Ready to Scale? How to Take Your eCommerce Business to the Next Level
Building a successful eCommerce business takes skill and dedication. If you’ve had consistent sales and revenue for at least three months, you may be wondering if it is time to grow your business. With the global eCommerce market poised to reach a value of more than $7 trillion (with a T!), there is definitely money to be made. At the same time, increasing your sales without a proper plan in place can cause much more problems than it’s worth, and even compromise your business.
If you’re looking to grow your eCommerce site, consider taking the following actions:
Know Your Numbers
While strong sales and high revenues can indicate that your eCommerce site is doing well, that is only half the picture. If you want to achieve sustainable growth in the long-term, you will have to understand several metrics, known as key performance indicators (KPIs), to assess the health of your business.
Since eCommerce sites can generate an immeasurable amount of data, you will need to narrow your focus on a few KPIs that are the most essential to growing your business. The exact combination of metrics will vary based on your industry, product, and other variables However, there are a few KPIs that any business can benefit from tracking.
For example, two important KPIs, shopping cart abandonment rate and average order value, can shed light on your typical customer’s buying behavior. When you first start tracking your KPIs, you can use an industry average to assess how your eCommerce site is performing. For example, if your shopping cart abandonment rate exceeds the industry average of 70%, it can indicate that some aspect of your checkout process is scaring customers away. Any changes that will improve that KPI will also grow your business.
Once you know the KPIs you want to measure, you can create an ecommerce analytics dashboard to easily view and track your data.
Get the Right Tools
Running an eCommerce business requires you to complete multiple, ongoing and complex tasks. If you don’t manage your workload carefully, you will become overwhelmed well before your business has the ability to scale. To prepare your eCommerce site for major growth, you must put automations and systems in place.
Research software as a service tools that can help facilitate the major tasks in your business. For most eCommerce companies, those tasks include marketing, inventory, customer service, and invoicing. Although very few tools can handle all of these tasks, luckily most software can easily integrate with other platforms.
If you are working with a small budget, or you aren’t sure which type of features will best fit your needs, consider experimenting with free trials before making any concrete decisions. You can also seek out blogs and videos from other eCommerce business owners in your niche and find out what types of tools they incorporate in their workflow.
Raise Your Brand’s Profile
It may seem obvious, but you can only get sales from customers that are aware of your business. If you want to take your eCommerce site to the next level, you will need to double down on your brand awareness efforts.
Getting your product in front of the right customers will require strategy. If you’ve been tracking the correct KPIs, you will have a good idea of who are your most profitable and loyal clients. Once you have that data, you can make targeted ad campaigns to reach that specific group.
Google and Facebook ads are two highly targeted ways to reach your ideal audience. You can also find more niche ways to advertise, such as sponsoring podcasts whose viewers match your target demographic. Video-based content, such as TikTok or Youtube is especially effective for showcasing eCommerce products that require a demonstration to appeal to customers.
Improve Your Customer Service
Even if you magically doubled your sales overnight, this will not lead to a successful company if your customer service is not up to par. Customers are highly influenced by reviews and other word of mouth marketing, and one person’s bad experience can lead to the loss of countless potential sales.
In order to provide responsive customer service, you will need to track your customer’s feedback. You can use a reporting tool that will aggregate reviews from anywhere your customers can share their experience. You can use these analytics to identify and address issues. You should also add a personal touch to your customer service. If your company is too small to support an in-house customer service specialist, consider subscribing to a highly rated third-party provider.
