Owning an Instagram store is somewhat easy in terms of time and money investment, as well as other resources in general. Signing up takes just a few minutes, plus it’s free. Next, you are to ensure your profile has a business status, then you start placing product cards, and work on links and targeted advertising.
Many students decide to open a store on Instagram due to the following advantages:
- The high speed of founding a business from scratch and the minimum cash investment at the start;
- A minimum of resources – you can do everything through the phone;
- Direct interaction with the audience.
However, what are the pitfalls behind all this?
1. The Need To Сontrol It All
Owning an Instagram store means that you will spend almost 24/7 on your phone. Responding to a message from an interested client, sharing posts and stories, and updating the assortment – all this requires a sense of style and aesthetics, communication skills and flexibility. In addition to this, you need to keep up with school deadlines.
Combining work and study often leads to stress, so it’s best to delegate some tasks to maintain your mental health balance. And the best way to do this is to trust the online paper writing service which has many positive reviews. Thanks to experienced writers, your grades will be on top, just like your overall productivity.
2. Fear Of Scamming
Many users are worried about sharing their personal information, such as banking data needed to fill out a form when shopping. If you don’t reassure clients about the safety of the process, they may be hesitant to buy from you.
In fact, there are many hackers who are looking for opportunities to attack social networks and payment services in order to steal customer information. To prevent such situations, social networks are constantly working on payment security solutions, encryption tools and other means of protection against online fraud.
3. Instagram Failures
You can lose a lot of time and money if Instagram stops working for some reason. The most widespread problems are slow loading, unavailability of InstaStories, or impossibility to open your chats (some of them can even be deleted because of system failure). These and other mistakes can affect whether a store visitor becomes a customer. It’s important to remember that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression.
4. Indecisive Clients
Obviously, there are not many opportunities for online shoppers to test a product before buying. The solution to this problem can be detailed product descriptions, high-quality photos and video reviews. It’s best to stay in touch with the client to advise them and provide answers in real time.
5. Logistics
Even if you don’t pay the rent for the offline store space, you need to think about the costs of warehousing goods, processing returns, and assembling packages for customers.
Of course, you need to cooperate with delivery services. It’s crucial to rely on companies that offer affordable yet quality services.
Online shopping means customers have to wait a day or two to receive packages. If there is a delay, they may be unhappy and thus, may leave negative feedback. To avoid long delays, try looking for shipping services and allowing customers to track their packages.
6. Great Competition
Due to the pandemic, most entrepreneurs have gone online with their businesses. As a result, your store may get lost in a sea of similar companies, that’s why you need to find a way to stand out from the crowd.
E-commerce appeared a long time ago, which means that you will have to fight for a place under the sun. But with unique products and the right promotion strategy, you can beat the competition.
7. Commission Fees
The more payment options you offer your customers, the better. This way, you show the visitors how loyal you are to them. But there is no getting away from commission fees: each payment system that will be used on a platform will charge its own commission for transactions.
8. Managing The Store On Your Own
This may seem like a disadvantage for many, since they don’t have the necessary knowledge and experience in this matter. That is, they will have to start learning something new. Filling the page with content and promoting it requires plenty of skills. But in fact, you can always employ a social media manager to teach you many tricks.
9. Disputes With Customers
Be prepared that there will be a huge number of controversial situations when owning an Instagram store. Customers will be dissatisfied with the product quality, its inconsistency with the picture on the product card, delivery time, etc. When buying a product in an offline store, the buyer can make sure that the item suits them perfectly.
In an online store, everything is much more complicated. In addition, mistakes can happen at any stage of the process: the customer may choose the wrong product, and you can miss something when sending a parcel.
Many online stores make concessions to their customers even when they are wrong. Thus, the company tries to save its reputation. However, the best thing you can do is publish the store’s policy and make sure the customer reads it before placing an order.
To Wrap It Up
Many brands have their own online stores, so the competition in the market is pretty huge. Yes, this opens up opportunities for you to improve yourself and upgrade your skills, but there are also many stressful moments that you will have to deal with.
The first one is the payment systems commission. Several payment methods provide customers with better opportunities, but all of them imply a commission after the purchase is finished.
The second is that you will maintain contact not only with the buyers, but with delivery services as well. Due to the irresponsibility of many couriers, customers often blame the store, and not the delivery service.
Third, you should also be prepared to resolve disputes with customers. The main thing is to do it in a civilized and legal way.
Try to see each pitfall as a chance to grow, and your Instagram store will truly flourish.