Every day, open and close online shopping. The reasons for going out of business can be different: problems with competition, logistics, and marketing. In the article we will look at 10 mistakes that Shabbir Nuraddin made when launching two online stores.



Working in e-commerce gave me the best practical experience in life. Those things that I learned from launching an online business do not speak in MBA lectures or other training courses.
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All the mistakes that I made allowed me to understand business problems better, and I will share my experience so that you do not step on the same “rake” and be able to achieve success faster.

Error number 1: did not calculate the effectiveness

If you ask any experienced entrepreneur what is important in business, he will answer: “Mathematics”.
When I started my business, it was more of a hobby for me. I did not pay enough attention to mathematics.

As a result, I found myself in a niche in which demand was high, but the income was not so large that the business brought profit. I sold goods very cheaply, but in order to earn decent money, it was necessary to sell more potential demand.
Business math works very simply. To understand how profitable your business can be, use this formula:

Profit = Demand * (Revenue - Expenses)

Suppose every month your products are looking for about 20,000 people. This figure can be obtained, for example, based on the statistics of queries in search engines. If you can attract half of these people, then this is already 10,000 potential buyers. With an average conversion of 1-2% - this is 100-200 sales per month. With an average check of $ 100 and a markup of 30%, your profit will be $ 3000-6000 per month.

Of course, this is a rough estimate, but in any case, having made such calculations, you will be able to understand the limits of profit for yourself and make a conclusion about the prospects of your undertaking.

I learned this lesson by running two stores. Even despite the fact that the second store had a fairly high average check, the margin was so small that I had very little money after all the expenses.

Mistake number 2: did not find a niche in the market

Both stores that I launched were built on a dropshipping model (buying goods from a supplier after receiving an order in an online store). I sold the same products as other stores that worked on this scheme. It was necessary to somehow stand out among other stores, so as not to be one of many for the buyer. It was necessary to offer value to customers and stand out among other vendors, not to mention competing with Amazon and Walmart ! (Shabbir - shy man).

With the first store, I just randomly chose a niche, because I thought it was quite promising for sales. I did not conduct a study of competitors to understand the situation on the market. And I did not notice that the largest players in this niche were very strong. They had the same products that I sold, hundreds of reviews, thousands of likes and a great blog. I still think that I could not compete with them. Understandably, the store was catastrophically unprofitable.

With the second store, I found a great opportunity in terms of content. I managed to create an information resource. This information was on other sites, but I managed to process it and teach it in a simpler form. As a result, the resource generated 15,000 visitors from search engines in a competitive theme.

Estimate the amount of useful content on industry resources, on the subject of your store. It is possible that you will be able to find niches where there are few resources or content delivery suffers.

Mistake number 3: did not pay attention to the brand and products

My first store was called ReusableBagStore.com. As you understood, I was selling eco-bags. They did not sell very well, so I gradually began to expand the range, adding eco-products to the range.

As a result, completely different products were sold in my store. The only point that somehow united them was environmental friendliness. But this was not enough to position the store and I had difficulties in seo-promoting the site and explaining who the store is for and what it sells.

Building a brand and positioning is important to think about from the very beginning. If in the future you plan to expand the range, then do not use any specific product in the name and positioning.

Error 4: there was no content plan

It was another mistake I made in my first store. I have not used content marketing, which allows you to attract visitors from search engines and social networks. And without content marketing, it was quite difficult to attract visitors to the eco-bags store.

I fixed this error in the second store, which was completely built on content marketing strategies.

For some niches it is quite difficult to create content. Seriously, do you think many articles can be written about eco-bags?
The key point (which I learned later) is not to write about the product, but about your customers. Continuing the example of eco-bags, who uses this product? Most likely they are those who care about nature, most likely they lead a healthy lifestyle and practice yoga. These are just guesses, but they can be confirmed by conducting a small study.

By building a content strategy relative to your audience, not a product, you will find more topics to communicate. Even if your niche is small and specialized.

Using content marketing is a long-term strategy to drive traffic, but nevertheless, thematic content will provide constant free traffic and the attitude to your store will be more loyal.

Error number 5: incorrectly used free samples

Some online stores make very large sales through the distribution of free samples of products. For me, this experience was unsuccessful, I “closed” only one sale with 300 samples.

Free samples, contests, gifts are tools that work well for promoting your products, but they are not suitable for all niches. They will work for perishable products and for consumables: cosmetics, food, additives, etc. For other products that can be bought only once (for example, clothes) this reception will not work.

This technique also works to increase store awareness and brand building, but if you do not have a common marketing plan, then such activities will lead nowhere.

Mistake number 6: launching a contest without a plan

After the failure of free samples, I began to look further for ways to promote my online store. I decided to run a contest in conjunction with a blogger. I thought that this would give me a lot of links, which is good for seo, as well as subscribers to groups in social networks and subscribers to the newsletter.

This time I was more financially savvy and the prize was a $ 50 certificate. Result? I tripled the number of subscribers in social networks, and the contest became a hit.
But since I made mistake number 4, I did not have the content and plan to continue to communicate with subscribers.

As a result, subscribers have forgotten about me, since I did not have content to talk about my store and continue to communicate. Who would have thought that generating content on Facebook and Twitter takes so much time?

When launching a contest, make sure that you have content to continue communicating with subscribers on social networks or using email newsletters.

A very common mistake is the wrong choice of prize for the contest. So, if you sell products for car enthusiasts, play either your products, or a purchase certificate in your store. Thereby you will attract the target audience that is interested in your products. It often happens that non-thematic prizes, such as the iPhone, are played out, and as a result, your group on social networks is replenished by those who like Apple and not your products.

Error number 7: I did everything myself

In economics, there is the concept of “opportunity costs” (or costs of alternative opportunities). Your time is not free. For example, if you are engaged in copywriting for an online store, then you lose the opportunity to do other, more efficient work. For example, find new suppliers or arrange new ways to deliver orders.

I did everything myself: I created the site, made descriptions for the goods, uploaded them to the site, was engaged in marketing. He was a human orchestra.

The problem here is that by doing it yourself you spend a huge amount of time that could go on more important things, such as building business relationships, finding new ideas for business development.

Black work is of two types: mandatory and optional.

Mandatory work is: adding products, creating descriptions, etc. Such work can and should be optimized, your time in any case is more expensive. To search for artists for such a job, you can use various freelancers exchanges, there are quite a lot of offers for such work and it will not be expensive.

Optional work includes: logo design, “add to cart” button color choice, etc. Such work can bring significant effect only when testing and with a large attendance site. If you are just starting your business, then it will take a lot of time for such work, and there will be no significant effect.

Mistake number 8: I did not know who my ideal client was.

I made this mistake when starting the first store, then I did not completely correct it when working with the second one.

Correct work in your niche consists of two points: find a product and find a target audience. It is easy to find a product when you have customers, but when there is a product, but no customers, then difficulties begin.

When researching the market, it is important to look at the numbers, but for me the most important thing was to create the profile of an ideal client.

Even if your niche is in good demand and a large selection of products, not knowing who your ideal customer will be harder to work with. I made this mistake when working with the second store: I had good sales in some months, but due to the fact that I did not know my target audience, I lost some of the sales.

If you dig a little deeper, you will understand that there are niches inside the niches. The more narrowly targeted you can do to your customers, the better. In the second store I was selling sophisticated electronic equipment and I had advanced equipment segments, intermediate and entry level.

I sold all three types of equipment, but now I understand that if I focused on selling only one line, it would be easier to contact the target audience. And I had a situation when the products were too advanced for beginners and too simple for the pros.

Mistake number 9: there was no general marketing plan

“If your plans fail, plan for your own failure.”

Creating a marketing plan is an easy task if you know who your customers are and where to find them. I didn’t have a plan and I did what came to my mind and it wasn’t the best idea. The marketing plan should cover all channels of attraction, but in any case, contextual advertising will be more effective for someone, for someone SEO or social networks.

A marketing plan should be ready before launching an online store. In the future, it can be scaled and modified or expanded, but the foundation remains.

Mistake number 10: failed in PPC campaigns

When you first start your online business, in each service you see the solution to all your problems. I spent a lot of time looking through the sites of various services, seeing in them the solution to all my problems.

And once I got one company, it could be any other company, but for me it was the one.

The price of their services was significant for me and if there was no effect, my budget would suffer very much, but the results of other clients and marketing videos did the trick.

They called me from the service and told me that they could significantly increase the sales of the store and everything would work on autopilot.

As a result, I signed a contract for 6 months, which cost me quite a lot, but I did not receive a single order from ppc (pay per click - pay-per-click advertising) during this time. All the orders that were made during this time were the results of my efforts in the website promotion.

Therefore, choose the right services to attract traffic. I am sure that this company works well, but for my niche such a channel for attracting visitors did not work. Evaluate cases and customers with whom the company works. It is desirable that she already had results in a similar niche.

What you need to do to run an online store:

1. Explore the market - is there a demand for your products?
2. Research your customers - who are they and what problem do you solve?
3. Find a niche market. Do you run a regular store that offers the same thing as others or carry additional value for the customer?
4. You must have a marketing plan;
5. Do not waste time not unnecessary work. Concentrate only on the most important;
6. Think twice before starting work with a company that guarantees an increase in sales;
7. Use simple, neat design;
8. Work hard.