What's the Biggest Challenge for Most Businesses When Going Online?
The Glorious Company Team
You’re finally ready to take your business online. You’ve determined that there’s a whole, new market waiting for you online, and all your stakeholders are on board. While selling your products or services online provides a breadth of opportunities, making the jump online isn’t always smooth for each business. In fact, it can be fraught with a lot of challenges. Just 10-20% of online businesses succeed, with most going under in the first 120 days.
Competition is fierce, and selling in a brick-and-mortar setting is different than the digital environment you’ll find yourself in. Going digital is unavoidable in the 21st century, especially if your goal is to expand your brand awareness and capture a bigger slice of the market in your industry.
What’s the Biggest Challenge for Most Businesses When Going Online
Providing a seamless user experience to your online shoppers. Compliance with data rules and regulations. Shipping and fulfillment with no friction. Using a plethora of marketing channels—everything from social media to blogging to paid ads.
These are all factors your business has to master if you’re going to succeed in making your mark digitally. Here are 12 of the biggest challenges you’ll face as you take your business online, along with solutions to each.
1. Understanding the Difference Between Selling Online and Selling In Person
Selling online is based on automation and technology while selling in-person is more about face-to-face contact and relationships. While your customers do have a relationship with your brand online, it’s not as intimate as walking into a brick-and-mortar or a mom-and-pop store and asking a sales associate or saying hello to the small business owner you’ve known for years.
With digital ecommerce, people put more of an emphasis on speed and a frictionless checkout. The faster they can purchase what they want, as far as B2C (business to commerce) is concerned, the happier they’ll be, and the more you’ll retain them. Even in B2B, though sales cycles are much longer, online selling still involves efficiency in prospects having all the necessary content from your brand at their fingertips—so they can educate themselves and move down your sales funnel smoothly.
Overall, selling online comes down to empowering your customers and prospects to find the information they want, with no friction, and then letting them make the purchase quickly when they’re ready to buy.
2. Understanding What Your Competitors Are Doing (and Doing It Better)
Conduct thorough market research and analysis to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors’ online endeavors and your own potential areas for improvement. By thoroughly assessing how your competitors are operating, you can pinpoint ways to outperform them and claim a larger market share.
In their Market Research Impact Report, Hanover Research revealed that 68% of businesses that succeeded in increasing sales have done so with market research. Further, the entire global market research services market will grow from just $76.37 billion in 2021 to a huge $108.57 billion by 2026. This is a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 7.29%, as businesses are harnessing this method of research in greater demand.
Determine your competitors and analyze their online stores’ business strategies, products, services, pricing, and customer engagement. Look for areas where you can differentiate and offer something unique to customers. For instance, if your competitors excel in product quality, you can focus on providing exceptional customer service on your website by having live chat, self-help guides, and a 24-hour number for customers to call. By understanding what your competitors are doing well and where they are falling short, you can formulate a strategy to outperform them.
3. Training Your Team for the Move Online
Making the transition from an in-person business environment to the digital realm of an ecommerce store or B2B website involves a learning curve. That’s why it’s critical that you prepare your team for the transition to online business.
In all likelihood, your team is used to a certain process, structure, and way of doing things offline. This relates to customer service, operations, marketing—you name it. When your team makes the move online, customer service, operations, and marketing will still be necessary, but they will look very different in the digital world.
Your team will likely be apprehensive about making the change, and some may even be resistant because of their entrenchment with what they’re used to doing. There’s also concern about having to learn new, digital tools and workflows.
Ease them into this transition by investing in human resource development. Create a plan to begin training them on new processes, tools, and workflows months in advance of launching your online operations. Explain to them why this advancement is necessary for business and be responsive to their feedback and concerns. Train them to work well with project management platforms, online software, website analytics, content management systems (CMS), and online marketing.
4. Building a Website With a Great User Experience
To design a website with a great user experience, start by focusing on clear navigation. Ensure that users can easily find what they are looking for by organizing your website's content logically and using intuitive menus and links. Incorporate easy search functionality to allow users to quickly search for specific products or information.
Make sure the website is mobile responsive, as most of your users access websites from mobile devices these days. This ensures that the website looks and functions well on all screen sizes, providing a seamless experience for all users. According to Statcounter GlobalStats, the current share of global mobile users is 53.59% vs just 44.59% who access the web on desktop, as of December 2023.
Include distinct calls to action throughout the website to guide your customers towards their intended actions, such as making a purchase or signing up for your newsletter. Incorporate user feedback and industry best practices to ensure the website is user-friendly and engaging, constantly seeking to improve the user experience based on real user insights.
Strive to make your new website fast, as slow loading times can lead to a poor user experience and high bounce rates. According to Semrush, your website’s main content ought to load in 2.5 seconds or less.
Finally, provide customization options for products or services, as personalized experiences can greatly enhance the user's interaction with the website. By implementing these strategies, you can create a website that offers an exceptional user experience.
5. Providing Strong Customer Service Online
Because the competition online is so fierce, particularly if you’re in ecommerce, the customers service has to be second-to-none. Your shoppers expect a website that doesn’t make them wait for pages to load, where everything they want to find is just a few clicks away, and which makes it easy for them to buy from you.
Customer service includes more than the availability of live chat on your website or responsiveness from your customer care team by email or phone. It also includes factors like a checkout process that has no friction, is blazing fast, and accepts as many payment options as possible, including alternative methods (like PayPal).
The stronger your customer service, the quicker your brand awareness will grow on the internet and the more successful you’ll be in making the move online.
6. Keeping Data Secure
When transitioning a business from offline to online, it is crucial to prioritize data security. Online platforms are susceptible to data breaches and cyber threats, making it essential to implement measures to protect your sensitive information.
Maintaining data security is important to safeguard valuable business data, customer information, and intellectual property from unauthorized access and potential breaches. Implementing encryption methods, using secure payment gateways, and regularly updating software and security protocols are effective solutions for protecting data when moving a business online.
The potential risks of data breaches and online scams include financial loss, damage to your business reputation, and legal implications. To mitigate these risks, it is necessary to prioritize secure data management and cybersecurity. This can be achieved through employee training on cybersecurity best practices, implementing multi-factor authentication, and regularly conducting security audits and assessments.
Based on an analysis of well-publicized, data-breach issues at Yahoo, Marriott, and Equifax, the mean market cap loss per company was $5.4 billion, illustrating how vital it is to avoid data being compromised in the first place.
7. Determining the Right Marketing Channels to Use
There are a slew of marketing channels available to businesses that have transitioned online. How do you choose which channels to use? Which ones make the most sense for your business?
If you’re in B2B and you need to develop relationships with your customers before they make the purchase from you, you may want to invest in content marketing across a number of channels. This includes everything from social to email to video.
If you’re operating in B2C, where sales cycles are much shorter, you may want to focus more on just social media to drive traffic to your website, along with paid ads (PPC) that give your search results a higher priority in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
No matter what industry you’re in, using a multitude of channels to raise your brand awareness will have a positive effect on your organic traffic, onsite conversions, and overall revenue. On the internet, it’s a smart move to cast your net wide into more and more channels to introduce your brand and engage with more prospects and customers.
8. Ensuring Your Online Reputation Is Excellent
In today's digital age, managing online reputation is crucial for maintaining a strong customer base. A business's online reputation directly impacts its credibility and trustworthiness in the eyes of consumers. Positive online comments can bolster your company's reputation, attract new customers, and build trust, while negative comments can damage your brand's image and drive potential customers away.
To build a positive online presence, you should actively engage with customers and address any negative feedback. Encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews to help counteract negative comments. Additionally, regularly update social media channels and create quality content on blogs and forums to showcase your expertise and commitment to customer satisfaction, shaping public perception in a positive light.
Don’t forget about proactive reputation management either, which involves consistently monitoring online conversations, promptly addressing any issues, and actively participating in online interactions. Social media, blogs, and forums play a crucial role in shaping public perception, making it essential for businesses to maintain a strong and positive online presence.
Unlike with your offline business, your online presence is going to be impacted in real-time by what people say about you. Stay engaged and alert.
9. Having Well-Organized Logistics in Place
One of the key areas of difference between running an offline business and moving online is logistics. This is particularly applicable if your online store is an ecommerce store. There has to be real-time action from the time a customer places an order on your website to fulfilling that order.
Look for a strong and reliable logistics partner. There’s almost nothing worse than deliveries being delayed, getting lost, or not coming through at all. This can quickly tarnish your brand image and repulse people from ever wanting to buy from you again. Your logistics partner should have a wide network and chain to ensure there’s always connectivity and that products get delivered in the appropriate time frame.
Based on a recent study of consumers from Voxware, 69% of respondents will be less likely to buy from a retailer in the future if their delivery is more than two days late.
Stay on top of your inventory, shipment tracking, and delivery coordination, so you can have control of all the different stages of the supply chain environment.
10. Creating Proper Refund and Return Policies
People shopping online tend to be more skeptical since they’re involved in an abstract buyer journey (they don’t have the product in their hands that they then check out at a till, as they would in a physical store). To create proper refund and return policies in your online store, it is important to prioritize customer satisfaction, flexibility, and simplicity. Start by clearly outlining the policies for product shipment, returns, and refunds. Make sure the language is simple and easy for customers to understand and that it’s easy to find on your new website.
Consider allowing for a reasonable return window, such as 30 days, to ensure flexibility for customers. Provide multiple options for returns, including in-store, mail-in, or online methods, to accommodate different customer preferences. Ecommerce management platform Narvar released a study that confirmed that 95% of online shoppers would purchase again from the same brand if it provided a good return experience.
When it comes to refunds, aim to process them promptly and efficiently, keeping in mind that quick resolution is key to customer satisfaction. Train your customer service team to know your return and refund policies like the backs of their hands.
By incorporating these clear and simple policies, you can build trust with online shoppers. They will feel confident in their purchases knowing that they have the option for returns and refunds if needed. Ultimately, the goal is to make the process as painless as possible for the customer, which will lead to increased trust and satisfaction.
11. Retaining Your Customers
Always keep in mind that it’s more cost-effective to retain your customers rather than generating new ones. According to classic research from the inventor of the Net Promoter System of management, Frederik F. Reicheld, boosting customer retention rates by only 5% raises profits by 25% to 95%. Customer retention is crucial to your online store’s success.
Because of the lack of face-to-face human interaction online, you have to be even more mindful to invest in customer-retention strategies to make up for the impersonal nature of the web.
You do this by ensuring all the basics of customer care are in place on your website. Optimize your website, so that it’s the best in your industry from a B2C standpoint. Design for easy-to-find navigation and frictionless checkout. If you have a blog, make sure it only publishes industry-leading content. Then, incorporate the hallmarks of stellar customer service, such as live chat, phone agents being available, on-site FAQs, on-site self-help guides, smooth and efficient order fulfillment and logistics, and a return and refund policy that takes the side of your customers.
When you do this to the maximum level on your website, your online experience will be a joy for customers and allow you to retain them with ease.
12. Growing Your Organic Traffic and Customer Base
To increase organic web traffic and expand your customer base online, your business can utilize various effective marketing efforts. These include search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, and email marketing. Leveraging different social media platforms to engage with potential customers and build relationships is also crucial:
X or Twitter
Pinterest
Instagram
Facebook
LinkedIn
Special offers and discounts can attract new customers and retain existing ones, fostering loyalty. Excellent customer service is essential in creating a positive customer experience, leading to word-of-mouth referrals and repeat business.
Focusing on building organic traffic and growing the customer base through these strategies is important for long-term success. Organic traffic ensures that website visitors are genuinely interested in the products or services you offer, leading to higher conversion rates. By growing the customer base authentically, your online business can foster a loyal customer following and gain a competitive edge. Unlike paid traffic, organic traffic and a loyal customer base can provide consistent, sustainable growth and revenue.
Boston Consulting Group’s recent study confirms this and concluded that online stores get more traffic from organic sources like organic search and social media rather than paid search. This study was broad, taking sales data from more than 220,000 ecommerce stores.
In today's digital age, establishing a strong online presence through organic strategies is essential for your new online store to thrive.
Frequently Asked Questions
A lot of business owners moving their operations online from a physical store are unsure about how and when to make this move. That’s why our FAQs are here to give you additional insight on the right time to make this monumental transition.
Q: What Problems Do Most Businesses Have?
A: Business problems come in all shapes and sizes and don’t discriminate between small, medium, and large enterprises. For the most part, business problems revolve around keeping high-quality customer relationships, satisfying and even surpassing customer needs, maintaining a good brand reputation, retaining good employees, standing out and marketing effectively in a highly competitive and saturated niche or industry.
Q: How Can Businesses Find Quality Web-Design Services?
A: There are numerous ways for your business to find solid web-design services. You’ll need the expertise of professional designers and developers to build out your online presence in the form of a fast, high-converting website that can take orders and offer the best user experience to your customers.
Directories like Clutch, G2, and Toptal are reliable online sources for you to explore. In addition, you can always ask your professional network for word-of-mouth recommendations.
Take care to always evaluate a web-design agency’s or freelancer’s portfolio and body of past work. Ask for references from their past clients, and check if they have online reviews about their services.
Q: How Much Does It Cost a Business to Go Online?
A: If you have a very simple business, then you can get up and running online for just the cost of buying your domain name, web hosting, and buying a CMS subscription, as we’ve laid out in our how to start a blog pillar page. The more you add, such as web designers and developers—which you’ll need if you have a larger business with many products or a more complicated sales process—the more your costs will go into the thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars.
Q: How Can Businesses Improve Their Online Sales?
A: You improve your online sales when you take your business to the web by focusing on driving in more organic traffic. This means using a variety of marketing channels that are available to your business. For example, you can harness organic search by publishing a lot of product pages, blog posts, and landing pages for your online store. Simultaneously, you should also use multiple social platforms like X or Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, just to name a few.
The second part is ensuring that, once this organic traffic lands on your website, you have conversion rate optimization (CRO) in effect. This means a fast-loading website, smooth navigation, easy-to-see CTAs, and a frictionless checkout.
Even the Biggest Online Challenges Can Be Solved
Moving your store from a physical brick-and-mortar presence to online operations doesn’t have to be daunting. Naturally, there’s always going to be some apprehension when making a move of this magnitude. It’s well worth it for your brand awareness and revenue, though, because of the sheer number of leads and customers that await you on the internet.
By focusing on a several, key principles like building a highly optimized website and ensuring strong fulfilment and customer service, your new online store can be a success in a short period of time.
If you’re searching for a content marketing agency you can partner with to ideate your brand’s content strategy and execute your content marketing plan, then reach out to us today. Contact The Glorious Company today for a no-obligation consultation and estimate.
Any questions? Keep the conversation going by leaving a comment below.
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