Top 5 Challenges in eCommerce Business and their Solutions

1. Top 5 Challenges in eCommerce Business and their Solutions The eCommerce business is the primary retail growth engine, which is expected to claim 17% of the industry by the end of 2022. The majority of shoppers, almost 81% begin their journey with online research and 71% of the customers say that a fast and highly responsive online marketplace is essential for a good shopping experience. The Total Transaction Value (TTV) in the Digital Commerce segment was reported to have a worth of 3.7M USD in 2020 and it is expected to rise, hitting 4.5M USD by 2023. With this increasing size and demand for eCommerce business, riding the Digital Commerce wave is not an easy task.

2. eCommerce leaders across the globe face a lot of problems while adapting to the Digital Commerce business. Here are the 5 most common challenges faced by them.

3. 1. Capitalization of Data The expansion of the Digital Commerce function for becoming a part of a holistic brand solution is one of the crucial parts of the eCommerce business. Not only this but it is also hard to build efficient solutions that help them right from shipping to store management, omnichannel solutions like BOPIS, and new Key Performance Integrals (KPIs) beyond conversion rates and Average Order Values (AOV). Your service has to catch the customer’s attention; else they will move on. Another challenging thing in this category is to discover new customer insights with deep demographic, geography, and interest profiles. Solution Retail businesses should start by making the eCommerce function an autonomous side business instead of a brand solution. They need to find smart ways to capture and measure data related to in-store shopping and customer loyalty. It will help them in the data visualization, targeting the customers better, making a cross- digital impact, and improving monetization methods in local stores.

4. 2. Customers’ Exploding Expectations Retailers all over the world are continuously trying to build their reputation and a strong brand image with the promise of a great experience. In an era where experience matters the most and tech giants like Amazon are taking the online buying process to the proverbial ‘nextlevel’ with Anticipatory Shipping methods, it is very difficult to meet customer expectations. Thus, competing with them and fulfilling the ever-evolving customer demands is a huge challenge for retailers today. Solution 86% of buyers are more likely to pay extra money for a better experience with a hulking 89% starting their own business and turning into competitors as a result of a poor experience. To meet the customer expectation of good user experience, brands should start analyzing their shopping trends and must focus on using it to come up with personalized customer experiences. Your customers must feel acknowledged and valued right from the moment they start using your service. Send them notification alerts or product updates for the same.

5. 3. Agility Challenge Agility is the capability of a business to introduce advancements, develop and deploy digital content, reacting to seasonal changes, etc in rapid fashion. Agility drives immediate digital fulfillment and it is identified as one of the most important initiatives in the eCommerce business. Agile Transformation is at the heart of digital business and scaling is important for making it successful. A big number of companies find it difficult to move or change quickly as per the needs of customers. It is usually because they can’t integrate new technologies efficiently with their existing system and as a result of which, penetration into the market gets harder. Solution Being agile in the eCommerce approach helps you deliver an enhanced shopping experience. To become agile, eCommerce businesses need to incorporate quick views across all platforms and must create personalized collections that inspire consumers. They should keep transporting fresh content and must design it separately for all devices and media channels along with guided selling experiences.

6. 4. Personalization Approach There is no denying that personalization is the key factor responsible for good customer experience. Retailers are obsessed with trying to provide their customers with a personalized experience which sometimes gets over-personalized without them noticing it. And customers get irked by the excessive amount of targeted online ads. In this hustle, retailers miss out on developing a one-to-one relationship with the customers and it turns into a major challenge in front of them. 84% of customers refer to being treated like a person and not just a number as an integral part of winning their business. Solution eCommerce business leaders must focus on developing the 1:1 relationship with their customers. They need to strengthen their tools and capabilities for a better reach and visibility amongst the consumers. Retailers should use additional customer data strategically to better understand the individual customer behavior and curate personalized customer experience for them. It can be made possible with the integration of the latest technologies and smart algorithms into the current framework that can help automate the entire customer journey. Additional commerce tools, a new machine learning approach, and cross- application data sharing can also be harnessed to serve the purpose.

7. 5. Being Consistent Consistency is the most critical element for a successful omnichannel shopping experience. Customers use multiple platforms for searching items before making a decision which bounds businesses to provide seamless purchasing encounters through every product or service offered by them. But analyzing and understanding customer interactions across all touchpoints and using it to build consistent and seamless customer experience is a major challenge for retailers. Solution Brands can go about optimizing their online platforms to deliver complete consistency between search options, various shopping pages, and shipping details. It will help them make the shopping experience seamless for the shoppers. They should work on product quality, fulfillment, and distribution as well. Conclusion To overcome these challenges, eCommerce businesses should operate as a modern omnichannel retailer. They should focus on turning data into insights, knowledge, and ways for market leadership. Inspiring shoppers and driving loyalty

8. with personalization at scale can work in their favor and can help support their brand, business model, and international expansion. In this highly competitive world, they need to use smart digital retail practices that can address these challenges with the right set of tools. Last but not the least, all of this must be backed up by strong digital leadership providing clarity about the destination and support with the right resources to help you reach there. Source - https://www.netsolutions.com/insights/ecommerce-business-challenges-and-solutions/