I’ve worked with 200+ clients and helped them generate over $250 million in revenue. The first step is always analyzing their strategy and seeing what they’re doing wrong. Here are the 12 most common mistakes in eCommerce (so you can avoid them): 🧵
1. Not Having A Specific Audience Trying to sell to everybody usually ends in selling to almost nobody. Pick a specific audience, not a general one.
2. Not Building An Irresistible Offer Most people just find a thing to sell and try to sell it. The best businesses turn that thing into an irresistible offer with emotional angles, refund/results guarantees, bold promises, and more.
3. Not Doing Enough Research Guessing what your audience will respond to is a losing strategy. Do deep research with forums, social media, competitor websites, ad libraries, surveys, and conversations with your audience.
4. Not Investing In Copywriting Whether you’re writing ads, landing pages, or video scripts, copywriting is the foundation of persuasion. Either invest time in learning it yourself or invest money in hiring a professional.
5. Not Having Enough Social Proof A sales page with no social proof or limited social proof is doomed to fail. Hustle to get a bunch of detailed testimonials and case studies, then use them to sell.
6. Not Investing In Photos & Videos Even if your copywriting is great, low-quality photos and videos will likely tank your conversion rates. Just like with copywriting, either invest time in doing it yourself or hire someone with a track record of success.
7. Not Being Able/Willing To Invest In Ads Paid ads often take a few weeks or even a month or two to become profitable. If you don’t have the budget or patience to test and learn for a while, you’ll have trouble getting off the ground.
8. Not Investing In CRO CRO usually means “conversion-rate optimization,” but for my team, it means “conversion-revenue optimization.” It involves testing offers, copywriting, upsells, bump offers, and everything else that increases conversion rate and average order value.
9. Having Poor Customer Service No matter how good your offer is, some people will be upset with their order, or they’ll at least want to learn more before buying. Invest in having great customer service, and you’ll build a good reputation and an army of brand advocates.
10. Not Having Goals “Sell a lot of stuff” doesn’t cut it. You should identify KPIs, make big goals for things like yearly revenue, and make small goals for things like individual ads.
11. Having Poor Back-End Marketing/Offers I have clients who get 1.00 ROAS but still make millions of dollars per year. That’s because they have email marketing, organic social, and back-end offers that convert customers without having to buy more traffic.
12. Not Constantly Testing & Evolving eCommerce is a game that never truly ends. If you want to stay profitable, you need to keep testing ads, testing landing pages, launching new offers, learning, researching, collecting data, and evolving.
