7 Problems of Taking your B2C Business Online(And How To Fix It)

Let’s say you want to buy a vacuum cleaner. What’s the first thing you will do? Most probably, you will fish out your smartphone from your pocket and check for it online. Why? Because like thousands of people, when you want something, your first part of call is the internet.

Since the time of its inception, the online B2C market has grown at an incredible rate. Current figures reflect that 40 percent of worldwide internet users depend upon online shopping for the purchase of goods or products. This accounts for nearly more than 1 billion online buyers. And we are counting!

Of course, digitalisation has transformed the way companies market their products. Unlike the olden days, sales happen across multiple touchpoints within the online sphere, i.e. your social pages, microsites, etc. 

This has made shopping a lot more convenient for B2C customers. Yet at the same time, it has projected some unique challenges for entrepreneurs. 

The ever-evolving market scenario and customer purchase behaviour pose different sets of challenges from time to time. As simple and easy it may seem, taking your business online is no easy feat. You need to take care of everything, from website maintenance to customer service. 

This blog will shed some light on the possible hurdles that your retail business can face online. Nowadays, smart and savvy entrepreneurs rely on top e-commerce platforms for these needs. Soon you will learn that it’s probably the smartest thing to do!

7 Problems of taking your B2C business online and how to address them

1. Building a duplicate site for mobile

These days, every single thing is going mobile. Why? Because in this millennial age, most of the so called 'digital natives' prefer to do everything via their smartphones. It’s been estimated that millennials check their phones as many as 150 times daily. This makes them one of the largest customer segments of e-commerce. And this segment prefers shopping from their smartphones.

Besides just reaching out to them, there are several other reasons for your B2C website to have a mobile-friendly design.

• A mobile-friendly website ranks higher in the search engines
• It loads faster as compared to other versions
• Since everyone is on mobile, it gives you an edge on the competition
• As compared to a traditional website, it offers improved backlinking

So wouldn’t it be difficult to duplicate your website for mobile? Yes, it can get way too tedious. But you need not undergo the trouble.

Nowadays, top-ecommerce platforms like StoreHippo offer mobile-first technology, using which you can create a rich user experience. StoreHippo helps you roll out high-performance, next-generation websites that grow your business. By choosing from a wide range of responsive designs, you can engage tech-savvy new-age online shoppers with mobile-friendly web stores.

2. Hiring professionals for developing your apps

Think about one web store that you are fond of and use regularly for online shopping. Now as a B2C customer what do you do each time you want to shop? Do you go to the website or you already have its app on your cell phone? Guess it’s the latter, isn’t it?

Regardless, your online business is at a grand scale or its nascent stage, having an app always helps. It is a constant reminder for your customers that you are just at an arm’s length whenever they need you. Besides, data shows that B2C businesses that use apps, get greater ROI and increased visibility.

So once you have a mobile-friendly web store, what should be your next step? Of course, to build an app for your business. That again is no less tedious. 

StoreHippo helps you do away with hiring professionals for additionally developing your apps. You can create Android and iOS apps directly from your dashboard. Through this top-e-commerce platform, you can also go for PWA apps that are far more affordable and flexible in the long haul.

3. Struggling to achieve good conversion rate

An iRP data puts the overall average e-commerce conversion rate at 1.71%. But what is this conversion rate, after all! It represents the percentage of visitors who take action on what you offer them. Also, depending upon your product type, product cost, etc. conversion rate is highly contextual. It takes skill, tactics and efforts to convert those B2C shoppers into customers.

Conversion rate is a way to track the effectiveness of your offer as well as the products behind your messaging. Like for example, if you send newsletters to a targeted list of customers with a coupon code, you can calculate the conversion rate based on how many of those subscribers bought the product.

As we said, it isn’t that simple to retain customers. Of course, your products will matter, its costing too. But the overall experience that you provide your customers through your website will matter a lot. You need to provide an excellent navigation experience combined with smart marketing techniques to capture the audience.

A top-ecommerce platform could be just what you need! With its responsive designs, StoreHippo not only attracts customers to your web store but once they are there, it helps you retain them. Its powerful discount engine helps you plan a variety of discounts and promotions and manage them easily.The platform enables you to offer e-wallets or loyalty-based rewards to your customers each time they make a purchase. By letting you generate custom forms it lets you gather data and customer feedback for taking strategic sales decisions. 

Also, customers can use its advanced search option for faster product discovery. This way they can find exact matches for what they need. Likewise, you can offer them social logins and keep track of B2C customer data. 

4. Finding an Advanced Technology Solution

Online stores and technology go hand in hand. You cannot create a trendy e-commerce store without poking your nose into technology. But you are a businessman after all! Surely, you know the tricks to market your products. But how would you know what it takes to support them?

In an online world filled with stylish shops, your business needs a top e-commerce platform. The right kind of platform will help you create a real impression in front of your audience. Needless to say lots of money! 

So what’s the way out? Well, to make life easier, you need a future-ready platform designed to offer a comprehensive solution for all your online selling needs. You need a solution that is easy to manage, takes off the hassle of handling tech-teams and frees you to focus on business growth. Also, the online store builder solution should be DIY and designed to offer all the tools depending upon the kind of store you want.

StoreHippo can offer you high performance, scalable stores built using PWA, Microservices and Mean stack. Your store can be custom designed as per the dynamic requirement of the B2C e-commerce industry. Also, with StoreHippo you will find technology handholding you at every point of shipping, marketing, selling and more.

5. Coming up with unique marketing ideas

A recent report confirms that fast-growing e-commerce market in India will touch US $200 billion by 2026 from US$ 48.5 billion as of 2018. Of course, this indicates a healthy growth in the organised retail sector. But it also signifies a tough market competition. 

As time flies, attracting customers, selling to them and retaining them is going to be tougher than ever.

So what are those B2C e-commerce marketing ideas that can give you a competitive advantage?

• Creating a strong video-based content strategy
• Sending shopping cart abandonment emails
• Remarketing to get people back to your website
• Creating valuable blog posts
• Upselling and Cross-selling products
• Asking for customer reviews and place them strategically on your website

Besides these obvious marketing ideas, StoreHippo provides you out-of-the-box strategy to market your products to relevant customers. It helps you use your customer database to its fullest potential by creating diverse user lists for marketing purposes. 

You can easily generate different user lists for targeted B2C campaigns and sync it with your favourite marketing tool to maximise your ROI. Depending upon your customer segments, you can send them emails, SMSes or push notifications and create an effective communication channel.

6. Providing customers a safety factor

The downside of people shopping online is that they need to share their personal and bank details everywhere. This leaves very little room for privacy, especially when it comes to making payment online. One person might have his or her information spread across so many portals, making it confusing to track if some mishaps happen.

That is why most B2C customers look for safety first! Even if your competitor site offers the same product at a slightly higher price, your customer would want to shop from there. Perhaps, your web store does not offer a sense of security to your customers. Think about it. So how to cope up with this problem and generate trust in your customer’s mind?

One simple way to do this is by equipping your web store with advanced security features. And that’s the benefit of choosing a top e-commerce platform! StoreHippo verifies customer information by sending them a verification code for secure registration and transaction. This helps both the buyers and sellers and create transparent relationships for future sales. 

Also, with StoreHippo, you can secure your website with FREE SSL and get a higher ranking in Google searches. 

7. Dealing with different vendors for an end to end operations

Surely opening a web store is easy. But running an e-commerce business is not a cakewalk! There are many things to consider behind the curtain. You need to build a scalable B2C multi-vendor marketplace before any other e-retailer within your niche does. You might also want to create multiple storefronts for different product lines and increase sales. 

Now this is only about selling. What about providing customers different options to pay for the products? What about an arrangement to ship the products to their doorsteps? All these back-end operations need time, manpower and of course, the capital. If you involve yourself in the nitty-gritty of administration, you will hardly have time to focus on your business.

However, a top e-commerce platform such as StoreHippo can address the above-mentioned necessities. By offering a 360-degree e-commerce solution, it manages your e-commerce business from scratch. 

By taking care of your logistics needs and helping you partner with multiple carriers, it takes off a huge load from your shoulders. Now you can not only build yourself an attractive web store, but also market, sell and shine out with flying colours!

Final thoughts

The wise thing to do is to think about solutions to the problems rather than problems itself. Surely, e-commerce offers B2C entrepreneurs different challenges from time to time. But against that, solution-ready platforms are always there to provide support.

If you are an e-retailer, then you can easily relate to some or most of the problems mentioned above. So instead of having a ‘trial and error’ approach or ‘take it as it comes’ attitude, why not be fully prepared to face the e-commerce storm in the coming years. 

Why not check out our 14-day free trial and check it out yourself?