Common E-commerce Mistakes to Avoid in 2025

January 23, 2025

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E-commerce has taken the world by storm, becoming a cornerstone of modern business across industries. Whether it’s B2C (Business to Consumer), B2B (Business to Business), or C2B (Consumer to Business), online commerce continues to grow at an unprecedented pace. However, as more people shop online and more businesses rush to claim their piece of the digital marketplace, common e-commerce mistakes are becoming increasingly apparent—mistakes that can hinder growth, reduce customer satisfaction, and impact long-term success.

However, despite this booming opportunity, many business owners fall into the same traps when launching or managing their eCommerce platforms. From poor user experience to weak backend functionality, these E-commerce mistakes can cost businesses conversions, customers, and credibility.

Whether you’re running a small boutique or a global supply chain operation, avoiding these mistakes is critical — and that’s where expert eCommerce development services come in.

What is E-commerce?

E-commerce is all about the buying and selling of products, services, or money and data transfer over the digital medium, mainly the internet. Usually, the transactions are divided into four categories for simplification, which are: business-to-business (B2B), some firms that sell to consumers (B2C), individuals selling to each other (C2C), and individuals selling to businesses (C2B).

However, while there is an overlap of meaning with e-business, sometimes the term e-tail is used to talk about retail transactions conducted via the internet.

The last two decades have been largely dominated by the role of Amazon and eBay as major players in the expansion of online retail. The U.S. Census Bureau said that e-commerce accounted for only 5% of total retail sales in 2011. However, as of the second quarter of 2020, spurred partly by the COVID-19 pandemic, this figure grew to 16.5%. As brick-and-mortar shops reopened, that share of e-commerce has slightly ebbed but remains at around 15%.

Types of E-commerce

The six major types of e-commerce; this model evolved into types depending upon the parties involved in the transaction: Basically, the six types look like this:

1. Business-to-Business

B2B (business-to-business) E-commerce is a subset of e-commerce in which, with both parties’ consent, transactions are carried out electronically. This involves anything from manufacturers and wholesalers to suppliers selling- mainly goods and services-to another business or entity rather than to the ultimate consumer. This type of marketing makes the backbone of many industries’ supply and distribution chains.

2. Business-to-Consumer

This is the most common type of e-commerce. The B-C model describes the situation when businesses sell goods or services directly to individual consumers by means of an online transaction. Think online retail, digital services, or subscription models. The Internet has brought great impetus to this sector whereby the consumer is given a lot of choices-right from electronics, clothing, books, and food-at prices and the convenience of shopping that is lower than brick-and-mortar retail.

3. Consumer-to-Consumer

C2C e-commerce is a type of commerce whereby individuals sell goods or services to one another, typically through the intermediary of a third-party platform such as eBay or Facebook Marketplace. These platforms provide the basic infrastructure and the operative means for their users to list their items, complete transactions, and communicate with potential buyers or sellers.

4. Consumer-to-Business

The B2C model is the completely opposite direction of the classical model. In this case, products or services are offered to companies by individuals. This occurs in freelance marketplaces, crowdsourced design contests, and stock photo sites, where a company procures creative work from individual contributors.

5. Business-to-Administration

Future B2A e-commerce will encompass all digital transactions in which firms interact with governmental administrations. This would include filing tax documents, compliance paperwork, and personnel record management, etc. The government will further its agenda of e-governance by providing an online avenue to effect these transactions.

6. Consumer-to-Administration

The C2A system involves online interaction between individuals and public authorities. Examples of encounters within the C2A framework include tax filing, medical appointment booking, government benefit application, and educational resources access. This model seeks to empower citizens in their reach to government services through digital services.

Common 4 Mistakes to Avoid while Creating an E-commerce App

Creating an e-commerce app can be an exciting venture, but it’s easy to overlook critical details in the process. To ensure a smooth launch and long-term success, here are some common mistakes you’ll want to avoid.

1. Mistake - Take a good look at what you need

Before you even go online you need to take a good look at what exactly you’re selling. Different products will require certain packaging, shipping regulations, and age-restricted product verifications. Start by breaking your products down into “stores”. For example, if you sell clothing break it down into going outwear (men/women/unisex), casual wear (men/women/unisex), etc. What you’ll start to see is how many main pages you’ll need for your e-commerce site and how flexible the showcasing of your products needs to be.

When choosing a platform to showcase your products really think about your needs:

Do you need to personalise your page?
How many products will the site hold?
Who’s your target audience?
What is your brand?

I know this seems like very simple information, but these really are the foundation of your e-commerce.

2. Mistake - Speak with your clients

I’m guessing, and forgive me if I’m wrong: if you’re looking to set up an e-commerce for the first time, then you already have a client base backing you and the products you sell. Correct? Yes, ahh good. What works for your brain doesn’t work for others, and that’s a fact. A big e-commerce mistake that new business owners make is forgetting who got them where they are today, hold on to those customers tightly.

Speak with your current clients about what platforms they use, what sort of layouts attracts them, and most of all – What makes them buy more. Ignoring the ideas of tried and trusted return clients will lead you into even more common e-commerce mistakes, these are the people who if you do this right – will continue to buy from you.

Look up other stores that sell similar products as you, obviously you don’t want to look exactly the same as them, but it will give you inspiration (don’t worry, there’s literally no such thing as original anymore).

3. Mistake: Pricing and delivery

Never compromise on your prices, if someone else is doing the same product cheaper – let them. You don’t know how much delivery they pay, or how much it costs them to host their site, or even how much time they put into their store and products. Just leave them to do their store, and you do yours. On the flip side, don’t price yourself out of the market. Every buyer understands that occasionally there will be a price increase due to supply costs, shipping charges, … but again, reasonable price increases are okay, don’t just throw your prices up because you fancy a new pair of shoes or eating at Salt Bae’s restaurant.

Delivery charges and delivery times need to be specified and correct, none of this we’ll calculate your delivery charge at the end, it puts people off. There needs to be a balance between your pricing and your delivery charges, if you were to put every item up by £1 and then put a standard delivery charge of £6 then people will not buy from you. Would you pay delivery on a £1 item, no? I didn’t think so.

Chose a courier wisely, these people are your final frontier before reaching the customer, and if their parcel is lost, battered, or miss-delivered – you’ll be the one replacing it. Not all courier services have a good reputation, which can have a knock-on effect on your business if you don’t put the time into choosing. People will be put off from buying from you if you use a poorly rated delivery service.

Need Help Avoiding Common E-commerce Mistakes?

Talk to our team and launch your platform the right way.

4. Mistake: Checking your website for updates and errors

Regularly run checks on your website for bugs, pricing errors, and everything else that can pop up from time to time. If a client reports an error to you, make sure that you have it checked and corrected straight away. Errors on your page cause your site to play up, which creates a poor user experience resulting in client loss, customers not returning, and sometimes not even completing their transaction. The user experience should always be one of your main focuses, as I’ve said before – your clients pay your bills. The better you treat them, the more loyal they will be to you.

If you wish to, run your website through the seasons. Create packages for the different festivities as they come up, if you decide to do extra for new clients, do something for your loyal clients as well.

By hiring the right web and e-commerce developer, you’ll be able to avoid common e-commerce mistakes.

Samuel Meleder

Samuel Meleder founded Chimpare, a global company that builds software solutions. With a passion for innovation and a commitment to helping businesses grow through smart digital strategies, Samuel leads a global team delivering cutting-edge solutions across industries

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