Avoid These 8 Ecommerce Product Selection Mistakes

Your to-do list is about a mile long when you’re beginning a new e-commerce website, and you may not have put too much thought into product selection yet.

After all, you've got to get it optimized, write content, find the perfect checkout system, build an email list, focus on an attractive (yet easy to navigate) web design, and then some.

But before you fill that online store with items, you’re going to want to check out this article and make sure that you aren’t making any of these products selection mistakes.

#1: Choosing too many products

Even if you’ve been running an e-commerce store for a few years, it can be easy to get bogged down by having too many products.

Keep a close eye on how well each product performs, so you know whether to keep it or if it's time to put it on the clearance rack. If you find that you're too overwhelmed by the number of items you have in stock, then it's time to reevaluate your list and make cuts.

#2: Straying too far from your niche

Many of us forget that our customers don’t share all of the same tastes as we do. It's crucial that you choose products based on your niche because that is what was promised to visitors and the SEO efforts are designed to bring in a specific customer base.

If you own an online auto shop and have a passion for artwork made from repurposed car parts, you might add a few pieces to your product lists. And you might even get a little traction in sales. But it might also just confuse people coming to your store to buy a new muffler when they're sent to muffler lawn art.

#3: Not pricing competitively

When you price your products too high above the competition, then you'll find that people will utilize your website to do research and then go elsewhere to convert. If the price it too low, then you'll be overwhelmed with work, but your ROI won't be good.

Price your products competitively, and if you do choose to go off the beaten path when it comes to the cost, then be sure you have a valid reason backing you up.

#4: Not optimizing product pages

So, you’ve applied SEO to your static front page, your blog posts, and meta tags. Keyword research has been checked off the list, and your products are up.

Now the question is, have you optimized your product descriptions? You want people to find you, but you also want them to find exactly what they are looking for. The more you optimize your product pages, the better chance you have of attracting customers that aren't window shopping, but people that want to buy right now.

#5: Not utilizing product reviews

If you haven’t noticed, people love writing and reading product reviews. While they want to get the detailed descriptions from you, they also want a little real world feedback about the purchase they’re going to make.

Don’t hide these from your customers, but embrace them and let people express what they think about products.

A bonus is that you'll get to know what your customers think about the products you promote, so if you find one that gets a lot of negative reviews, you can remove it from your inventory and replace it with a better product that would service your customer base better.

#6: Having too much duplicate content

You might have a product that fits into multiple categories (and that’s fine), but the key here is to make sure you don’t just copy and paste the images and product description. Each page should be unique, even if you’re showcasing the same thing.

#7: Not having high-quality images

We can’t stress enough how critical your images are to making that final sale. Studies have shown that an inferior product with a quality image would outsell a premium product with a poor image.

#8: Having uninformative descriptions

More often than not, if you don’t have thorough and informative descriptions, customers will go elsewhere to do their research. If they happen to go to another e-commerce store to get the bits of info they need to make a confident decision, then that is where they’ll convert (and probably go back to next time).