Starting your own business can be a fulfilling experience. For some, growing a startup is a springboard for achieving financial freedom. But is this always the case? Forbes says that 90% of startups fail, and even for the most confident and optimistic entrepreneurs, this can be a worrying statistic. As hard and bleak as these numbers look, several startups are a success. Finding out the reasons behind the failure numbers can prepare you for any challenges ahead and how to beat them.
- Lack of basic business understanding
Everybody can start an online business thanks to the internet and advancing technologies. Numerous platforms can make it easy to create a website and begin selling in a few hours, even with no business background knowledge. Unfortunately, the lack of basic business understanding like operational costs could see you running out of money even when your business generates cash every week. Basic arithmetic isn’t enough, so you want to learn about the obvious and hidden factors that could drag your business to an abrupt halt. You can take a business course at the local university, learn from a trusted entrepreneur or study online.
- Prioritizing selling over helping
Customers today are discerning and easily turned off by traditional sales pitches. Focusing on only selling creates the impression that your business is all about making money. Unfortunately, this doesn’t only harm your sales but can ultimately kill your business. Customers want to buy benefits and not features, so you want to focus your marketing efforts on delivering the best benefits and services for their needs. Your sales will significantly improve when you focus on the customer rather than what you have to sell. Pushing a sale without thinking about what you can do for your customer may help you sell but only temporarily. And this isn’t good for business, especially when you need repeat customers.
- Poor user experience
There is no question about making your website look trustworthy, especially for a startup business. Several factors can cause customers to look elsewhere, including unprofessional website design, slow page load time, intrusive pop-ups, and so on. Research suggests that even a second delay in page load can cost you a sale. With 70% of online shoppers abandoning carts, you want to streamline the buying process to deliver a simple and fast buying experience. You can consider integrating features like MagTek SDK into your mobile app to offer the best checkout experience.
- Heavy competition
Too much competition is one of the commonest reasons some online startups fail, and this includes trading the same items or using a similar business plan as their competitors. Doing so can make it challenging for your business to stand out. However, it is not all doom and gloom yet. Your business can survive even the fiercest competition when you learn to uncover the competitors’ flaws and exploit that to your business advantage. It can be hard to compete with an established business but not impossible. For example, finding out what your competitors are doing or not can help you figure out how to stand out and beat them.
