I believe that many people have the habit of using Instagram (IG) as a social platform, and there will also be merchants who will operate IG online stores through this platform to sell different goods and services to other IG users. Have you ever thought about the following 5 potential problems, aspiring to run an IG online store, or a merchant who only relies on operating an IG online store now?
Table of Contents
The potential problem of relying only on IG Shop to run a business
1.Low scalability
If you want your business to be sustainable and increase competitiveness and break through among your peers, I believe that you will hope that your online store has more functions to improve the customer shopping experience and can obtain more customer consumer habits and data to assist you in data analysis and market research, which will help you develop a more efficient marketing strategy. However, IG Shop is always just an online store based on social platforms, there are still many functions that have not been realized, and you cannot add new features such as membership system, shopping cart, and connecting to third-party payment platforms within IG App.
2.Poor customer experience browsing products
I believe that when you browse some IG online stores, you will find it difficult to find the goods or services you want, just like you are browsing an IG online store that sells both men’s and women’s clothing and shoes. The owner posts each item separately, and the total number of posts in the IG online store rises to thousands, tens of thousands, or even more after a long period of operation. At this time, if you want to find a men’s T-Shirt in this IG online store, do you have to search for the goods you want and compare a batch of different styles of goods from a large number of mixed men’s and women’s clothing and shoes posts? I believe that as a consumer, I hope to find the product i want faster.
3.Poor customer payment experience
Now electronic payment methods and e-wallets are prevalent, credit cards, prepaid cards, QR Code payments, bank transfers, but now the IG online store function does not provide in-app payment channels, merchants can only provide payment information to customers and require them to pay the corresponding amount to the merchant’s commercial bank account or e-wallet, but also need to send proof of payment to the merchant. As a result, the entire payment process becomes more complicated and prone to human error, resulting in a significant increase in the time and cost of both the customer and the merchant in dealing with the normal and erroneous payment processes.
4.Running an IG Shop alone makes the online store less reliable
In recent years, the number of online stores around the world has been increasing, including some fake online stores opened by unscrupulous people for different forms of fraud, so consumers generally have a high desire to spend in highly reliable online stores. Since the IG online store is based on the social platform of IG, there are still some shortcomings and limitations as an online store, such as a variety of posts and advertisements that make it difficult for customers to quickly understand your brand data, business and philosophy in your IG online store. Therefore, as a merchant, you only rely on the single channel of IG online store, and believe that it is difficult to build a reliable online store on this platform.
5.Additional time costs and manual work are required to handle the entire process
Because operating an IG online store requires a lot of manual work, it is difficult to automate the entire process, such as the store owner needs to take the time to reply to some common customer inquiries, record the customer’s order information, warehouse management, arrange the delivery of logistics companies, account management, etc. Without an automated process, shopkeepers need to do more manual work. The biggest difference between manual work and automated processes is that people are more likely to experience human error and are more unstable. For example, a shopkeeper who records the number and type of goods in the wrong order leads to calculating the total amount of the wrong order or sending the wrong goods to the customer, resulting in the need to spend more time contacting the customer and affecting the customer’s shopping experience and impression of the store; Even if the computer has errors, it can operate efficiently and continuously as long as it is corrected and maintained by people.
Use WordPress to build an e-commerce site as a solution to potential problems with your Instagram online store
If you don’t know what WordPress is, you can first check out this WordPress website introduction as an understanding.
1. Solve the problem of low scalability
WordPress, a powerful platform for setting up websites, contains more than 59,753 plug-ins with different functions to meet everyone’s different racking needs, and the number continues to increase. Click here to learn more about WordPress plug-ins
2. Use WooCommerce to improve the customer experience of browsing products and making payments
WooCommerce is a free and open source plug-in that allows you to build an e-commerce website on WordPress in a short period of time to sell the physical goods, virtual goods and services you provide. As a shopkeeper, you can easily customize the product information, prices, pictures, etc. in the online store, or cooperate with your marketing methods, provide different offers to customers, and be able to connect to the collection methods you can provide such as bank transfer, credit card, prepaid card, etc. to your e-commerce website, you can also connect to other logistics companies to assist you in quickly dispatching goods. Customers can use different methods to quickly find the products they want when browsing your e-commerce website, for example, they can quickly find their products by searching for product keywords in the interface provided by WooCommerce, using product filters, sequencers, categories and other functions.
When the customer finds the desired item, it can be added to the shopping cart, and the total price of the item in the shopping cart will be updated in real time at the same time, reducing the calculation errors of the buyer and seller, the wrong recording of the order content and other human errors. They only need to confirm that the order is correct, press the payment, and fill in the correct payment information and delivery location to successfully place the order, making the whole transaction process more convenient and fast, greatly improving the customer’s experience of browsing goods and payment.
3. Build pages and features on your website that increase the reliability of your online store
As mentioned above, consumers generally have a high desire to spend in highly reliable online stores. To increase the reliability of your online store, as an online shop owner, you can try to increase the reliability of your online store in the following ways.
A new About Us page has been added
The “About Us” page is one of the main important factors for your customers to quickly understand and judge whether your online store is trustworthy. This page can use text, images and videos to explain who and when your online store was established, the main goods or services, the concept of the online store, and even some media reports, awards and certifications about your online store.
Added the ability to rate and leave comments for products
Authentic product ratings and messages and customer service’s good response to problems can help increase the reliability of your online store. Customers will judge the quality of the products of the online store, whether the complete shopping experience is qualified, and whether the attitude and method of the online store to deal with unexpected situations are acceptable. If they judge that it is acceptable, they will increase their intention to spend on your online store. Therefore, your online store should offer a feature for buyers to rate and leave comments.
New contact data
Customers who shop online are more likely to find the owner if there is a problem throughout the shopping process. As a result, they would prefer to have more contact methods such as some instant messaging software (WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram…), phone numbers, social media pages of online stores, emails, and a physical contact address.
4. Reduce time costs and manual work with a range of automated processes
Go-to-market automation
E-commerce sites are able to use pre-arranged ads on WordPress to send wrapped to customers at different times and times from different channels such as SMS and email. There are many times when these are sent. For example:
- Birthday discounts are available for customers on their birthdays.
- Approaching the time of the festival.
- Merchants need to implement a marketing strategy and send coupons or coupon codes.
- Customers receive the product and invite them to comment and leave a message.
- The customer has some items that have been in the shopping cart for a while and have not yet checked out.
Warehouse management automation
E-commerce websites can automatically update the warehouse storage of goods after the customer pays for the order, after the online store is shipped or after the purchase, etc., and if the warehouse is insufficient, it can also notify the store to find the supplier to purchase in time.
Logistics management automation
After the customer places an order, the system automatically generates invoices and receipts for the merchant to prepare the package and ship the goods, and deliver the service through the logistics company.
Customer service automation
Now there are different Chat Bots that can analyze customer input questions, find relevant common problems and suggest solutions to them, and if they still can’t solve the problem, they can contact the online customer service staff or leave contact information to wait for the customer service staff to reply. This reduces the number of problems that customer service personnel need to solve and reduces time and labor costs.