5 rookie mistakes I made launching ecommerce business

Before you even think about starting an ecommerce business, learn from others’ mistakes to improve your chances of success.

Back in 2020, my partner and I started an ecommerce business. I also mentioned this in my 2021 year in review, but I didn’t share a lot about what really happened. And because startup cost seems significantly low compared to having a physical store, we decided to give it a shot.

While there may be several platforms out there, business models, and products to sell online, we decided to try the dropshipping business model.

Dropshipping is a business model that doesn’t require you to invest in product inventory.

Here’s how it works.

We looked for suppliers online that allow us to dropship their products (i.e. AliExpress is the most popular). When we found a good supplier, we imported their product images, description, and prices into our online store.

We have changed the product description to our liking and put the marked-up price of our chosen products on our site.

And of course, we didn’t have to do this manually because we use Shopify as our ecommerce platform which automates almost everything for us.

So when someone buys from our online store, we forward their order to our suppliers, then our suppliers ship the products directly to our customers.

And our customers won’t even know that their products are shipped from AliExpress supplier.

Best part is that we just keep the profits.

This cycle just keeps on repeating without needing for us to see the actual products.

We were very excited to start this venture because a lot of entrepreneurs become successful by doing business online. Little did we know the challenges that we are up against.

Since we started operating our online store, we have been struggling and encountered a lot of problems. And becoming the next Jeff Bezos won’t be happening real soon. So we decided to shut it down.

Here’s what our online store looked like back in 2020.

While our business model seems to be different from the most common way of selling online, the mistakes we have made and the lessons you will learn will be pretty much applicable to other methods of selling online as well.

As long as you are doing business online, you can avoid these costly mistakes.

Here are 5 mistakes we have made:

1. We sell products that we’re not passionate about

It’s really hard to sell products that don’t resonate with you.

We have sold products from toys, apparel, electronics, gym equipment, and a lot more. And because most products didn’t resonate with us, we didn’t put a lot of effort into writing our product descriptions. We have just copied and pasted most of them from other sources.

And we just thought that our minimal efforts would allow us to sell every product in our online store, which never happened.

So if the product you sell doesn’t resonate with you, it won’t take long until you lose interest in selling them and won’t be motivated to sell better.

2. We didn’t write a business plan

When we launched our online store, we didn’t even bother writing a business plan. And when we failed, this one is a big factor.

So no matter how big or small your business will be, having a business plan will help you stay on track.

3. Lack of market research

Market research provides you with valuable insights into whether there’s a demand for your product or not. And if your ideal business is worth your time, money, and effort.

In our case, we thought that a lot of people will be interested in our products and sell them like hotcakes.

But obviously, it didn’t happen.

I wish that we could have gathered more data before considering launching. That would give us insight into whether to pursue it or not.

4. We didn’t consider other digital marketing strategies

We only promoted our brand through Facebook and run some ads, which is expensive.

It is expensive if you keep on spending on ads without someone buying from you.

We have tried running Facebook ads multiple times and there were lots of engagements based on the reports. But obviously, engagements don’t equal to conversions.

The problem with this is that we just rely and promoted on one platform and didn’t consider other digital marketing strategies at the time.

5. We didn’t know when to pivot

Sometimes we get emotional with the products, and we don’t want to let them go even if it’s hurting us more every day.

In our case, we kept our store online running for several months hoping that more customers will buy from us, but it didn’t happen.

So before we shut it down, we did try pivoting to other business models hoping to save the business, but it also did’nt work out.

That was when we started thinking that maybe it was not the best business for us at the time. So we’ve decided to finally shut it down.

Final thoughts

I hoped that you have learned from our mistakes. You could avoid a lot of mistakes by just simply listening to others’ mistakes.

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Featured image credit: Alex Green