In many ways, online selling is getting easier as time goes on. More and more tools are being developed so that new sellers can enter the game and quickly start turning a profit. Thousands of sellers have come and gone, and their mistakes and successes act as a road map for anyone trying to get into ecommerce. We also live in a world of instant information: you can search up any question you might have about selling and instantly get an answer.
Sounds good, right? Well, yeah: if you’ve been dreaming about starting up an online store, now is a great time. But for those of you who are already running their own Internet business, you have probably also noticed that there are some unique challenges that are growing with time. 2022 is definitely a great year for sellers… but it’s also one that has a new set of issues that sellers are going to need to proactively plan for.
So what are these challenges that 2022 will bring? In this article, we will go over 8 of the biggest challenges that online sellers will face this year. We’ll also go over what you can do to overcome them before they start taking a toll on your business.
Increased competition
There are more people than ever before in the ecommerce arena. As you probably already know, this can be helpful in a lot of ways. More sellers means more data, and that can always be leveraged to your advantage. You can watch how other shops are doing to monitor trends in real time, and that can be a huge tool for your own gain. If you notice that other shops are adjusting their prices, for instance, you can do the same without needing to lag behind by very much. Progress becomes instant.
But, in a very real way, more competition is obviously a problem. Most sellers operate in relatively small niches, and having more people inside of those niches means that customers have more options that aren’t your shop. Where before you may have only had one or two competitors to deal with, you might now have double that.
2022 also promises to bring in even more sellers than there already are. The COVID-19 pandemic introduced many buyers to the beauties of shopping online, and sellers are starting to catch on. Anyone that wasn’t already selling is now doing so, and markets are getting flooded with more and more people. This is great for buyers, as they now have lots of shops to choose from with the promise of even more in the future. For you, though, this spells trouble.
So what can you do to prepare for increased competition? One thing is certain: you need to take action soon. If you sit around and don’t innovate while tons of other sellers enter the fray, you might find that your shop is no longer relevant. Once that happens, it can be surprisingly hard to claw your way back to the top. Remember that the Internet moves incredibly fast; buyers won’t go and visit your shop just because it used to be doing well. All they care about is what is doing well right now.
There are a few ways that you can try to prepare for increased competition this year. The first step that you should take is to try and strengthen your shop as much as possible without even thinking of others. Only the strongest will survive, so try to focus on what areas of your shop obviously need improvement. If you can look at your store and see that your shipping times are too long without even comparing with others, that means you need to fix that now if you want to keep customers.
Another strategy that you can employ is to keep an even closer eye on trends in your niche. If your shop is as good as it can be on its own, the only real thing that you need to worry about is your competitors doing something unexpected and surpassing you.
To avoid this, try and regularly perform market research on the shops closest to yours. Are they moving their prices? Are they introducing new products? Any of these changes should be noted by you. If necessary, invest more money into a research department so that you don’t need to do it yourself.
It’s a fact that more sellers will be coming. Just make sure that you’re ready to respond appropriately and stay ahead of the curve.
New payment methods
In case you haven’t been paying attention for the last few years, let us update: cryptocurrency is a really big thing right now. In fact, the blockchain as a whole is becoming more culturally and financially relevant. People who used to invest in these sorts of things used to get laughed at; now, they’re laughing to the bank. NFTs and Bitcoin are the talk of the investment world, and it’s clear that things are changing.
So does that mean that you need to start converting all of your money into Ethereum to survive in the ecommerce world? No, not really. But it does signal something important: the cultural definition of money is beginning to shift. People no longer think about financial transactions in a binary way. We used to walk into a shop with cash in our hands if we wanted to buy something. That’s not really the case anymore.
What we’re trying to say is that 2022 is the year that people wake up to alternate payment methods. That might be a whole new kind of currency – like crypto – or it simply could be novel ways of spending traditional money. Either way, it’s clear that things are changing in the collective consciousness when it comes to payment, and you should be ready to adapt to that.
Luckily, this isn’t a massively difficult problem. While it may be hard to know what the exact trends are when it comes to money, the Internet is here to assist you. Doing some basic research will point you in the right direction as to what you should adopt.
At the end of the day, you will probably do just fine with having customers enter in their credit card info to make purchases. But if you want to start adapting to the times a little bit, it’s pretty easy to just install a PayPal payment widget. This will show that you’re ready for the future without much effort.
If you want to go the extra mile, there are lots of other payment methods that you can start employing. One that has been gaining steam in ecommerce lately is that of a monthly payment method. There are a few apps that let you do this, but it essentially lets buyers purchase something with a payment plan over the course of a few months. It’s a great option that can help net you a ton of business that may have otherwise balked at certain prices.
And, of course, you could always consider allowing cryptocurrency as a way of purchasing your items. This may not make sense for some businesses, but there are enough people that are into crypto that it could be a wise decision. Additionally, crypto only seems to be gaining more and more steam. This is harder to implement than the other options discussed above, and it’s also more of a gamble. But if it works out, it could be a huge boost to your store.
The need for great content
It seems like the Internet is run by “content.” But does anyone really know what that means? It seems like it might refer to copywriting, Tik Tok videos, vlogs, or even just photos. Content is the word that encompasses all of these things and much more. Users are expecting a higher caliber of content than ever these days thanks to the sheer presence of the Internet in our daily lives. And that means that you need to rise to the task.
Okay, we realize that might sound a bit ambiguous. You need to have good content. What does that mean exactly?
For an ecommerce shop, content can mean a lot of things. The main thing that you need to know is that you can no longer get away with unpolished, ramshackle content across your shop. Bad photos and poor writing won’t cut it these days. People simply won’t shop with you if your content isn’t good. The quality of your products and your service can be the best in the biz, but it doesn’t matter if your site itself isn’t catching eyes and making people want to buy things.
So what can you do? Let’s start with copywriting. Most shops tend to skimp on copywriting. They publish generic, clunky copy on their sites, and their product descriptions just don’t feel exciting. If you go on the web stores of the most popular brands out there, you’ll find that their writing follows a consistent tone that is professional enough to be convincing and conversational enough to be appealing to younger audiences.
Invest in your writing. If you need to, hire someone that can edit what you currently have and fill in text where you still need it. It might sound like a small issue, but typos and weird, robotic copywriting can push a lot of customers away. It’s 2022; you don’t have the wiggle room you used to.
Additionally, it’s time to start improving those product images that you have. Is your product photo a picture of the item in front of a white background? Is that the only image you have? If so, you need to upgrade.
But it’s not just about getting high resolution photos. Yes, that helps, but the Internet has advanced beyond just being able to show images. If you really want to compete, you should have 360 product images that customers can rotate.
That’s hard though. If that sounds like too much, just take a product video instead. Comparison photos can also help a lot. They give your buyers a sense of what the item looks like in the real world. You can also use comparison photos to highlight the strengths of your items versus the ones your competitors are selling.
In summary: you need great content throughout all aspects of your shop simply because that’s what buyers expect these days. Do you need to start filming vlogs? No… but don’t be surprised if that becomes a real challenge for 2023.
The importance of social media
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: the world is changing. If you don’t adapt in order to keep up, you will certainly get left behind. One of the major catalysts for change in the last decade or so has been social media. It has had an impact on everything from our interpersonal relationships to large-scale global conflicts, so you’d better believe that it has affected ecommerce.
The biggest change that social media has brought to the world of selling online is through advertising. The old ideas of marketing need to be thrown out of the window at this point. Social media has even begun to supersede modern marketing methods like Google Ads. A guerrilla marketing approach using social media is now needed to just stay afloat.
Additionally, potential customers are spending more time on social media now than they ever have in the past. People are no longer just logging onto Facebook for a few minutes to say hi to their grandmas. They are now sitting on their couches and scrolling through Instagram and Tik Tok for hours. Old social media platforms (such as the aforementioned Facebook) are even being abandoned for newer, sleeker ones.
All these eyes on social media means that you need to start using it to your advantage to keep up. There are lots of ways of going about this, but one that you need to do as soon as possible if you haven’t already is creating your own social media presence.
This might sound like we are telling you to hop on Tik Tok and start doing dance challenges. That isn’t exactly correct, but it’s also not entirely wrong. Creating brand awareness through the use of multiple social media platforms is key, but you don’t need to sell your souls. Hiring a young intern who knows the ins and outs of Instagram, Twitter, and Tik Tok can really give your shop a boost. They’ll post frequent content that will get a ton of customers interested without much financial investment from you.
Think about it this way: when young people learn about something new, they either Google it or look it up on their preferred social media platform. If they hear about your shop and search you up on Instagram only to find nothing, they will probably forget about you and move onto the next store.
Social media marketing doesn’t need to stop there. Another great tool at your disposal is partnering with an influencer. We understand that hating on influencers seems to be all the rage these days, but it’s an undeniably powerful advertising strategy. Sending items to people who are popular on social media is a relatively cheap way to make thousands of people aware of your brand.
Finally, you can also just look into running traditional ads on social media platforms. While Facebook used to really be the place to do this, you may want to go for Instagram if you are looking for a younger demographic. In the end, though, it really depends on who you’re trying to attract.
Cybersecurity
As technology progresses, it seems like there is an arms war being waged between cybersecurity professionals and hackers. Just as new tech is created that makes it much harder for information to be stolen by hackers, they figure out how to do exactly that. In fact, brilliant hackers are often even hired by security companies to try and break their new systems. And they are often able to.
This is a double-edged sword for ecommerce shops. Constantly evolving security measures are always good. You don’t want any of your own information to be leaked by a malevolent hacker, and you certainly don’t want your customers’ data to be accessed either. Many large businesses have had to weather huge PR scandals due to hackers gaining access to passwords, payment info, and other sensitive data from their databases. New cybersecurity tools help avoid that.
But you should also be aware that hackers are constantly learning more and evolving alongside the cybersecurity professionals. That means that you need to stay as vigilant as possible. Just because you feel secure doesn’t mean that you actually are.
And here’s the thing: your buyers expect you to handle their data with extreme care. If they feel like their information won’t be safe with you, they won’t want to buy anything from you. That makes it critical that you are as diligent with cybersecurity as possible.
2022 poses to be a big year for ecommerce shops to start investing big in cybersecurity, and we suggest you get on the bandwagon. Unfortunately, we can’t just recommend one tool for you that will solve all of your problems. By the time you read this, our security recommendations might be out of date. Additionally, what security software you will want to go with will depend greatly on how big your shop is and what platform you are using.
That means that you need to put in some leg work to make sure that your security is top notch. Do some research on what plugins are best for the platform that you are working on, and don’t skimp on them. You may never actually need to use whatever tool you invest in, but that’s much better than the alternative.
Another step that you can take towards mitigating the damage of a cybersecurity attack is to make sure that your data is backed up at all times. This won’t actually prevent attacks on its own, but it will make them far less painful to try to deal with. A hacker taking data is one thing, but it’s another thing entirely if all of your data gets wiped in the process.
So, yes, it’s incredibly important that you take the time and effort to make sure that you are prepared for any cybersecurity threats that might come your way. This goes for shops big and small. Don’t get caught off guard: it could be the end of your ecommerce business.
Customer retention
We already discussed the positives and negatives of the fact that ecommerce is growing so much in this article. But one major issue that we didn’t yet touch upon is that of customer retention. It has always been an issue, but most ecommerce experts agree that retention is only going to get harder in 2022.
This is for a few reasons. First of all, other shops have the ability to steal your customers from right under your nose, and more and more shops are being made every day. Second of all, the average attention span on the Internet is being decreased thanks to apps like Tik Tok where immediate gratification is emphasized. If a shop isn’t giving someone what they want, they see no problem just moving on to the next.
Finally, you need to keep in mind that ecommerce functions very differently than traditional commerce. Most people don’t build up relationships with the brands they shop at online like they do with brick-and-mortar stores. They don’t walk into a building, speak with people, and walk out feeling socially satisfied. Online stores tend to be more transactional.
But that’s not to say that the feeling of a transactional nature can’t be conquered by shop owners that approach this issue with an open mind. In fact, every aspect of the customer retention issue can be mitigated if you work hard towards demonstrating to your buyers that they are valued – and that you have value to continually provide to them.
One of the ways that you can do this is by giving them an experience while shopping online that is just as satisfying as one that they might experience in real life. The key to do this is to show personality. Using your copywriting, images, and website design, you can show that you’re a brand made up of people rather than just a shop made out of code.
We also recommend using a tool that lots of other shops are starting to adopt this year: a live chat feature. This will let customers feel like they are being cared for in real time, something that they normally only get in a real shop. If they can ask questions and get answers quickly, they will understand that there’s a reason to keep coming back to you.
Beyond this, you need to keep up with current customers to make sure that they remember who you are and why they shopped with you in the first place. The tried-and-true method for this is with an email campaign. Once someone buys things from you, start sending them fun and informative messages that capture the essence of your shop. This goes a long way towards customer retention.
If you want to go even further than email, you can also try out SMS reminders. Lots of shops use this quite effectively. But be careful with these nudges: if you go overboard, a customer might just be annoyed when they think of your shop. An annoyed customer is not one that is looking forward to coming back.
Damaged supply chain
Shipping has always been an obstacle that all online sellers have needed to overcome. It’s not easy to figure out how to get items all around the world as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, the past few years have made shipping much harder than ever. We’ve had constant supply chain issues thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s been incredibly hard to ship things to customers on time even if you do everything correctly. Sometimes the shipping companies simply can’t move fast enough.
And while 2022 is beginning with a downward trend in coronavirus cases, supply chain issues still exist. There is also the threat of future variants that may pop out of nowhere and cause even more problems with shipping.
Another issue to consider is the fact that the cultural attitude towards COVID dictates how customers accept long waits for their purchases. In the early days of the pandemic, everyone had lots of patience. They understood that it was an unprecedented time. But it has been years now, and many people have moved on. If wait times are still just as long as ever, they might not be as understanding as they once were.
We don’t say all of this to frighten you. We say it to make you aware that supply chain issues have been a problem – and will continue to be a problem in 2022. But knowing the problem is half the battle. What you need to do now is prepare for these supply chain issues to help reduce the impact that they have on your shop.
The first thing that you can do is to look for vendors and shipping companies that seem to offer the least amount of wait time between orders. While you may have to pay more to switch to a more reliable company, it can be worth it if it makes sure your customers are satisfied and leaving good reviews. Cutting down on how long it takes for orders to be moved will ensure that future supply chain issues don’t have as big of an impact.
Additionally, you can start to analyze your inventory turnover ratio to see if you are ordering too often. There’s a basic formula for doing so, and it can help you see if you should order larger batches less often or smaller batches more often. If you find that you are turning over your inventory many times throughout a year, that leaves you more susceptible to supply chain problems.
No matter what you decide to do to try to help you with supply chain issues, you still might encounter them. That’s just an unfortunate fact of how ecommerce is functioning right now. That means that you should have a plan for when that happens. If products are taking too long to ship, will you change suppliers? Will you reach out to customers directly? Will you offer discounts? These are the questions you should answer now so that you aren’t scrambling to answer them as the issues are happening.
The expectation for free shipping
For consumers, Amazon is the pinnacle of convenience. People used to have to leave their houses to buy things; they can now sit on their couches and purchase anything in the world and have it shipped directly to their homes. It’s pretty amazing. Amazon also changed the game in a few other ways, with one of the most important being fast and free shipping.
Once Amazon introduced free shipping on many items, it was like opening Pandora’s Box. Customers learned that free shipping was possible, so they now expect it from every shop. It doesn’t matter if you’re Target with millions of shoppers or some lonely Shopify store with ten customers. They want shipping to be quick, convenient, and totally free of charge.
Of course, this is an unrealistic expectation for many shops. If you don’t have a lot of funding, free shipping might just not be possible for you. If that’s the case, you are going to need to think outside of the box to make customers satisfied with the shipping process. Can you personalize their orders somehow to demonstrate that you care about them despite not being able to give them free shipping? If so, do it. That’s a surprisingly powerful tool that will make buyers feel good.
A halfway option between never and always offering free shipping is to offer it sometimes. There are a few ways of going about this. Many shops employ a policy where anyone who spends above a certain amount – often $100 – will unlock free shipping. Because it’s such a big draw for shoppers, they’ll be encouraged to spend more than they normally would have. You can also try out offering free shipping as a reward for return shoppers – or as a coupon available in marketing emails that you send out. Offers like this can bring in a lot of business on the power of free shipping alone.
You can also set up limits so that you are not offering free shipping to everyone. For instance, if an item is particularly large and heavy, you can decide to never offer free shipping with it. Most customers will understand this, but keep in mind that free shipping on items with very high shipping costs is an even bigger draw for certain buyers.
If you can afford free shipping, though, it is a pretty wise decision to go for it. Shopping around for different vendors or shipping companies with lower rates can help make the decision less impactful on your business. If you decide to offer free shipping, you might find that the increase in business outweighs the financial strain of keeping it going. In that case, it’s a no-brainer to offer it to all of your customers.
While it may not be financially viable for you right now, don’t forget about the power that free shipping has. Lacking free shipping is already a deal breaker for some customers in 2022, and it will only become a more prevalent feature in ecommerce shops moving forward.
