Streamline Your Ecommerce Business
With consumer habits moving online, now more than ever are there opportunities to expand, refresh and make those essential updates to meet the changes customers are demanding from this experience. So, if you’re looking to start up, or even expand your current e-commerce business, the sector certainly offers great opportunities, but the competition will be ferocious. The expectation of the consumer has grown significantly, what may have started out as a side hustle, may now have become a full-time enterprise, eating away at your productive hours. Streamlining your eCommerce business, to improve efficiencies, and create capacity will become vital. Here is how:
Setting achievable strategies
Like any business review, you need to take a top-down approach, and consider what your main key considerations would be. Such as:
Do you intend to scale up, or retain only as a side hustle?
Do you want to diversify across many sales platforms, or restrict to only one?
What areas are restricting your capacity away from the core areas identified?
Sustainable habits
Keeping on top of your business commitments is challenging but it's essential to your long-term success. Set strict boundaries for yourself, and form good working practices, that allow you to set achievable, but also challenging tasks.
Getting overwhelmed is easy, but by creating sustainable working habits, key tasks can be broken down, and become more manageable.
Perhaps start your day with transaction processing and inventory handling. Commit your time spent on social media, and customer relations to specific times of the day, which allows you to remain focused. You can diarise your weekly schedule, including things such as when to check your website traffic and analytics etc.
Automate and simplify
Look for working processes to simplify, rather than just eliminate. Can the website be more customer-focused, and user-friendly? Can a large marketing blog, be broken down into a more digestible series?
Additionally, could you be using cloud-based accounting software and utilise app solutions to sync your invoicing and expenses. Digital solutions are also available, to automate your payment process, inventory management, and sales.
Software solutions to consider:
Every process that can be automated, provides that additional capacity for you to concentrate on other areas of the business you do best.
Protect Data
Ecommerce businesses are so reliant on IT infrastructure, and software so you must always ensure its up to date. Hacks and data breaches can cost you money and time. Make sure back-ups, updates and necessary patches become a regular routine.
Customer focus
Become customer-centric and look at your business from the perspective of your customers.
Does your marketing material present your business efficiently?
Does the website provide simple navigation or does content get lost?
The power of virtual images: Virtual reality can now bridge the touch/feel gap that customers want.
For further information and advice on your e-commerce business, please don't hesitate to contact me via email at roy.butcher@raffingers.co.uk or click here to get in touch.