7 Tips for Troubleshooting E-Commerce Challenges

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What is your one tip for troubleshooting an e-commerce challenge? What was the challenge and how was it resolved?

Create Synergy Between Your Departments to Troubleshoot
Part of troubleshooting an e-commerce challenge is to find how to effectively use all the tools at your disposal, therefore coordinating your departments from logistical to customer service is critical. Segmenting off one part of your business efforts from another can leave you blind to potential challenges or issues, and this often ends in an unsatisfactory result.
By creating synergy between your various teams, you can coordinate your efforts to address inventory issues, customer experience and complaints, shipping, and website user experience, so you can align your overall strategy, stay on message and expedite solutions to any problem. In addition, by having the departments share information, you can prioritize what is most effective to obtain better results more consistently. In creating a cooperative and synergistic relationship between your departments, you can better address many of your e-commerce challenges.
Greg Gillman, MuteSix

​Use A/B Tests to Improve Abandon Cart Rates
​We needed to optimize our abandoned cart rates early on in our business, so we partnered with a digital marketing firm to help refine our strategy. Through split testing retargeting emails to customers who had recently abandoned their shopping carts, we improved sales and customer retention in the long run.
Our abandoned cart rate improved by 4% using this strategy. The most persuasive retargeting emails look different for different segments, but can all be optimized using split testing or similar methods. After optimizing our Abandon rate, we doubled focus on automating our retargeting strategy to populate at the right time to keep users most engaged. These campaigns along with cross-selling focused emails significantly impact Abandon rates and improve conversions across audiences.
Zach Goldstein, Public Rec

Reach Out to Your Platform Provider for Help
​If you’re having trouble with your e-commerce store, my number one tip is to reach out to your specific platform provider for help. Whether you’re using Shopify, WooCommerce, or another platform, the team that built the software will have a wealth of knowledge about how it works and can usually help you troubleshoot any issues you’re having. When it comes to troubleshooting e-commerce challenges, my number one tip is to always start with the basics. For example, if a customer’s payment is being declined, it may be an issue with the payment processor or the customer’s bank. In these cases, contacting customer support can help to resolve the issue.
In my own experience, I once had an issue with my Shopify store where customers were being charged twice for their orders. I reached out to Shopify’s support team and they quickly identified the root cause of the problem and helped me resolve it. Without their help, I would have been struggling to fix the issue on my own for weeks.
Travis Lindemoen, nexus IT group

Use Social Media Giveaway Campaigns to Generate Leads
​Many eCommerce businesses struggle to optimize social media leads, conversions, and growth. Customer engagement must be central to companies’ social media strategies, which means putting consumer value at the forefront of a content strategy. One terrific method for generating leads and prioritizing the customer experience is running giveaways online. Giveaways are low-risk to enter and help businesses drive new leads exponentially through their followers’ reach and participation.
By asking followers to tag three friends in the comments, like, and sign up for email notifications, eCommerce businesses can build up email leads before a major campaign. The more value offered in the giveaway prizes, the better participation businesses will see, and the more leads they will be able to convert in follow-up campaigns.
Kevin Miller, kevinmiller.com

Track Data to Improve the Landing Page
​At first our e-commerce store had a high bounce rate, so we paid attention to see why a huge portion of our visitors didn’t stick around. The problem was a hastily put together website, as we had to pivot to e-commerce faster than expected due to shoe stores closing during the pandemic. We had all this inventory slotted for physical stores and needed an effective website to sell. Building an effective and intuitive website is a process, making the process as simple as possible and measuring changes by tracking the data.
Monte Deere, Kizik

Start With the Basics
​My main tip for troubleshooting an e-commerce challenge is to always start with the basics. By that, I mean clearly identifying the issue and then systematically working through each potential cause. Once you’ve ruled out the obvious causes, start looking at more complex issues. By doing this, you’ll be able to identify the root cause of the problem and make the necessary changes to resolve it.
In terms of specific challenges, one common issue is website performance. A variety of factors can cause this, so it’s important to rule out each possibility before assuming that the problem is with your website itself. For example, if your website is loading slowly, check your server first. If that’s not the issue, then look at your code and see if there are any bottlenecks. Only after you’ve checked all of these potential causes should you start to look at your website design and architecture. This way, you can be sure that you’re making the necessary changes to improve performance.
Ty Wilson, CustomMade

Choose Cloud Hosting to Resolve Most Hosting Issues
​E-commerce hosting firms customarily manage all the technical aspects of creating and maintaining a website for their customers. Hosting issues are more common and most owners don’t usually realize the importance of it. Hosting is a common and very important aspect of e-commerce so you need to make sure to select the most reliable host. For e-commerce to be reliable fast ecommerce hosting should be selected and most of the time it crumbles. So, the best way to overcome this problem is to choose cloud hosting. Cloud ways offer scalable cloud hosting and a fantastic method of managing the hosting issue. Ultimately, choosing a good host can easily solve the hosting challenge of e-commerce.
Brigid Davey, Nimble