Magento is the most reliable E-commerce platform with tons of powerful features that helps you to set up a fully-functional web store. Currently, it powers 29.1% of total eCommerce websites available on the Internet.
Creating an eCommerce platform on Magento is a straightforward and easy process, but many beginners make fundamental development mistakes that can affect their sales and conversions.
Related: Why Magento is suitable and efficient for building eStores?
While operating a Magento store, you must avoid making some mistakes (highlighted here below) to ensure 100% satisfaction of your customers:
1. Using Shared Server & Resources
Many E-shop owners run their store on shared servers. This could affect their site's loading speed and damages its security.
When your site receives excessive traffic, you will find it difficult to manage the rapidly increasing load of traffic in case you run your site on shared hosting.
Hackers keep targeting Magento stores to steal the sensitive data of customers. Your site can be an easy prey for hackers in this case.
So, to keep your store safe from all types of online security breaches by configuring it on dedicated servers .
2. Using Default Settings
If you wish to increase the conversion rate and expand your business rapidly, just discard using default settings.
There are some default settings (detailed here below) which prevents you from achieving the desired business targets.
2.1 Default Homepage:
Many E-retailers use default Homepage on their e-commerce site which affects their raking in Google and other search engines.
To enjoy improved ranking in all leading search engines and get a steady flow of traffic to your website constantly, you need to edit your site's homepage and use a primary keyword along with a secondary keyword to write a compelling homepage.
It is necessary as per SEO algorithm and it helps your potential customers to have a basic idea about your business, products and services.
2.2 Default Descriptions
It is one of the biggest mistakes made by the owners of Magento websites. When you display products and services on your store with improper descriptions, it affects your site's ranking in Google and other search engines and the experience of your customers also.
As Google and other search engines prefer the most relevant pages in their search results, you need to write the fresh and SEO-friendly content for all your products and services.
2.3 Default XML SiteMap:
Sitemaps are important because it help search engines to find your store's pages and include them in their rankings. But, the majority of store owners don't add sitemaps while developing the Magento store.
To fix this issue, you can use different techniques:
- Create a new sitemap
- Go to Directory > Google Sitemaps > Add ( For advanced Magento users)
- Go to the System > Configuration > Catalog > Google Sitemap > Add ( For those who use the Normal version of Magento)
Besides this, you can use Magento Sitemap Extensions.
See Also: What are Sitemaps and How to Create an XML Sitemap File
3. Non-Responsive Website
As the Internet browsing through various mobile devices crossed PC / laptop searches, it's important for your website to run properly on various mobile devices of different screen sizes and resolutions.
If not, then you will start losing customers rapidly and suffer a huge loss in business in the long run.
Therefore, you need to consult an expert Magento website developer and ask him/her to create a responsive website so that it can run smoothly on various mobile devices.
It will boost your site's traffic up to a great extent and chances of conversions and leads gets increased.
4. Layered Navigation Problems
All e-shop owners want to provide an excellent shopping experience to their customers and for this, they display different categories of products on the same page with the help of layered navigation.
They do so to provide an easy navigation facility to customers. But, this causes several problems such as obscured images, overlapped image, etc, and it affects the loading speed of page.
It annoys customers and they abandon your site immediately that affects your business a lot.
To fix this issue, you can take following steps:
- Use a Magento Navigation Extension
- Use Ajax Navigation as it allows visitors to filter products easily.
5. Poor Selection of Themes
Magento offers you a number of exquisite themes using which you can customize your site to make it look attractive and user-friendly.
But, Most of the developers choose themes without investigating them properly, which creates problems for them in the long run. They need to select a theme which suits customers more.
Additionally, some developers choose heavy themes which could impact the speed of their site when new products and services are added.
To solve this problem, take following steps:
- Use a simple theme which comes with various customization options
- Make sure the theme you are using, is user-friendly and allures them to land on your webpage
- Make sure your site loads fast on PC / laptop and various mobile devices
6. Neglecting Top-Notch Magento Features
Magento has a lot to offer and it comes with a heavy package of features and functionalities. Most of the developers tend to ignore the advanced functionalities of Magento and they receive negative feedbacks from customers.
Before setting up an E-store with Magento, try to learn about Magento advanced functionalities.
It will help you in many ways while handling a popular E-store and will amplify your sale.
Summary
Now, you know 6 basic mistakes a Magento developer or store owner makes while developing a Magento based online store.
Just get rid of these and rejoice great business flowing out from your Magento store with abundant traffic 24*7.
See Also: 3 Things To Consider While Migrating Your Store To Magento