Starting a web shop in Belgium? Avoid these 7 disastrous mistakes

Launching an omni-channel webshop in Belgium requires a lot of time, knowledge, effort and, above all, expertise. Today, it is no longer easy to launch an e-commerce platform on which you immediately start selling online. The legislation around distance selling, payment methods and privacy (GDPR) has changed and become stricter in recent years. This does not mean that it is impossible to start a profitable e-commerce business now. It just requires a lot more know-how.

Read below the 7 most disastrous mistakes that can turn your e-commerce story into a nightmare:

Proper market research is a crucial step in any marketing plan. Determine your target audiences, their goals, fears, expectations ... and use them to assess EVERY aspect of your e-commerce strategy. It is tempting to translate your own vision into the strategy and design of your webshop but the chances of getting it wrong are very high and could well cause you serious financial setbacks. With the insights from a market research, however, you can create buyer personas that are a concrete personification of your customers. It is much easier and more profitable to target real-life people in your e-commerce strategy. Why. Meanwhile, it is common knowledge that online buyers (B2C) use emotional arguments more often than rational ones, especially when it becomes harder to distinguish one webshop from another. In other words, they buy emotions. Therefore, as a company, you better make sure you understand those emotions well. To do this, you conduct market research and draw up buyer personas.

A golden tip: Also, always look at which products are selling better and which products are scoring less with your target audience. Is your online assortment too broad to be distinctive enough? Then refine your online assortment first and expand your assortment according to the insights from your analysis. A solid enhanced eCommerce research can certainly help with this. Today, you grow fastest online with a data-driven approach: so always look at the data to keep optimizing.

For substantial growth of your e-commerce website, it is smart to decide in time when to outsource something. The faster you generate customers and sales, the more dominant your online presence becomes. So find the right in-house skills as soon as possible, but also decide in time when to bring in outside expertise. If you try to do everything yourself you put a lot of time into a learning process while a good consultant or freelancer will get the same work done in a snap. Of course, you pay a price for this but consider the following: in the end, what will cost you more money? The price of external help or the time you lose learning everything yourself?

Knowledge and skills become more precious as they become more specific. So try to get the right people in house as soon as possible and also invest in further developing your in-house skillset, but know when to turn to external help.

Any effective online marketing strategy has several essential ingredients:

• A value proposition: what do I have to offer the customer?
• Unique selling points: what makes my offer different from the competitor's?
• Target groups: who is my audience?
• Channels: how much time and money am I investing on the website, ads, social media, SEO and more?
• Current goals: should I attract more traffic or optimize my UX first?
• Strategy to achieve goals
• Strategy to measure goals: what KPIs apply to my goals?
• Plan for regular evaluation of these KPIs.

These elements are the basis for an effective marketing strategy. If any of the above aspects are missing, there is a serious hole in a marketing plan. All of these elements are also strongly linked: your value proposition and unique selling points largely determine who your target audience is but ultimately it is perfectly possible for you to tailor your value proposition and USPs to your target audience. Similarly, your target audience and goals will determine which channels you deploy on. Each element affects the other.
 

For example, you may choose not to send out newsletters. This is because you think that people usually consider this as spam and will evaluate your brand negatively. Assume, however, that many of your customers like to be kept informed via e-mail. After all, discounts and new products are a huge driver of increased engagement with your customers. Then suppose that email is a relatively cheaper channel to reach your target audience and that it brings more traffic to your site than Instagram, in which you invest a lot of time and money. In this case, you would be choosing a channel without thinking about the behavior of your target audience. Don't make this mistake and create a marketing plan in which all the elements are a logical consequence of each other.

Online feedback and customer research are often not a priority for companies. After all, there is already enough to do in terms of logistics and online marketing. Therefore, such a survey is usually conducted only when problems come to light. This is unfortunate, because information about your products, content pages, branding and how customers rate you is very important to grow strongly.

In the beginning, adding a phone number and chat can also quickly ensure that you have more contact with your customers. Through reviews, as well as through online feedback surveys, you can quickly learn more about your customers' expectations and pain points. As mentioned earlier, information about these expectations is crucial to a successful e-commerce story.

Although the maintenance costs of an e-commerce store are often cheaper than for a physical store, processing and shipping costs for products will increase rapidly. A strategy that considers return on investment (ROI) is important for positive cash flow. There are plenty of costs that cause the prices of an online assortment to be higher than in-store: shipping and return costs, transaction costs, commissions, logistics costs and marketing costs. Margins and cash flow (positive ROI) mean everything in an e-commerce strategy.

We see it happen often: most omnichannel companies operating online do not dare to experiment. As a result, these companies always have to start from a chase position, becoming slower than the big competitors. What do big online players like Amazon, Bol and Coolblue have in common? They know the power of experimentation. Coolblue was one of the first online players with the option of Sunday deliveries (Google up the keywords “Sunday delivery” yourself). Amazon launched Prime to offer loyal customers as much value for money as possible. Bol.com even introduced a bargain Select membership, giving you free deliveries in exchange for EUR 6.99/year.

These online giants are always thinking about the unique benefits they can offer customers as well as customer retention. As a result, they are more daring to brand themselves as the best party on this basis and can generate more sales as a result.

Well begun is half won. Indeed, in e-commerce, you can even assume the following: “Well begun is 80% won.”

Definitely try to talk to as many e-commerce experts as possible about your specific e-commerce plans. They know the pitfalls and can save your company a lot of unnecessary investments and lost sales. Achieving additional growth through good strategy and expertise should always be a part of your digital marketing plan.

PHPro has been a pioneer in e-commerce in the Benelux for years. Our experts at PHPro have the necessary experience and are happy to help your company in all possible areas. Request a free consultation here.