In India, the ecommerce industry is growing at a rapid pace. With this growth, ecommerce has also taken a new turn towards the Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) model.

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Research by Statista states that the Indian D2C market is expected to grow three times from 2021 to 2025—pacing rapidly from US$ 33 Billion in 2021 to US$ 100 billion by 2025.

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While having an independent online store is the dream of every ecommerce seller, Shopify is the go-to platform for turning this online store into a reality.

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No matter how easy creating, running and managing a Shopify store is, the platform poses distinctive challenges to Shopify sellers. These challenges can significantly threaten your independent online store and harm your business on multiple levels if you ignore them.

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In this blog, you will learn what are the common challenges faced by Shopify store owners and the strategies they can implement to rise above them.

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What are the common Shopify challenges sellers face and how to overcome them?

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1. Integrating with ERP

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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) refers to software that ecommerce businesses use to manage day-to-day business activities. ERPs combine a multitude of business processes and enable the flow of data between them. To build an online store and sell on the Shopify store, you need to integrate your business ERP with the Shopify store to automate your business operations and manage your day-to-day activities.

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However, integrations with ERP are often complex, time-consuming and require expertise. Most Shopify sellers are not familiar with the technical know-how. Moreover, there is simply too much information and data to understand for integrations during configuration. Thus, integration is a rather complex endeavour, so it is no surprise that it comes with certain challenges to implement successfully.

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Solution: With Eshopbox, integration is not a hassle anymore. Here’s how:

• You can easily connect your Shopify store with Eshopbox within a few steps without any developer effort or custom integration
• You can eliminate manual processes with frictionless integration

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2. Streamlining and automating repetitive tasks

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The most critical challenges that Shopify store owners face are order management and inventory management. Shopify store owners can be caught between importing orders, updating inventory, updating order status, and many repetitive tasks all day long. Adding to the complexity is a large number of products— updating inventory and orders for hundreds and thousands of products can create chaos. Moreover, a single error can render the entire process useless.

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Solution: You can use Eshopbox’s powerful technology and automation to streamline repetitive tasks and processes, such as:

• Eshopbox ensures real-time inventory updates so that accurate inventory quantity are displayed on the Shopify store and other sales channels
• Whenever an order is received on the Shopify store, the same order would be created in Eshopbox automatically without any manual effort
• Whenever there is a change in the status of your Shopify orders during order fulfilment, it will be updated on Shopify automatically
• Shopify orders are imported into Eshopbox automatically, and you can also select specific orders using advanced order filters
• ‍Eshopbox empowers you with full visibility of your Shopify inventory at all stages in real-time
• You can avoid stockouts and plan when you need to reorder inventory for your Shopify store with timely replenishment
• You can gain insights into the performance of the Shopify store, including slow-moving inventory, inventory turnover, and other ecommerce metrics

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3. Driving traffic to your Shopify Store

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Increasing the discoverability of a Shopify store is a major roadblock for many Shopify sellers. While advertisement and marketing are the best way to introduce a brand, the primary purpose is to draw more authentic customers to the D2C business.

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Solution: Here’s how Shopify store owners can drive traffic to their Shopify store in the following ways:

• Build organic traffic with great SEO by updating meta fields like title, description, URL slug, automatically generating sitemaps, 301 redirects, and canonical URLs
• Run ad campaigns on channels like Facebook, Google and Instagram
• Use Pay-Per-Click (PPC), social media ads, influencer marketing, banner ads and ad retargeting
• Collaborate with social media influencers and celebrities through paid advertising and shoutouts

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4. Increasing sales on the Shopify store

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Driving traffic to your Shopify store is one thing but persuading online shoppers to make a purchase is an entirely different thing. Here’s where most Shopify stores fail to meet the true potential of their business.

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Solution: Here are the fantastic ways Shopify store owners can increase Shopify sales:

• Make great product pages
• Pay attention to the functionality of your Shopify store
• Display extra costs upfront to eliminate any surprise element at the checkout
• Utilise trust badges and use reviews to build customer trust
• Have a customer-centric returns policy and a live chat to prioritise customer support
• Leverage product kits, combos and bundles to increase Average Order Value (AOV)
• Offer multiple payment options and ensure a quick checkout process
• Minimise shopping cart abandonment
• Introduce loyalty programs and subscriptions
• Drive external traffic through social media, email marketing, SMS marketing, and push notifications
• Run promotional events like flash sales
• Utilise multichannel ecommerce

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5. Matching the shipping speed of online marketplaces

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Amazon has made customers accustomed to same-day and one-day and two-day shipping. Now, customers expect the same shipping speed whenever they shop online. In fact, 1 out of 3 shoppers will choose one ecommerce brand over the other due to better shipping options.

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If you want to compete with online marketplaces, you must match the shipping speeds of Amazon, Flipkart, and other major marketplaces. For that, you need to fulfil your Shopify orders from multiple warehouses located across India—basically translating into a massive investment. Moreover, you must try to get shipping quotes from various courier companies and choose the best service at a reasonable price. Although, it's unlikely for a D2C brand to have access to discounted rates due to low order volume. This means that matching the shipping speed of online marketplaces will drastically increase your costs.

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Solution: 3PLs like Eshopbox are known for their gigantic geographic footprint. Here’s how they can help:

• You can leverage Eshopbox’s distributed network of fulfilment centres spread across India, which allows you to split your inventory and store it closer to your customers. This will allow you to reduce shipping costs as well as transit times—enabling you to afford express shipping on your Shopify store.
• ‍Eshopbox handles high order volumes and has strong tie-ups with domestic courier companies. Thus, you can avail services with national carriers at substantially discounted shipping rates.

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6. Delivering branded customer experience

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Marketplaces like Amazon and Myntra have set some high standards when it comes to online shopping. This has raised expectations from customer experience from D2C brands too. For example, Shopify stores are now expected to provide the estimated date of delivery, real-time order tracking, proactive order notifications, and the easiest way to offer returns and exchanges. Thus, delivering a great post-purchase experience to delight customers is essential for Shopify stores to retain them and drive business growth.

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Solution: Shopify stores can either invest in innovative technologies to provide a great customer experience or partner up with an end-to end- fulfilment provider like Eshopbox to take advantage of a self-service portal for a superior customer experience that facilitates the following:

• Estimated date of order delivery so that your customers know when their order will arrive
• Branded order tracking page with real-time order tracking so that your customers have complete visibility of their orders at any given time
• Easy returns and exchanges that can be initiated within a few clicks—leaving the hassle out of the returns process

Apart from the customer portal, you can enhance the customer experience in the following ways:

• Proactive order updates via email and SMS throughout the fulfilment process
• Branded and custom packaging to curate highly personalised unboxing experiences for your customers and differentiate your brand with an option to go eco-friendly

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7. Integrating with multiple sales channels

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When a Shopify store sells its merchandise on other sales channels, it opens its business for expansion, larger customer base and better revenue. However, multichannel ecommerce can be troublesome.

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When you’re selling on a single sales channel, it’s simple. You only have to log in, create product listings, process orders, fulfil them, and manage returns. On the other hand, when you add several sales channels, you have to multiply your efforts. You have to create product listings for each channel manually, ensure fast and accurate order fulfilment, and manage returns for all the sales channels. Such duplication of work and effort for each platform gets challenging for ecommerce brands and brings in scope for error and mismanagement, delay of order delivery and poor customer experience.

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Solution: You can connect with multiple sales channels and manage them easily with Eshopbox. Here’s how:

• Eshopbox has 2-step integration with 29+ sales channels
• You can manage product listings, orders and returns for all sales channels from Eshopbox’s actionable dashboard with ease

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Research predicts that multichannel sales will account for 46% of all ecommerce sales by 2023.

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Bottom line

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Shopify is the ultimate answer that enables sellers to build an independent online store. While the platform allows easy development and deployment of the store, there are specific challenges that Shopify store owners face on a daily basis—instead of focusing on the growth of their business. On the bright side, these challenges can be easily overcome by implementing the right strategies, technology and policies. With an end-to-end logistics and fulfilment partner like Eshopbox, Shopify store owners can easily ensure seamless operations, ecommerce processes and fulfilment capabilities while delighting their customers and gaining cost-efficiency.