Is Your E-Commerce Platform Limiting Your Growth? Top Signs to Watch For

The perfect product brings in customer loyalty only if it reaches the right customer at the right time. However, your product, irrespective of its great quality, might not get the market penetration that it deserves.

So, what can constrain the growth of your business and the reach of your product? It is the ecommerce platform that you are using to market and sell your products.

There are several reasons an ecommerce platform may stop serving your purpose. Hence, what once seemed adequate may soon start crumbling under the pressure of your growing business networks. 

The nature of the ecommerce industry is very dynamic, inherently. Factors like the types of people who interact with an ecommerce site, the geographic area where the site is required to cater, etc., change very fast.

Therefore, if the ecommerce site you have been using for your business earlier ceases to evolve with the changing times, it is always a good idea to consider whether to change it.

This blog post explains what the tell-tale signs are that reveal the right time to change your e-commerce site.

Why is Using the Right E-Commerce Platform Important?

As has been explained in the paragraphs above, an ecommerce platform is essentially your window to the outside world. These platforms are the channels via which you reach your end customer. Hence, the role of an effective ecommerce platform in furthering your business goals cannot be undermined. Here are some of the reasons why a good ecommerce platform is absolutely a necessity for your business to flourish.

• Basic Requirement For Growth

If you want your business to expand, the first criterion for growth is increased profits. If you have to increase profits, you need increased sales. Ecommerce platforms are your channels that help you sell your products. So, if the ecommerce site is not scalable, then the sales of your products are bound to be affected.

• Allows Scalability of Your Business

A business is scalable if it expands with time. A scalable ecommerce site allows your business to grow. So, with time, you may want to sell a higher quantity of a given product, or you may want to explore newer markets, so that a scalable ecommerce site will help.

• Allows Flexibility in Your Business

A rigid business is bound to fail. Hence, a flexible ecommerce site boosts your business. A flexible site provides customers a scope to interact in various ways, can display a number of languages, and thus is more productive than an inflexible site.  

How to Find Out Whether Your E-Commerce Platform is Limiting Your Growth or Not

The efficiency of an ecommerce site critically affects the success of a business. To check whether your ecommerce site is working properly or not, you must keep an eye on the following indications.

A Site That Doesn’t Run at its Best

There are two primary aspects for checking whether or not an ecommerce site is running smoothly:

First is the loading speed of the site, and second is the downtime. If a site takes way too long to load, it is bound to affect customer retention. Likewise, if the downtime of a site is high, that is when the site is unavailable for reasons like maintenance, which is also a major turnoff for customers.

Bad User Experience

The appeal of an ecommerce platform, the simplicity of navigating the site by a user, and the ease with which the website can be accessed on a mobile phone are some important factors that affect the user experience. When your ecommerce website fails to provide a good experience to users, it is time to change your ecommerce platform.

Inability to Customize Freely

Every business owner should be able to customize easily on the ecommerce website. So if the design of the webpage is such that changing it is very difficult or if integrating the sites with other platforms is a challenge, then it is a problem.

The Inability to Scale With the Business Growth or Be Flexible

When a business grows, it is expected that more people will want to visit the ecommerce site that sells a certain product. However, if an ecommerce site cannot handle the additional traffic, then that is a problem.

Likewise, if the website cannot scale the inventory management with the growth of the business, then that is also a problem.

Issues of Security

An ecommerce site handles sensitive information of your potential customers, so if the site cannot provide adequate protection to the data fed into their site, that is a major concern. Most of the websites ensure that the data fed into their system is encrypted so that someone cannot misuse the data.

Other than the measures mentioned above, an ecommerce site must strictly follow the data security measures specified by the relevant regulatory authorities.

Thus, if you cater to customers in the European Union, your website must stick to the GDPR guidelines laid down for EU citizens.

The Operating Costs

When you partner with an e-commerce site, you have to pay them in one way or another. Thus, you pay something like a transaction cost that is paid based on the number of purchases that are made via the website. You may also pay a subscription fee to list your products on an ecommerce site.

Now, if the transaction cost or the subscription fee is very high, then that eats away at your profit, so if the transaction cost is very high, it is a sign that you need other ecommerce websites.

The Consequences of Ignoring These Signs

Ignoring tell-tale signs of a problematic ecommerce site can pose a serious threat to your business growth as well as your reputation. Here are some of the reasons why you must not ignore these signs

• Customer Dissatisfaction

A bad experience on an ecommerce site creates irritation to your customers. When a customer gets annoyed while using your site and his interest in purchasing products from your site dwindles. Further, he also writes negative feedback which may be detrimental to your business.

• Lost Revenue Opportunities

As has already been explained, ignoring the signs that your ecommerce site is not working well will result in revenue loss and will impact the plans to expand your business.

• Falling Behind Key Competitors

When you do not follow the latest trends when choosing ecommerce sites, it is obvious that you will fall behind your competitors.

Final Words

Selecting a perfect ecommerce platform is a critical factor that helps you to grow your business smoothly. 

Therefore, it is a good idea to find out the latest trends in ecommerce business and go for the ecommerce platform that fulfills your current business requirements.Check out if the e-commerce platform offers scalability, the ability to customize, and low operating costs. You must also check if the platform has a website that runs smoothly and whether it takes care of the data security of your potential customers.