10 Challenges to Starting an E-Commerce Store

Obviously, this is the big daddy challenge. Without sales, it all falls apart.

It never seems to be accurate.

Far and away my least favorite activity.

What's driving the most traffic? Where are you getting the best ROAS? Deciding how much more ad spend to apply to those channels is critical.

Deciding whether or not they need less ad spend or should be discontinued altogether.

If you have just one social media platform, it's not bad. If you have multiple ones, it's such a pain to keep up without help. Unless you are head-over-heels in love with whatever platform you're on, and you're good at it, this is something that's a good candidate to outsource as soon as feasible.

This is absolutely key, not just for the benefit of the business but also it's good for the soul to have great relations with business partners.

Treat customers well and they will be your best advocates. When first starting, answer all incoming calls, emails, and chats yourself, so you can get speak directly with your customers, get to know their pain points, provide the greatest possible value, and connect one-on-one with them.

This is good to start from Day 1, but it's not worth obsessing over unless there are obvious things working very well or very poorly that need attention. Do this on your product pages to understand what's helping conversions and what's hurting them.

Working online means you can work all day, every day. It's not necessary, and as soon as sales are consistently coming in it's best to start looking at automating and outsourcing aspects of the business to people who can do them better than you.