Top 3 Mistakes Online Retailers Make and How to Avoid Them

In its most basic definition, e-commerce is "the process of selling stuff online." That sounds simple enough, right? But how exactly does that work? An e-commerce marketer has many balls in the air at any given time and juggling them all can be time consuming. What are some of the common pitfalls that you should avoid in your retail business? Let's take a look at three of them as well as how you can easily implement solutions for them.

Mistake No. 1: Striving for Perfection
Are you waiting until your blog, website and product ads are "perfect" before you launch them? Well, that means you have a good chance of either never launching them at all or delaying so long that someone else beats you to the punch and scoops your market out from under you.

Microsoft — and pretty much every other software company — does it all the time. It launches products and software that wouldn't hold up to your standards of perfection. If "good enough" is good enough for billionaire Bill Gates, it should be good enough for you and me.

However, do keep in mind that there's a fine balance between releasing something that's not ready and releasing something that looks good but is a little rough around the edges.

Mistake No. 2: Not Defining Your Unique Selling Proposition
The web is filled with products, which means you often have to compete (aggressively, at that) for consumer attention on web shopping search portals, on marketplaces like eBay and Amazon.com, and even on comparison shopping engines like TheFind.com. If you're selling a product that's branded and widely available, don't be shocked if the world isn't rushing to your door, even if you have the lowest market price. It's OK to source a product that's similar to a competitor's, but you absolutely need to put your own spin on it, adding value over what your competitor is offering.