Starting an eCommerce website may sound like an exciting plan. However, running an eCommerce website for real is a huge responsibility.
If you’re an eCommerce business owner, you’re answerable to many questions like:
How long do you expect your eCommerce website will take to start earning for you?
Is your website appropriate for what you’re selling and how your customers interact?
Is your eCommerce website fast enough?
Is it competitive enough?
Is it earning as expected? If yes, how do you improve it? If no, then why is it not?
Is your eCommerce website updated daily?
And the most important question - Is your eCommerce website safe?
With other important work duties like sales, customer support, inventory management, marketing, and keeping up with the trends, it can become very overwhelming. Especially, if you’re new in the business.
While you’re inside the ocean of eCommerce business activities, it might become very easy to forget about the boat with which you first started sailing - your eCommerce website.
Many eCommerce business owners simply neglect the importance of eCommerce website management.
Importance & Benefits Of eCommerce Website Management
1. Enhanced Customer Experience
There’s nothing better than looking for a product online and landing on an appealing, well-organized, and fast loading website. It’s like a dream come true experience for many customers.
This doesn’t only make your customers stay on your website for longer but they also keep coming back.
Imagine yourself landing on a website that’s taking minutes to load and has no specified area to find the product you’re looking for.
Getting frustrated must be your obvious reaction. Turning to some other website will be your very next step.
Thus, make sure that:
Your website isn’t taking more than 3 seconds to load
The layout is user-friendly and accessible
The filter, sort, and search options are easily visible
The product image editing is professional and natural
Your eCommerce website is mobile-optimized
2. Better recognition by Google
Turns out, a fast loading website plays a major role in better Google ranking.
Also, if you’ve done a great job on the eCommerce website management tasks, then the happy customers you get on your site also adds up for Google to recognize you.
Except for the website optimization, it’s highly important that your website is secured at least with an SSL certificate. The website owners who forget to provide security to their website and fail in the proper eCommerce website management are not considered well by Google.This means, no matter how good your products and services are, you may not get the good you deserve from Google.
3. Reduced Cart Abandonment
70% of the customers abandon their cart, to which, businesses lose almost $18 billion each year. There are many reasons why customers abandon their carts and most of them relate to poor eCommerce website management. If your checkout page is slow, your customer might just want to abandon the transaction rather than waiting. On the other hand, when you don’t update your eCommerce website regularly, it malfunctions. Customers report that many a time when they come back, the products in their carts vanish. This can leave the customer frustrated.Let’s be real, no one has the time to sit again, find the same products again, and add them to the cart again, still wondering if they’ll remain there. Regular website management in eCommerce can reduce such complicacies to reduce the cart abandonment number.
4. Improved Conversions
In the end, it all comes down to what effect is eCommerce website management putting on your sales. With the improvement in the updates, working, appearance, and a better ranking, all your website management efforts add up to boost your eCommerce conversions.Your website is your only 24/7 employee that’s working for your business with no day-offs and sick leaves. Hence, it’s highly important that you regularly put your time and effort into managing it and making it better for your business as well as your customers.
5. Get an upper hand Over Competitors
When you’re adamant about staying ahead in the competition, eCommerce website management makes it easier for you to beat the heat. A fast, secure, updated, and well-recognized website is the wisest tool to beat your competitors. With regular website management in eCommerce, you leave no reason for your customer or even Google to choose any other over you.
Consequences & Disadvantages Of Not Managing Your eCommerce Website
1. Soft Target for Cybercriminals
The proper security on your website not only makes your customers feel safe, but it ensures that all your important data, critical information, and files are safe. Losing the company’s data to cyber thieves is the biggest nightmare of every eCommerce business owner. Cybercriminals not only steal it but missuses it to jeopardize your business reputation and collapse your online store. Regularly managing the security, fixing the bugs, and updating your website can help you stay protected.
2. Hindrance in Future Updates
Ensure that you’re updating your website’s standards, coding, and languages timely. The chances of facing problems or failing to update are always there if not properly updated on time.As CSS and HTML changes every year, if you’ve built your website using them, then it’s highly important that you update your website with new codes regularly.
3. Your site is Considered Suspicious
If your eCommerce website is suspicious, web browsers may think that it’s a phishing site and notify you as suspicious.Once they find your site suspicious, your online store is tagged as ‘unclean’ by the popular browsers. This often results in less traffic, fewer sales, and poor Google ranking.
4. Reduced Sales and Conversions
Just to the opposite of how eCommerce website management can boost your eCommerce growth, the negligence of it can lower it. Nobody wants to buy from a site that’s suspicious, not updated, slow, and unsafe. When you don’t take care of website management in eCommerce, it slowly, gradually puts a negative impact on your sales, causing losses.
SUMMARY
It’s highly important to set a proper eCommerce website management system in place for greater customer satisfaction, better ranking, improved sales, and smooth functioning. Being lazy or overlooking the importance of website management in eCommerce is not an option if you want to survive and beat the eCommerce competition. No matter if you’re a B2B or a B2C company, be very vigilant in managing your website. You may also take the help of some of the eCommerce management software to reduce the workload and make it a breeze.
