5 Obstacles That Hinder Growth

What You Will Gain from This Article

In this article, I will outline the five obstacles that hinder you from doubling your revenue. I will also explain how to overcome these five obstacles. Revenue growth requires hard work—don’t be mistaken. However, in this article, I will provide you with 9 tips that you can implement yourself in just 30 minutes. This way, you can immediately start moving closer to your goals!

Start with the Low-Hanging Fruit

In addition to the significant gains to be made, many online entrepreneurs leave revenue on the table. This is a shame, as a few simple, effective interventions can help you realize that revenue. So, read on to see if this applies to your webshop. I will show you how to double your online revenue without investing more in traffic and outline the theory behind it for you.

Growth in e-commerce is a field with many facets and depths. This makes it interesting but also challenging to execute well. As an entrepreneur, you are busy enough, so I will share the summary here. This way, you can gain new insights that you can immediately apply to generate more revenue.

Five Obstacles that Hinder Webshop Growth (and How You Can Overcome Them)

In my role as a Conversion Optimization & Growth Specialist, I help online entrepreneurs achieve their growth objectives every day. Every entrepreneur has that goal on the horizon. You likely do too. Whatever your objective is, it’s probably growth. Because this motivates entrepreneurs, we even named our company accordingly: Polaris Growth is the North Star—your mark on the horizon.

Unfortunately, I often see webshops struggling to increase their conversion and revenue. This is often due to one or more of five obstacles. I will go through them with you and explain how you can prevent them. You will also receive practical advice that you can implement immediately.
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Obstacle 1: No Time for Growth

A common objection or pain point is a lack of time.
“I don’t have time for growth; we’re already incredibly busy, and no one can afford to focus on growth.”
Or
“I’m so busy working in my business that I have no time left to work on (the growth of) my business.”

Of course, running a webshop takes a lot of time, but often, a simple question can save a lot of work.

💡Tip 1: Identify the cause of everyday problems and solve them structurally, so they don’t come back.

When a problem arises, try to take a little more time the next time. Ask yourself where the problem originated. If you know where the cause lies, will it happen again? If a problem threatens to reoccur within 90 days, make sure to resolve it. You’ll be improving the structural processes of your webshop (and back office).

If you maintain this for four weeks, you will likely have resolved more than four problems that won’t return. This way, you create time in your business to work on your growth.

💡Tip 2: Start small; begin with half an hour per week.

Ask yourself what one task or activity you can stop doing to take the smallest possible step towards increasing your conversion. Every little bit helps. Here are some tips for what you can achieve in that half hour.
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Obstacle 2: Lack of Knowledge and Experience

You dive in headfirst but work on the wrong things. Therefore, you don’t make an impact on your revenue. “It doesn’t work for us.” Unfortunately, when growing your webshop, you can also make a lot of beginner mistakes. However, there is a solution.

💡Tip 3: Stay hungry, stay foolish

Keep learning. The more informed you are, the better your questions will become. With your knowledge, you can elevate your business to a higher level. But you don’t have to know or figure everything out yourself.

Ask for help.
You know your craft, and others know theirs. Take advantage of that and let yourself be inspired and supported. Always work with professionals; partner with someone who truly understands and can fully focus on your growth.

💡Tip 4: Use customer feedback as a revenue booster.

Leverage the database of knowledge and experience you receive every day: your current customers. I believe you do have the knowledge and experience “in-house,” but you might be looking in the wrong places. Your customers provide feedback every day!

What are the five most frequently asked questions at customer service?
Once you have this clear in your mind, ask the next time you make contact. Can you ask follow-up questions to clarify the issue? Often, the first actionable items you can solve will emerge from this.
If you don’t know, make sure to find out. Discuss with your team that for two weeks, you will ask one question each time you contact a customer. What didn’t work well for the customer? What wasn’t clear? Ask more questions and see if you can resolve this.
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Obstacle 3: Too Many Ideas

You may also have too many ideas for growing your business. Without a clear goal, everything seems equally important. But without a clear action plan that prioritizes your steps to grow, you're likely to struggle. Furthermore, not all ideas are good ideas.

Keep This Rule in Mind:
An idea that comes directly from a customer (or multiple customers) is worth more than an idea from an employee who doesn’t regularly order as a customer.

💡Tip 5: View the Funnel from Your Customer's Perspective

It’s possible that you are looking at a different funnel than your customers. To find out, you can do the following: Check which part of your traffic is mobile and what the conversion rate is.

See Your Website Through Your Customers' Eyes
One of the first things we do with our clients is to ensure they view their webshop through their customers' perspectives. You work on your desktop, while your customers are likely on mobile. This is logical since you work on a computer at the office. However, this can create a skewed perception, as your customers may be using mobile devices. At 90% of the B2C webshops we work with, the majority of traffic is on mobile. That’s where the traffic—and thus the opportunities—lie. Any ideas focused solely on desktop can likely wait. Fix the mobile issues first!

💡Tip 6: How to Determine Which Device Category Has the Most Traffic

Check in Shopify (Google Analytics can also work if properly set up) which device category has the most traffic and what the conversion rate is on mobile.

If more than 50% of your traffic is on mobile, and the conversion rate is lower than that for tablet and desktop, then go through your webshop on an older iPhone (with a smaller screen) and on a newer model iPhone, as well as on two Android devices—again, one older model with a smaller screen and a newer model. If you don’t have access to these devices, try a tool like: www.browserstack.com. 

Shopify is 100% Mobile Ready, but Your Theme Might Not Be

Shopify itself is mobile responsive, but there may be small styling errors in your theme or in the custom adjustments of your design. If a button falls just off the screen, a customer cannot place an order. This issue may exist on an older iPhone but not on a new one. So, walk through all the steps of the funnel with your team using different phones.
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With Focus, You Can Overcome the First Three Obstacles

Does this sound familiar? How many of these obstacles do you recognize from first-hand experience? As mentioned, you are absolutely not alone, but it can be frustrating. In my experience, the actions listed below are the way forward:

You’ve probably heard this word a hundred thousand times, and I’m just going to say it one more time: F O C U S. The key to your success lies in how you invest your energy to achieve growth. This applies to many aspects of life (gym, education, love, career, etc.), and it holds just as true for the success of your webshop. Focus on what matters most. Below, I will explain how to find the right focus.

💡Tip 7: Ensure Focus with This Step-by-Step Plan

1. Define Your Objective. If this is a concern, look closely at your objective: what do you want to achieve?
2. What do you want to accomplish? More revenue, okay. But how much? What should your conversion rate be? And your average order value? Higher conversion, okay. But how much higher? When will you be satisfied?
3. Set a numerical goal, e.g., a 10% higher conversion.
4. Focus on the leverage point where you will achieve the most growth. This way, you can get results with minimal effort. You can read more about what these leverage points are in this article.
5. Then, prioritize: focus on the two, at most three most important steps you need to take right now. Tackling the largest obstacles that stand in the way of your growth will have the most significant impact. Let the smaller issues rest for now. If you tackle everything at once, your energy will become fragmented, and you won’t make much progress on any front.
   

n my next article, I will explain what you can do to bring focus to revenue growth itself.
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Obstakel 4: Niet gedreven door data

Decisions are not made based on (accurate) data, but rather on intuition and opinions. What you cannot measure, you cannot improve. Without accurate data, you cannot make sound decisions. It’s that simple.

A more challenging point is when you lack accurate data. It’s like having a ‘false’ compass. Your tools are not reliable. Fortunately, the transaction data in Shopify is always accurate, and you can rely on that. Google Analytics is a good tool that must not be missing when you start optimizing, but it must be set up correctly.

💡Tip 8: Ensure Your Data is Accurate

I cannot emphasize this enough: base your decisions on accurate data! The transaction data in Shopify is always accurate, but data from sources like Google Analytics can have errors. Therefore, do not blindly rely on the outcomes of whatever analytics you use. Review and compare the number of transactions from the past month in both Shopify and Google Analytics. If the difference is greater than 10%, you cannot rely on the Google Analytics data blindly, and there’s work to be done.

Install Littledata in Your Shopify

This tool fixes all issues between Google Analytics and Shopify. It ensures that all transactions that are recorded in Shopify but missing in Google Analytics are added. Install this app: https://apps.shopify.com/littledata

💡Tip 9: Create a New View and Filter Your Own IP Address

If you are not yet filtering your own sessions in Google Analytics, this is a good tip for you. In a new view, exclude the IP addresses of your office, warehouse, and home addresses. This prevents sessions from your staff on the website from contaminating the data. Again, it’s essential to do this in a new view. If you make a mistake, you will still have all the data in your original view. It’s simple to do in 5 minutes. Here’s how you filter your own IP address out of Google Analytics.

Especially when it comes to actions that drive your growth: your numbers must be accurate.

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Obstakel 5: Increased Competition

There is significant competition online. It seems as if competitors are constantly offering more and that online marketing is becoming increasingly expensive. And that’s true. Your competitors are offering more because they can afford to. Their Average Order Value is higher, their conversion rate is higher, or their customers buy from them more often. Or they have a larger budget.

The competition is fierce and only getting fiercer. Due to this increase in competitive pressure, customer acquisition costs are also rising: we are all vying for the same customer, resulting in higher costs for that one customer. Additionally, if your competitors are not setting up their marketing activities smartly, this can negatively impact you as well, potentially driving costs up for everyone.

However, even with a smaller budget, you can achieve more revenue or be more profitable than your competitors. You can do this by leveraging the four growth levers to build a strong growth engine. Sign up for our email course Double Your E-commerce Revenue and receive a daily tip to increase your revenue in your inbox.