The global ecommerce industry is growing exponentially with worldwide sales expected to reach USD 6.4 trillion by 2024 (Source : BigCommerce). That’s a big market to capitalize on!

Ecommerce stores have become the key growth engines for the global retail industry. The pandemic and other global events have added fuel to the fire. Ecommerce market share of the retail industry increased manifold starting in 2020.

Approximately 81 percent of shoppers begin their journey with online research especially using their mobile phones. A survey shows that the majority of customers prefer a fast and highly responsive ecommerce marketplace that is important for a satisfactory shopping experience.

The growth seen by the ecommerce industry over the last decade has also led to many ecommerce challenges. Leaders say that getting on to the ecommerce wave is not as easy as it seems with the increasing size of the business and growing demand for ecommerce products. Brands must first take-up the core issues to gain a competitive edge in this crowded ecommerce landscape. They are coming across new challenges while adapting to the latest ecommerce trends and trying to match sky-rocketing customer expectations.

The good news is that now ecommerce businesses are positively responding to the obstacles. A McKinsey survey points out that they have accelerated the digitization of customer interaction resorting to upcoming technologies. moLotus mobile video customer interaction platform is an example of such technology and platform being embraced by ecommerce giants like Amazon. Even some offline retail brands having brick-and-mortar stores are gradually entering the world of online buying.

The most common ecommerce challenges and solutions when building and operating a successful ecommerce brand are here.

1. Capturing Relevant Leads

Generating relevant leads still remains a challenge for ecom brands. It is no wonder that the ecommerce conversion rates on an average are often minimal. Surveys show that only 2.57 percent of leads convert into purchases in the US.

The efforts to acquire and convert the prospects can be futile if the brands are not able to generate the desired quantity and quality of leads. Unfortunately, brands using social media tools like Facebook and email platforms like Mailchimp fail to communicate with the right audience and capture their data in the form of leads.

Lead capturing is all about finding and qualifying prospective customers and converting them into actual customers. The solution lies in embracing a new technology like moLotus which offers unique lead generation campaigns enabling ecommerce brands to attract leads in the form of detailed customer info like name, address, contact number, etc. moLotus helps in generating more leads at low cost per lead. It also converts the leads into new customers, building a new customer base. Illustrative product moLotus mobile videos up to 40 sec. and offers attract the potential customers; motivate them to interact, educate them, build trust and finally provide their contact information.

2. Avoiding Shopping Cart Abandonment

Not every shopper visiting an ecommerce store makes a purchase. Or Every shopper who loads the cart, does not complete the transaction. Studies show that the average cart abandonment rate (based on 44 reported statistics) is almost 70 percent (Source : Baymard Institute)

That’s a huge potential revenue loss for ecommerce players. The reasons could be slow delivery speeds, high shipping costs, long & complicated checkout process and more.

Looking at these, the ecommerce merchants should choose a marketing platform that allows them to provide a way to communicate with shoppers, dissuading them from abandoning their carts. Some platforms, like moLotus, offer automated, personalized cart completion campaigns reaching directly to the mobile inbox of customers.

Unlike the cart completion email campaigns, moLotus mobile video advertising campaigns have excellent conversion rates.

3. Driving Valuable Traffic To the Website and App

Ecommerce brands should take a step back from worrying about cart completion, and think about how to actually get potential customers to their ecommerce site or mobile app. It’s crucial to drive traffic and get more eyes on their products. Interested customers need to reach the ecommerce merchandise displayed in the apps or websites.

Driving valuable traffic to ecommerce sites or apps is an important challenge to overcome because it directly affects ecommerce brands’ ability to boost sales revenue. In order to reach new customers, brands should resort to digital marketing tools enabling them to create marketing campaigns promoting app/website visits.

Nowadays almost every digital marketing platform including Google Ads, Facebook, etc. boasts of providing app promotion campaigns however all are not equally effective. Experts advise brands to report to unique moLotus app promotion campaigns. These campaigns have a high response rate, reaching a massive customer base in just a few seconds without any app or data plans. And the best part is the platform is totally spam-free.

4. Need for Quick Customer Interaction

Research reveals that ecommerce businesses need to interact more with their customers all throughout the customer journey. However, this is easier said than done. Most brands have failed to interact with their customers resulting in low conversions and dismal sales performance.

Communicating with customers using platforms like moLotus offering easy customer interaction options like SMS, USSD, Call, Web Click etc. pave the path for more sales. Ecommerce brands get to intrigue and interact more with shoppers adding up to more sales. It has been observed that millennials and modern buyers easily ‘hang-out' with the e-commerce players via moLotus.

Moreover, brands get access to a number of multimedia formats including mobile videos, brochures, slideshows, dynamic greetings and showcases. They can improve communication with prospective shoppers by using pictures, voice-over and music.  Creating attractive storyboards, brochures, catalogs and HQ mobile videos up to 40 sec. becomes easy using moLotus.

5. Maintaining Customer Loyalty

It has been observed that happy customers return to buy more from ecommerce stores. They tend to become brand advocates and spread the word to their friends and acquaintances. However, for ecom players building and maintaining customer loyalty can be a challenge, especially in an era when there are so many options at customers’ fingertips.

Of course, some aspects of customer loyalty & retention likely depend on the actual quality of products. However, customer experience matters more. Running loyalty campaigns together with good customer service helps to build trust in the ecom brands.

As much as 95% of customers say that lucrative rewards together with great customer service are important for brand loyalty. A survey found that ninety-six percent of customers go back to brands who make returns and exchanges as seamless as possible. Another survey reveals that attractive seasonal offers are vital for retaining loyal customers.

And offering positive customer service clubbed with innovative loyalty campaigns require ecommerce brands to adopt tools like moLotus. is aiding e-commerce business growth by delivering hyper-personalized campaigns to shoppers for special events like anniversaries, reminders, birthdays, and festivals. The tool gives hyper-personalization options for name, greeting, reward, call-to-action for ecommerce customers. Brands can send various reward coupons directly to customer’s mobile inboxes.

6. Enhancing Brand Visibility

Ecommerce players are supposed to get quality traffic to their website or apps; converting casual visitors into buyers. Often customers don’t know much about emerging brands. Also, they may not be aware about the products and their new variants pouring in. It’s a significant issue for most ecommerce businesses and could make or break businesses.

The best way to overcome this challenge is to invest in brand awareness or brand exposure campaigns. Experts say that if done correctly using appropriate marketing tools, it will lead to higher brand visibility and optimized revenue generation.

For brand awareness, moLotus marketing works well. Some ecommerce brands have been using Facebook Ads selecting brand awareness as the business objective. moLotus campaigns have outperformed Facebook Ads specializing in creating compelling brand identity in all stages of the brand journey.

By tracking and measuring brand awareness campaigns, ecommerce businesses can gauge the increase in brand visibility and what measures need to be taken to improve it. Adding to the campaign performance, moLotus messages remain in the customers’ mobile inbox until deleted by them contributing to superior visibility. 

7. Reaching the Global Audience

Shopping has become borderless due to the mushrooming of ecommerce stores worldwide. Customers can easily purchase from brands outside of their own countries. Consequently, ecommerce businesses must accommodate customers of all backgrounds. Doing so poses challenges.

Reaching a diverse customer base requires providing marketing content in multiple languages. As per CSA Research, 76 percent of online buyers prefer to purchase products with info in their own language and majority might abandon the cart if communicated in a different language.

To maximize chances of having a successful ecommerce business, brands should consider using a globally scalable marketing platform like moLotus accommodating ad customization according to languages.

Ecommerce businesses have been unable to scale their campaigns to the extent needed to cater for the growing customer base. Fortunately, some innovative advertising platforms like moLotus, InMobi, HubSpot, AdRoll, have been super helpful to the ecoms in reaching diverse customers and scaling campaigns. They can target customers by using their data on the basis of demographics, online behaviors, interests, attitudes and perceptions.

8. Data Monetization & Gaining Deep Insights

Ecommerce brands generate a large amount of customer data from various sources. This data is a great source for understanding online customer interests, preferences, and behaviors. These insights can be helpful in planning the sales strategy and revenue generation.

Deep data insights help ecommerce brands engage their existing customers and target drop offs effectively. Data experts are of the view that it is no longer sufficient to give discounts and other offers without optimizing them to the requirements of customers.

Advanced analytics offered by digital marketing tools like Google Analytics, moLotus, Facebook Analytics, Yandex Metrica, etc. provide the actionable insights that can result in superior data monetization. Investing in advanced tools like moLotus provide merchants Big data analytics enabling them to get the right business insights, facilitating planning & thereby boosting revenue largely.

To unleash deep customer insights for meeting revenue goals, more and more ecommerce businesses are using moLotus data analytics. With access to real-time moLotus analytics, businesses are able to improve performance, optimize mobile advertising campaigns cost-effectively, manage revenues, and earn greater return on investment.

Conclusion

Despite fast growth most ecommerce brands are yet to master the business basics making them more vulnerable to the odds. Many even don't know how to advertise e-commerce business in the right way. They rush into investments with inadequate knowledge about what exactly will bring them revenue and end-up wasting money. Some brands still believe that building a good e-commerce website is enough to draw customers and generate revenues.

Investing in next-generation smart marketing solutions like moLotus and using them to fine-tune strategies offer real opportunity for the ecommerce businesses to overcome the challenges.