I can make less money. Its function is to increase the number of orders. As long as it can generate orders, the first order, the first 10 orders, orders every day, and several orders every day, it wins!

Because for everyone who is just starting out in e-commerce, the greatest pain is having no orders and no sales.

If you don't have any orders, you will be desperate, and you don't know whether this business can continue. As long as you start to get orders, gradually get some orders, and then a lot of orders, your entire store, traffic, and work can all turn around. Then slowly add some profitable products, and you can slowly make it. In other words, if you can't sell a hot product at a low price, it is definitely not a product problem, but a problem with your operation. This way, it is easier to find the direction of optimization.

That’s why I don’t agree with ordinary people doing the distribution of goods without a source of goods. The essence is that you don’t even have a hit product, you don’t dare to find a hit product to fight for, what’s the point of spreading a lot of goods? You are not doing e-commerce, you are just a brick-moving worker.

8. The eighth pitfall: the product will not be in the mainstream price range in the early stage

I am not advocating that e-commerce must be sold at low prices. But ordinary people who start e-commerce should at least start from the mainstream price range. For example, the mainstream price range of most products is more than 10 yuan, dozens of yuan, or more than 100 yuan. If you exceed the mainstream price range right from the start, you will add difficulties to yourself.

If you sell jewelry, for example, you can start with a price range of 10 to 20 yuan. This price range has a low threshold for customers to place orders, and customers can buy it at will. Although the profit is small, it is at least easy to promote. After your volume gradually increases, you can slowly increase it to 20 to 30 yuan, and then the business will gradually become better.

My brother is the agent of a Japanese jewelry brand and sells it in China. The average customer price is more than 200 yuan. I asked him if he had money. He said he didn't. I asked him if he had any resources of anchors, celebrities or KOLs. He said he didn't have any and couldn't afford the money for these promotional resources. I said he had no idea if he could sell it.

In the end, all the visuals that I spent a lot of effort on and the products that I put on the shelves can only stay there without many orders coming in. It’s all a waste.

9. The ninth pitfall: blindly launching a large number of new products

Some friends may have heard that new product platforms will provide traffic. So they launched a large number of new products and moved them to 1688. They moved piles of products and exhausted themselves, but in the end they could not get any orders.

When doing e-commerce, the priority of creating hit products is far higher than launching new products!

Because if you can make a hit product, you can boost the weight of the entire store, drive the sales of the entire store, and also make your funds, promotion, logistics, and work all work. After you have a few hit products, you will have a stable flow of traffic and stable customer fans every day. At this time, you will continue to launch new products, and the new products will also run some data with the support of stable traffic. Then you can continue to make hit products, bring in traffic and cash, and then launch new products, so that you have achieved a positive cycle.

If you don’t have stable traffic and stable conversion, you will just keep launching new products for nothing. The traffic that the platform gives to new products is actually negligible. So there is a saying in the e-commerce industry:

In the early days of a new store, use the least effort to launch new products, and use the greatest effort to create hits.

10. The tenth pitfall: not making advance preparations

When ordinary people start to transform into e-commerce, the whole process from 0 to 1 is full of confusion because they have never done it before. Often, the store is built, but the products are not yet understood, or the products arrive at the warehouse, but they are not very good at various operations and need to learn in advance. In such a chaotic situation, coupled with no traffic and no orders, it is easy to collapse.

In fact, many things can be prepared in advance. For example, three months before doing e-commerce, start making the following preparations:

First, do research on categories and products. Evaluate, compare, explore, search, and try them out.

Secondly, conduct some visual shooting exercises and drawing exercises to learn how to take high-quality pictures in a low-cost way, and how to use PS or drawing tools to create high-end pictures.

At the same time, you should familiarize yourself with some store operations, including opening a store first to familiarize yourself with the operations. At this time, you don't emphasize placing orders or generating traffic. Instead, you should first familiarize yourself with the relevant backend, operate it, put products on the shelves, communicate with customer service, etc.

Then you can watch the course at the same time to have a basic understanding of some things. It is even possible to participate in other people's projects and conduct some advance drills and familiarity.

This way, when you do it yourself, you will at least be prepared and will not collapse under the blow of multiple problems. You will be able to focus on solving more difficult problems.

Well, today I have summarized the problems I have personally experienced and seen people around me encounter in the process of doing e-commerce. These operational problems are headaches and confusions for many people who have transformed into e-commerce. I believe that if you can keep these ten points in mind, you will be more calm when doing e-commerce.

Author: Liu Weidong

Source: WeChat official account: "Liu Weidong's Entrepreneurship Notes (ID: liu17701793970)"