In past shows, we have talked a lot about how to start up your online store and have given you some great tips from several experts. But today we are going to focus on some of the common pitfalls for eCommerce startups. Of course, at the same time, we’ll give you ideas for how to avoid them.

No one can tell you more about this than someone who has worked with eCommerce sites of all sizes and understands beyond just the structure of putting a site together. To hear what he has seen over and over again, we are having Scott Buscemi, founder of Lumen Foundry, to join us. I had a great time talking with Scott about the importance of your USP, budgeting, marketing plans and more. So if you are working with or starting up an eCommerce site, join us as we listen to what Scott has heard from startups and hear his insights to get you on the right path.

We chatted about:

* Why startups need to focus more on their USP (unique selling point)

* The elements that are often are missing when they start putting together their budgets

* Some of the mistakes e-Commerce startups make with their marketing plans 

* What automation for logistics are— and whether it’s a good approach

* The misunderstood perception of marketplaces and how startups can fail there

Thanks to Our Podcast Sponsor: Bluehost

Transcript

You can also download a pdf of the full transcript here: WordPress eCommerce Show Episode 96 August 2 2017

Bob Dunn: Hey Scott, welcome to the show.

Scott Buscemi: Thanks for having me.

Bob: Now, before we get into these questions, tell us a bit about yourself.

Meet Scott Buscemi, founder of Lumen Foundry

Scott: Well, my name is Scott Buscemi. I am the founder of Lumen Foundry. We are a Los Angeles based e-commerce website development agency. We help out a lot of e-commerce websites that are looking to either build out for the first time, or build new features, or convert more people that are already on their site into customers.

Bob: Cool. Let’s dive into this now. We’re talking about those pitfalls around e-commerce startups. Let’s start with this. When it comes to e-commerce sites, you have a focus on planning and creating your site. Now that focus should include messaging and product USP, which for people who don’t know that acronym, your unique selling point.

That’s not always the case, though. We get distracted by other things. Can you tell us what startups tend to focus on besides their USP and why that is a mistake?

What do startups tend to focus on and why is that a mistake?

Scott: A lot of contact form submissions that I get on my website are 5,000 characters, 10,000 characters. Pages and pages and pages of features they want to see on their websites. So it’ll be unique subscription systems, or unique fulfillment systems, or unique ways of displaying the content on their site, or something that takes a lot of time to develop out. For companies that have done the research and know why they’re making those decisions, that maybe they have current data— customers have told them that they want that specific feature and in particular paying customers that say they want that specific feature.

For those people, that totally makes sense. They are creating a spec. They’re creating a feature set and they’re saying, “This is what we’re looking to build on our site, and here’s where we’re going from here.”

But for a lot of those submissions that I get, it’s companies that are just starting out and are taking a mishmash of a lot of other features that they’ve seen before, or even just taking a stab at it in terms of wh...