Some myths seem to make so much common sense that people will keep repeating them. When it comes to eCommerce, the misconceptions are particular virulent. Here are a few myths that seem like they just won’t go away no matter how hard people try and spread the word about them.
eCommerce Is Easy
This one is half myth and half marketing tool. The reason why the myth exists is obvious, companies are trying to tell potential clients that getting into e-commerce will take no effort whatsoever and that all you have to do is set up a website and money will just fall into your lap. The truth is, E-commerce takes work. It’s not impossible and beginners can find their way, but not without a little effort.
Visitors Will Pour in Right Away
If you were to believe some of these commercials, you’d expect that within 10 seconds of setting up your site, Google will suddenly dump millions of visitors in your lap. The truth is that until you actually do some marketing and get some visibility going,
Customers Are Always Trustworthy
Obviously you want to believe in your customers, since they are what will ultimately make your business go. And to a certain extent, you should believe in them, and try to build them the best site possible. But you shouldn’t go so far as to become gullible in that belief. It’s not just sellers that try to scam people out of money. Some fraudsters will target new e-commerce sites as well. This is why you need to be especially careful in the beginning, because if people take our fake orders it can really hurt your profit margins and cause you a lot of trouble.
eCommerce Is Free
While it’s true that you can set up some aspects of online businesses for free, you really shouldn’t stay like that very long. Services like free hosting will give you a tiny fraction of what you’re going to need in the long run in terms of handling traffic. It’s also unlikely that you’ll be able to get all of the software and services you’re going to need to run a top notch site using only free solutions. A lot of E-commerce products that are free will have severe limits on them. For example, e-commerce packages that help you install features that let users actually pay for items on your site come in many different shapes and sizes. There are some free ones in the open source bracket, but these will really only let you sell digital download type products. If you want additional features like the ability to track shipping, or automatically calculate taxes.
Free Pictures Are Good Enough
A lot of sites these days will tell you to just use fair use pictures for your site, since they’re free. But the truth is that cheap often looks cheap. This myth probably grew out of the idea that if you really want to save costs, it’s often a much better idea to just take your own pictures. You can really stand out from a crowd this way.
Generally, the best approach is to design your own website, using some solid tools to help you along the way. The best site for helping will really depend on what sort of site you want to create. There are many different good approaches to e-commerce sites, but they are all different. Sites focusing on physical products will differ sharply from sites that focus on digital download products that can be delivered to users instantly over the Internet, for example.
[box title=”Author Info” color=”#f00″]Guest author Marianne Ross is an online marketing enthusiast who spends most of her time online and loves to share her thoughts and articles on various channels in topics related to business, social media, marketing and SEO. If you have any question to ask from her, feel free to leave a comment below.[/box]