In today’s digital era, having an online presence for your business has become a must to survive. Whether we talk about consulting a doctor or booking tickets for your stay and travel, everything has come on the internet, and e-commerce is no exception. In fact, Statista predicts that the growth of the e-retail sector will reach a whopping 4.8 trillion US dollars by the year 2021.
However, developing an e-commerce site isn’t that easy. You need to address many significant challenges before launching your dedicated e-commerce website to the market. Not paying attention to these crucial factors may even hamper your brand value, and sales to a significant extent.
That’s why to eliminate such circumstances for your site, here we have mentioned the top eight crucial risks that you should consider during e-commerce website development. Read our blog till last to know more!
1. Payment Security
The first and foremost e-commerce challenge that you need to address is payment security. We all know that with the advent of digitization, digital payments became a need rather than leisure for the e-commerce industry. However, cyber threats like phishing, online malware attacks, DDoS, hacking, and credit card fraud have also become prominent issues. So, what could be done?
To ensure the complete security of your e-commerce website and user data, deploying a multi-layer security system could do the work. Besides that, encryption methods, one-tie passwords, requesting non-storable CVV, and SSL certifications are some of the other tricks that could eliminate the possible risks of e-commerce website development.
2. Warehouse Management
Now it is often seen that the e-commerce businesses, in the excitement of opening a digital stire, forget to automate their warehouse operations. As a result, they suffer conditions like stock-out or surplus of old stock. All that not only makes economic losses but even results in loss of brand value in the market. So, what could be done to eliminate that?
Outsourcing an experienced web development company is the answer to your question! With an experienced firm, you can develop an automated AI-enabled warehouse management system that could automate all your tedious and mundane operations., right from categorizing the products, to keeping a track of the most popular ones through customer analysis, an automated warehouse management system does it all.
3. Client’s Disputes and Returns
The customer is the first person to access your products/services, and a slight mistake could lead to a huge loss. Delivering the products late, or in the worst case, delivering the wrong products is one of the biggest risks of the e-commerce industry. Moreover, refund frauds that occur due to the low security of your site could also result in loss of customers and brand value. So, what could be done?
Simple! Always ensure that proper authorization techniques are implemented on your e-commerce site. Besides that, try to incorporate appropriate payment gateways and for th payments, always use one-time passwords. Having a dedicated team for refunds and customer queries is also one of the best suggestions to eliminate refund issues. You could even deploy a chatbot backed with conversational AI services to your e-commerce site for an excellent customer experience.
4. E-Commerce Intellectual Property
Another significant risk while developing an e-commerce site is the protection of your intellectual property. IP is a legal term and mostly includes your logos, taglines, content, and other copyright-related stuff. Any violation in these can cost you massive amounts of money!
A simple way to protect your intellectual property is to monitor any suspicious activity happening at your site through AI or machine learning systems. Additionally, you should always perform an Intellectual Property audit and patent for your copyright materials, including products, images, and icons.
5. Customer Services
A recent study shows that many e-commerce companies suffer a loss of almost $62 million each year due to poor customer service. Customers are always crucial for your business. They bring you sales and profits, and even the slightest of mistakes can result in a bad customer experience. Customer loyalty is also responsible for increased brand recognition and generating more customers through good reviews.
So, what could you do to improve your customer experience? First and foremost, respond to their queries timely and expertly. Create personalized suggestions and services for them, and give them loyalty points and discounts whenever possible. Furthermore, deploy chatbots for enhancing your customer services. Many leading firms have leveraged chatbots for an improved customer service process, and with new advancements in ML and the natural learning process, they are becoming more efficient.
6. The Right Website Content
Content always plays a crucial role when it comes to online marketing. The use of appropriate words and catchy headlines in your website content will surely create a positive impact on your customers. Similarly having dedicated customer policies, well-written refund and exchange policies, and other questions related to your site could also help you attain a huge audience for your e-commerce site.
However, make sure that you update your site’s content and policies every three years. That’s because customers need always change in today’s digital world. And having old themes or fonts may bore your customers. That’s why follow the latest market trends and keep your site up-to-date as per yur customer needs and wants.
7. Regulatory Compliance
Regulatory compliance is a much-needed factor that can affect your brand’s overall reputation and effectiveness on a global platform. All web merchants are given a specific set of standards and regulatory tools for protecting their sensitive client information. The Payment Card Industry and the Data Security Standards provide a particular set of tools to secure the users’ transactions and bank details.
What you can add here is set strong encryption capabilities for your sensitive data. Offer role-based controls and access to your management and executives and invest in good security solutions to store the card holder’s confidential information. Also, review all your security systems at regular intervals to ensure the complete safety of the data.
8. Improper Search Functionality
Last but not least, we have search functionality, as a risk while developing an e-commerce website. In today’s competitive era, customer ease and personalization are the two most important factors that one must consider. Even if you have the best products/services and if your customers can’t access them, then they are of no use. That’s where a modern and efficient AI search-functionality comes to play!
With smart AI applications like voice-based searching, image recognition systems, or object recognition systems, you could enhance your site’s performance and customer base. The smart AI applications enable the customers to search for any relevant products or services without the use of suitable keywords. That means the user could search for their favorite shirts by simply uploading a relevant image or by means of their voice-commands. Not to mention, the personalized suggestions using machine learning concepts are also an add-on for enhanced UX.
Final Words
Those were some of the crucial factors that you must take care of while developing an effective e-commerce website. To conclude, we can say that bringing your business online has become a much-needed aspect for every retailer. People today spend more time online. In such a case, there will hardly be any time to explore any store to buy the stuff physically.
Hence, investing in custom e-commerce websites is one of the best ways of fulfilling all the customer needs quickly and cost-effectively. You can showcase your products to a greater audience and outgrow your competitor and build a space for your business in today’s digital world. Plus, having a great customer base is an add-on with online stores. So, develop your e-commerce site and enjoy the perks of online business!
