The 3 Most Common Beginner Mistakes on Shopify

How poor research, bad branding and PO boxes can negatively impact your store.

Ready to take the plunge into e-commerce? You’re not alone. Shopify stores increased by 33% year-over-year in Q3 of 2024. More and more brands are successfully carving their names into the market. Whether you’re a seasoned business expert or simply dream of selling a killer product, the early stages of e-commerce can be a bumpy ride – a few simple errors can cost you enormously. Here, we’ll get into 3 of the most common beginner mistakes to avoid in order to set up a successful e-commerce site on Shopify.

1. Jumping in before doing market research

New beginnings are exciting. It’s easy to get caught up in the rush of opening a store and skip some essential research into your audience and competitors. 

Here are some common pitfalls to keep an eye out for:

Oversaturation

In certain markets, the supply of products meets or exceeds the demand for them. The more choice consumers have, the more intense the competition will be. If you’re just starting out, it will be difficult to stand out against industry powerhouses. Some examples of saturated markets in 2024 are general clothing, general electronics, and seasonal products like Halloween decor. Now, this doesn’t mean that you won’t have a chance in any of these categories. Notice what they have in common? Generalization. The more tailored, unique, and original your product is, the more it will stand out against the big wigs you’re competing with. 

Missing out on Trends

If you fail to dedicate your time and energy to understanding the market you’re operating in, you may miss out on a key component of your targeted audience’s spending behavior.

For example, let’s say you’re interested in selling high quality pet toys, and targeting a demographic of pet owners at a high price point. Preliminary market research can show you that your target audience is especially interested in eco-friendly products. If you skip the research and decide to package your toy in plastic, you’re alienating your product from the target audience without even realizing why. That’s why it’s essential to use tools like Google Analytics and SurveyMonkey to understand your market before you dive in. 

2. Poor website design

A cluttered, confusing, or otherwise badly designed website can sink a Shopify store doing absolutely everything else right. In other words, it’s probably the most important thing to invest your energy into. The good news is that it’s relatively simple to design a great Shopify storefront if you avoid these major mistakes.

Cluttered Layouts and Poor Navigation

Overwhelming your product page with too many images or too much information has two major consequences. The first is that users may not be able to find what they’re looking for, or how to complete the add to cart process. The second is that a page with too much content can lead to longer loading times on mobile or devices with slow connection. And, well, let’s face it: most of us have pretty short attention spans. A slow page will almost always increase your bounce rate.

Confusing Branding

Always follow design best practices when branding your website. Your Shopify store should have a consistent font, color scheme, and CTA strategies (like buttons) on every. Single. Page. Building trust is essential in the first few years of your e-commerce venture, and your audience isn’t going to trust the quality of a product from a brand that can’t even manage a consistent, elegant page.

For more tips on designing a clean, functioning storefront, check out this blog post. 

3. Disorganized shipping practices 

Shipping and fulfillment can be a whole lot more complicated than it seems when setting out to open an e-commerce store. Major carriers like Amazon have skyrocketed the average consumer’s expectation for how soon they’ll receive their package, and smaller businesses are struggling to keep up with the new standard. Moreover, mistakes can happen at several stages in the shipping process that can lead to rerouted or lost packages. Designing a robust shipping fulfillment strategy and avoiding the following pitfalls can save your business a lot of slip ups (and you a lot of stress). 

Shopify PO Box shipping

PO Boxes (or Post Office Boxes) are mailboxes owned by individuals or businesses that are located separately from their home address, oftentimes at post offices. The latest data from 2020 reports that there are 160 million PO boxes in the United States.

Without your intervention, there’s a pretty high chance that one of your customers will attempt to have their product shipped to a PO Box. The problem is that nearly every major shipping carrier including FedEx, UPS and DHL does not deliver to PO boxes. It’ll cost you more to use an alternative, and the chance of the package getting lost or reallocated is much higher. 

Thankfully, there’s an easy way to manage your Shopify PO box shipping settings. Ultimate PO Box Blocker for Shopify is an app that will reformat your add to cart process to block po box automatically. Simply complete the one time purchase, install the app, and voila: your Shopify store will block your customers from entering a PO box as their shipping address.