 Hey everybody, JR Fisher here. Welcome to this morning. It's gosh, the first day of July. I wanna welcome everybody here. And hey, I haven't seen you guys in a while. I've been out for like a week. A week without you guys. Oh my gosh, really tough. But today's gonna be a great session because I'm gonna help you prevent mistakes. All those mistakes that new people make when they go online and they try to sell stuff. So I'm gonna go through all those mistakes today so that you don't have to repeat them because most people are gonna hit on some or if not all of these mistakes. And I don't want that to happen to you. If you're new to the channel, make sure that you subscribe. Hit that subscribe button down there. Turn it from red to gray. If it's red, it's a warning. It's telling you something. And you wanna ring the bell. Turn on all bell notifications so you're notified each time I go live or if I upload a video. Make use of that chat box guys. The more you make use of that chat box there in the right, the better off you're gonna be. In other words, if you're participating, if you're part of the conversation, you're gonna be able to learn more and it's really gonna kind of draw you in and it's gonna help you accomplish all those things you wanna accomplish. So I do wanna get right to it today. I do have a free course below. You can grab, you just click and earn and learn all that good stuff. Okay, does it cost you anything? You don't have to have a credit card or anything. So go ahead and grab that free course down there. But I do wanna jump into it today. Today is a really interesting session because it's about mistakes. I mean, we're always talking about how we're gonna do all these things that work. But what about all these things we do that don't work? What about all those things? That's what I wanna talk about today. And I know you think, well, if I get a product and I put it online and I get it designed all cool and all that, then I'm gonna make a lot of money. And it's just not true guys. It's just not true. Just having a website is not gonna make you successful. You've gotta do certain things. You wanna make your e-commerce store the best it can be. You wanna minimize cart abandonment. When people go there and they look at stuff and then they just leave and they never buy it. So you've come to the right place. Even if you're not watching this live guys, I would suggest that you put some comments down there. I will come back and answer any of those comments you put in there. And you don't have to be live to participate in this conversation. Though if you are, you should participate. I mean, why be live and not participate, right? I mean, that's what you wanna do. You would be part of the conversation. So I'm gonna talk about common e-commerce mistakes and there's a difference between just having an online store and having an online store that gives users an awesome experience. And it's not that hard to really do that. Excuse me. Any business owner should be focused on really making it a better store. And that's what I'm gonna help you achieve today in this video. So you do wanna watch to the very end. So let's consider why it's important to avoid these mistakes. People are spoiled as far as a choice to where they can go buy stuff. All these retailers now, they all have websites people can buy from anybody. So why would they buy from you over anybody else? They're unlikely to return if it's an unpleasant experience and you can make it pleasant, you can make it easy. Maybe they'll leave a poor review though, if you don't persuading other people not to come to your website not to buy from you. And we don't want that to happen. All of which highlights the importance of reducing the friction in shopping. And when I say friction, I mean all the things that prevent them from actually buying from you. So what I've done is I've categorized these into several different areas. And the first area I wanna talk about is not understanding your product or your audience. There's that thing, if you build it, they will come. That's just not true. It's the exact opposite of best practice. You don't just build it, you have to build it to where it's gonna work for them. If you don't understand your product or audience, you're gonna be guessing what they want. And if they don't buy it, you won't even know why. Okay, so it's really important to do that. And I'm gonna talk about a couple of ways you can do that too. What you need to do is identify the need of the market. Okay, you wanna serve the market. And by learning what your audience wants and the frustrations they have with existing options, you can offer things that they truly do want. So you can actually look at your competition, see things they're doing wrong, and you can improve those things. It's not harder, it's just different. Then you'll have lots of potential customers all rushing to buy from you and hand you money. And that's what you want. So the first thing I would say when we're talking about this is not understanding your market research. It's really important to go fishing where the fish are. Fishermen don't cast a line in the first pool of water they come to and just hope the fish will come. Instead, they do some research. They go to where the fish already are and they offer something they can't refuse. If you've ever watched, what's the Alaskan show? The Deadliest Catch. They're always moving around to where the fishing spots are. And that's kind of what you have to do. Market research, these fishing holes are all around us. Google searches, Facebook groups, YouTube videos, comments, reviews for your competitors forums. The list is endless. Each of these fishing holes give you a treasure trove of information. From product information to customer service expectations. And these holes are excellent places for you to test the waters of your e-commerce business. You gotta check them out. Now, regularly spend some time just listening to the feedback and use it to target your customers. The conversation that you hear will be invaluable. It really will. The other mistake I see is failing to define who your target audience is. Imagine trying to sell a staircase to somebody who has a one-story house. Now, that's ridiculous, right? You know, it doesn't matter how good the price is. It doesn't matter, you know, the service or any of that stuff. It's the wrong product for the wrong group. And worse yet, they're probably getting irritated by hearing from you. And they may tell your friends and family to ignore you too or block you or to say that you're spam. If this sounds far-fetched, consider this. 56% of consumers believe businesses to have a deeper understanding of their needs. And 51% of consumers believe brands send too much irrelevant content. So we don't wanna do that. At a starting point, think about what the problems are that your customers are gonna have that you could actually solve for them. As you get this information, you can create this buyer persona, what this customer looks like, which can even be used to reach more people who are likely to buy from you. That information would include all kinds of different things. Like I don't know, the preferred platforms, are they on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, where they at? How they actually make purchase decisions. Their interests, their hobbies, demographic information, their age, gender, marital status, income, all those things. If you need examples of how to do this, just go online and look it up. It's not that hard to do. And the next thing I see is pricing products with no research. Now, most people think, well, I'm gonna look at my competitors, I'm just gonna price below them. That's wrong. When you've collected research on who your target audience is and what they want and how much problems you're solving for them, you'll also have an idea of how much your product is actually worth to them. But one of the most common e-commerce mistakes is to avoid this research on pricing. And it's a big problem. If your manufacturing costs are higher than the market is willing to pay, obviously nobody's gonna buy from them. But what if your potential customer would actually pay a premium for a better product? You could actually maybe be charging more. So it's not just what your competitors are charging, it's what they want, what they're gonna receive from this. Let me get my iPad, just die here. I think I don't have enough power to the iPad. I'm not gonna worry about that. I've got you on my phone here, guys, so I can answer your chat right here on my phone. All right. And I think we've had a little problem in our feed here. Is it okay? Let me know if it's okay in that chat box. I know my phone here went out and I don't know if it's just my phone or what's going on here. So let me just try this real quick. And something went wrong. I hope you guys aren't experiencing this on your end. But this is part of going live. This stuff happens. Okay, all right, I'm all right. Yeah, it's working on here now. And don't forget, even though I'm rattling on right now, guys, put your comments, put your suggestions in that chat box there. Start the conversation. Very important that you do that. So the next thing I wanna talk about is improper tech stack, improper tech stack. Now, what is tech stack? Tech stack is all of the technology platforms that you're gonna use. Now, the lowest barrier to entry starting an e-commerce store is a double-edged sword, okay? On one side, you can start today with incredibly low cost. That's true. Great. On the other side, not all tech is equal. From user experience to security to customer retention, choosing the right platforms or tech stack, you know what that is now, for your online business, it is crucial that you do that. It's crucial that you start off with the right things first. So choosing the wrong e-commerce platform. There's a lot of e-commerce platforms out there. I gotta tell you, most of them I don't like. I like Shopify a lot. And we should have a link to Shopify below where you can get a discount on it. So check that out in the description section. And I also like Hartra, okay? The significant difference between e-commerce platforms, some offer only the most basic features and not always an option to upgrade. Now the thing I like about Shopify is that they have great, I mean great customer support. They're gonna be there for you when you have a problem and you will have problems. You're gonna have to talk to customer support. Others may have seen appealing at first, but then they surprise you with hidden costs, making it more expensive than choosing a platform with an upfront fee. Basic e-commerce platforms are less likely to have native customization options, either being reliant on third-party solutions or not having access to such features at all. So I would say go with something like Shopify. On top of that, you wanna use something like Hartra for all your email marketing and that type of thing. The right e-commerce platform will grow with your business which features you'll need. You know, you go to Shopify and it's a beginner one but it's also a very high level one where people are selling hundreds of millions of dollars. So that's very, very important. If you're just starting out, spend some time researching the best e-commerce platforms. There's other good ones out there. I happen to like Shopify. I think it's easy to use. It's very responsive. They have great customer support. This is overall a good one. Now the next one is kind of interesting, not investing in security. This is part of your tech stack. Every new business owner wants to watch their money. Okay, and they don't wanna spend a lot of money. I get it, but people who are scammers have an endless amount of ways to attack your website, including financial fraud, phishing scams, infected links, all kinds of stuff, guys. It's a matter of when, not if your entire store will get targeted in some form and not having the right security in place can be really devastating to your company. So I think it's really important that you do invest in the security upfront and let me just hear it on the screen here with them. Let me get you guys back up here so I can see what's going on. But it's really important that you do that. It's really important that you invest in the security upfront. So don't skip that step. HTTPS appears as a padlock on your browser as shown in a lot of websites. You'll see on your website when you go there. Now, the next thing, creating your own e-commerce CMS, creating your own content management system, which is CMS content management system, to your own requirements can seem appealing. In reality, you're opening yourself up to external frustrations and problems. It sounds great to create your own, but I tell you, people before you have already figured it out and you can just use their platform. Once again, Cartra and Shopify, and you'll find links to both of those in the description after this video is posted to Facebook, or excuse me, to YouTube. So first off, it's really difficult to create your own. That's not easy stuff to do your own. You're gonna need to provide some kind of training. Your security becomes a lot more difficult. The lack of support or integration with other softwares is more difficult. You may underestimate the amount of features that you're gonna need. So really, if you're starting out, grab a platform like Shopify, grab Cartra and use those platforms. If you wanna build your own, you can certainly do it. I don't recommend it. I think it's a big mistake that newbies always do because they're trying to save money. The next mistake I'm gonna talk about is issue with product pages. Your products have to sell themselves. You're not gonna be in front of somebody talking about your product, okay? That's not what's gonna happen. You're gonna need to be where your customers are with pictures, with videos, that type of thing. And I see people making a lot of mistakes like not using social proof, okay? Social proof tells potential customers that your buyers like your products and they're worth purchasing. As a matter of fact, 76% of consumers admit they're less likely to purchase from a retailer that doesn't have reviews. So if you don't have reviews on your site, you need to do that. Borough and other sites use social proof effectively. Like if you have a product that has no reviews, then you have a product that has like 750 reviews, you're gonna go, wow, this one's got 750 reviews. It can be the exactly same product, but if you've got these reviews there, it's gonna help a lot. Product photos that don't showcase the product. Your photos are an opportunity for you to make your products seem desirable, okay? Seem like something that people wanna buy. The best item can be made to look unappealing with the wrong photography. While professional imagery can make your products really shine and look good. So it's really important that you do that. A product imagery is a master class showing how any product, like let's say our food from Survival K Food looks appetizing. Looks like something you'd wanna eat. So it's really important that you do that. The next thing here that I got on my list is lackluster product descriptions. And before I get into the product descriptions, add videos guys, make sure your website has some videos. Maybe explainer videos, maybe review videos, but videos are really good. They're gonna come up higher in the SEO ranking. So it's really important that you do that too. And product descriptions, which I just mentioned, product images don't do all the work, okay? They need to be paired with compelling, persuasive descriptions. It's gotta be something interesting. It can't just be facts about your product. We describe our Survival K Food can meet as something that tastes like your grandma's pot roast. And people always relate to that. They're like, oh my God, yeah, I remember that. That was really good. So it's really important that you have really good descriptions that really make people wanna buy it. Now, the next thing I see is a poor mix of this media, videos, imagery, all these things. Your website's primary goal is to encourage, okay, potential customers to buy. This requires giving enough information to make the items appealing without seeming like they're overwhelming, okay? So it's really important that you do that. It's really important that you pick up on the fact that if you don't do that, they're not gonna buy, okay? A common mistake is to throw everything in the kitchen sink or on a site or product images. A mix of media, including imagery, videos can be very persuasive, but overdoing it can push people away, okay? Like you don't wanna have testimonial videos. They say two or three is really good. But if you have 50 testimonial videos, it looks like you're overselling it. It looks like it may be BS, okay? If you have too many of those. If the site takes too long to load, it's slow to navigate, but the visitor feels confused and overwhelmed, your site is working against you. We don't want that to happen. Every decision you make when building your e-commerce site, okay, should be focused on providing one thing, the best user experience. You know, I see so many businesses and they talk about, well, we do this because we wanna do this and we do this because we wanna do this. And I always ask them, I say, what's best for the consumer? What's best for your customer? Is that what you're looking at? I remember going into a restaurant one day, my wife and I are sitting there and one of the managers came over and they said, you know, how's things going? We said, man, we're freezing in here. This place is so cold, we're really uncomfortable. He goes, well, it's comfortable to me. I thought, wow, it's comfortable to you, huh? Well, we're here and we're customers and you should be catering to us. So user experience is everything, okay? Your website design impacts conversion rates as well as your research and your ranking. So it's important that you get it right. Here, I wanna explore a few of the most common mistakes that people do. The first thing is I go to a website, there's no categories. Guys, you gotta have categories. Categories are so very important. The potential customer needs to be able to find the products they want. Categories tell your visitors where to go. They can also encourage visitors to look at items they weren't even looking at before. Once they hit that drop-down of categories, they see some categories that they're interested in. And let me set one thing here on my computer, so there's one thing's off here, give me one second, guys. The Wi-Fi is on, okay. I was having trouble connecting over here and I wanna figure out why it's doing this. Okay, back online, I'm good, okay. I had lost you guys for just a second. I don't want that to happen. All right, click here. So this user experience, guys. I think it is so underrated. It really is. And having these categories can help them so much, okay. A clean and concise user experience where it's easy to navigate. You know, it's like, I always point to companies like Chick-fil-A or In-N-Out Burger. I mean, everything about them is clean and easy to navigate. I mean, their apps are good, they're fast, they're easy to use. I've gone to McDonald's and well, McDonald's is actually pretty good. I've gone to Burger King and Wendy apps and they're terrible, they're very difficult to navigate. So even that little thing makes a big difference. Next thing I would say is providing a little service information or product, or excuse me, or business contact information. Guys, don't hide from your customers. I know you think, oh my gosh, I don't wanna put a phone number, I don't wanna put an address because somebody may come by, somebody may call me. These are super important, guys. If you wanna keep customers, the buying decisions are influenced more by just the product. Customers also want to know about shipping rates. They wanna know how long delivery takes. They wanna know what the return options are, how to get in touch with you for questions. And a lot of times people will never use these contact points. They won't call you, they won't email you, but if they see that it's there, they know that if they ever have a problem, they'll be able to get in touch with you. I know so many people are leaving Facebook right now because they can't get in touch with anybody if they run ads or if they have problems. They just get all these automated emails and they're seeing a flood of people leave. Their stock is one half of what it was about a year ago because they don't take care of their customers. Their customers are the users of Facebook or the advertisers of Facebook. And instead they just bar people and they close people's business accounts. I use YouTube for ads and I use Google and there's always somebody I can talk to. I mean, that minute on the phone or chat or whatever I want, they're there for me. And I pretty much left Facebook for that reason because nobody there wants to help you. It's really, really important. The next thing is poor navigation. So as I'm explaining when I was talking about designing categories, good navigation is also very, very important. Navigation is something that people need to be able to do. Your site has great products, contact information, details and shipping and returns, but can visitors find all this information? Is the navigation easy to use? For an example, a great navigation would be something that has everything visitors are likely to need. Clear product categories, including corporate sales as well as links to the contact page and shopping cart, all these things are important. Potential customers needing to move the footer has links about us page, frequently asked questions, contact information and additional ways to connect with you. All these are important. The next thing I see this one all the time is not having a guest checkout. How many times have you added something to the card and then abandoned it because you had to make an account? The answer is more than zero. I can promise you that. You already know why not having a guest checkout option in your checkout process is a mistake. There's an obvious reason why e-commerce stores do this. Making an account increases the amount of customer information collected. I get that in the number of email subscribers. However, giving the business owners an opportunity to email customers for future offers is great, but if they don't wanna do it, you're gonna lose the customer all together. The average abandonment rate right now is staggeringly high, okay? They've calculated the average card abandonment based on 44 reported statistics to be almost 70% and sometimes it's much higher. It should be a priority to make the checkout process simple and smooth so that you keep your card abandonment as low as possible. If you're absolutely going to force an account to purchase at very minimal, make it easy for your customers, but I don't recommend it. I recommend you having a guest checkout if they wanna have that, okay? Next thing is content that is exactly like your competitors. You go to your competitors, you see their description to see what you're doing and you do the same thing. You go, well, they're successful, so I'm gonna be successful. And the point is, if it's working for them, that's great, but what are you gonna offer more than them? You can have some similar stuff as them, but you need to make yourself distinguished above them. You need to have stuff that is gonna be better than them. You need to have stuff that they can't find at your competitors and that's what's gonna make them buy from you. Next thing I would tell you is not using your analytics to improve marketing tactics. So very important that you do that, guys. These analytics are free. For the most part, you can use Google Analytics. Effective marketing blends creativity and data. Your e-commerce store's marketing strategy should be influenced by customer behavior. Consider this, emails are personalized and set based on customer behavior. They generate 29% of all email purchases and have conversion rates of 359% higher than non-personalized email campaigns. And while accounting for less than 2% of overall email sent. So using analytics to improve your market tactics can give your online store a huge boost over the competitors. It's also quite easy to do because most platforms will provide clear data on traffic sources, card abandonments, popular products, and on-site behavior. And if you're using something like Cartra, you can target these people, use tags and that type of thing to create your campaigns. Next thing I'm gonna tell you is lack of payment options. And you know, I don't think I did this well in the beginning. I had like MasterCard, Visa, American Express. Now we have Google Payments, we have Amazon Payments, we have American Express, we have MasterCard, we have Visa, we even added AfterPay where they can break up the payments. And it's funny, the other day I was at the gym and I get notifications on my phone and I'm going through my emails. One of my emails said that somebody just got their card decline for a $215 sale. Which meant they didn't have enough on their credit card. But within two minutes, I also got another notification that I had a AfterPay payment, excuse me, for $215. Now the AfterPay is where they can take the price of the product and split it into three payments and they finance it through AfterPay. It doesn't cost them anything, it's zero interest. I've added that to my website and now people are actually using that and I'm getting more sales. It's crazy not to do that. That's a sale I would have lost. That's a sale where the person would have gone away. But since I had AfterPay on there, I got that sale. It's an easy fix. If you're an e-commerce store, support a whole bunch of different options, okay? Have PayPal on there. Have all of these things on there that you possibly can because you don't wanna run across that one customer that has something they wanna pay with whether it be PayPal or whether it be AfterPay or something like that. And you don't have that option, okay? And the last thing I wanna tell you is lack of shipping options, okay? Put yourself in the customer's shoes for a second. What do they want? Three things. They want the item, they wanna pay a fair price and they wouldn't have reliable and fast shipping, okay? Fast shipping is no longer considered a perk. 79% of customers putting in a top factor is shipping, okay? And with 15% of customers feeling their shipping expectations are met, there is a big opportunity for your e-commerce store. And guys, there's a lot of information in today's training but I think it's so very important that you go through all of it. If you do these things, you're gonna be avoiding the majority of the mistakes that most people make out there. And that's the whole goal of this channel, guys, is I wanna help you start running and grow online businesses and avoid mistakes. I want you to do that, okay? Now, this week, well, this week's over with it this Friday, 4th of July is Monday. I won't be here on Monday, well, be here but I'm not gonna be talking to you guys again. I literally will be here, okay? In my office, in my yard, in my house because that's where I broadcast from. But I will not be live on YouTube. However, however, Wednesday I will be live, Friday I will be alive. So I wanna see you those days. I have some great subject matter. I'll be posted this weekend. You can see what we're gonna be talking about. I hope this has helped you out. If it has, do me a favor. Put something in that chat box. Put something in the comment section below. Please do that. And give me a thumbs up, guys. A thumbs up matter so much to YouTube. I have no idea why, but it does. So if you give me a thumbs up, I would really appreciate it. Subscribe, hit that subscribe button there. Maybe it came in late. You didn't see that I asked you to do that in the beginning. That helps my channel. Turn that red button to gray. Don't forget to ring the bell. Turn all bell notifications so you're notified each and every time I go live or if I upload a video. It's very important that you do that. And like I said, even if you're not watching this live, guys, you can put comments in there. I will come back and answer them. I think I just did that yesterday. I answered a bunch of comments that were in there. I love getting your comments, okay? Don't think that your question's stupid. It's not. I wanna hear everything you've got because understand when I started going on, gosh, 13 years ago. It's almost 13 years now. I didn't know anything. I didn't know how to type. Here's the interesting thing. After 13 years, I still can't type. But I have learned other things, okay? There's other things that have helped me out. So guys, make sure that you're part of the game. Make sure you participate. Make sure you use the chat. Make sure you use the comment. That's where I really learn things is I participated in all these things. I learned things and that's the same thing you can do. Thank you so much for watching today. I really appreciate it. Don't forget thumbs up, subscribe, bell. All those things have really helped me out. I will see you guys next Wednesday live at 10 a.m. Central Daylight Time. You guys have a great 4th of July if you're in the U.S. And those of you who are not in the U.S., you could still have a great 4th of July too, right? I'll talk to you guys later. Thanks so much.