E-Commerce platforms have opened a world of possibilities for both business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs alike. By removing the back-breaking capital needed for starting a brick-and-mortar store, the possibilities of providing products have become endless. As a result, we’ve come to witness businesses dealing in products without having any inventory. Shipping companies have swarmed the globe. Intermediary agencies came to light, doing nothing but managing the operations of other e-commerce businesses.
If you ask an expert about the best one to follow in the middle of all these different operational strategies, they’ll tell you there isn’t a specific rule. They’ll point out how some businesses rely on selling high-tag items for profit, while others decide to dominate a certain niche. The strategy of either can work for neither, so it all comes down to your business strategy. However, if you adjust your question to asking for tips on managing your e-commerce business, they’ll give a list of proven tips they all swear by.
Here’s what they’ll tell you to do.
1. Think Like a Customer
If you’re still stuck between the pages of plans and statistics, it’s time to take a stroll down the other side of your eCommerce platform. Stop thinking like the executive you are – you’re only looking at how products are selling and the strategies you need to tweak to create more reach. Meanwhile, if you start thinking like one of your customers, you’ll instantly point out all the strategic flows you’ve been missing. Additionally, you’ll start experiencing what a real customer would, which gives you better ideas on how to optimize their experience and tempt them into adding more products into their shopping cart.
2. Craft a Full Operational Plan
Again, forget your strategic plans for a while. Do you have a full operational plan ready to be executed? Many business owners fail to realize the difference between the general plan and the operational one. Your operational plan considers every single factor you’ll deal with once you start your execution – ideally expressed as an action plan that’s divided into tasks and deadlines. Your operational plan must cover every step of your manufacturing process, supply chain, customer service, and promotional strategies.
3. Choose the Right Platform
There’s a world of difference that comes with choosing the right platform and failing to do so. While eCommerce platforms are available in multiple forms and features, ensure you’re very familiar with the technicalities that the platform relies on when operating. Some platforms are relatively easy to use, but they come with limited features. Other well-established platforms offer more features and better user experience (for you), but you’ll still face certain issues. Generally, you’ll face fierce competition on these platforms, so what’s your plan for dominating the market and positioning your brand?
4. Consider Outsourcing
While it’s tempting to do everything on your own (we know what we entrepreneurs are like), it’s not always the best nor smartest approach to operating your eCommerce business. Sometimes, it’s much more efficient to outsource certain parts of the operations to a specialized agency.
The experts from https://www.envisagedigital.co.uk/magento-support-services/ point out that using an eCommerce platform like Magento can be worthwhile – only if you ensure the optimum customer experience; this experience will be compromised if the site keeps crashing or lagging. Are you experienced enough to deal with these technical issues? If you’re not, then it’s better to leave it to the experts.
5. Map Out a Customer Journey
Following on thinking like a customer, you must optimize your eCommerce platform for the optimum customer journey. It includes regular site maintenance, yes, but it’s so much more than fixing bugs as they arise. Your main focus should always be to push your visitors to add more items to their shopping cart and finalize the purchase.
Think of all the tools you can accomplish without overwhelming the visitor. An optimized eCommerce platform will use a funnel approach to its maximum benefit, taking the customer through a smooth journey, generating leads and conversion, and customer retention.
6. Utilize Different eCommerce Marketing Strategies
There are a few well-known strategies when it comes to tempting customers over the eCommerce platform. For instance, make sure to cross-sell and upsell different products while they’re viewing the page of interesting products. Reminding them of abandoned carts is another popular and effective strategy to encourage them to finalize their purchase.
7. Integrate Your eCommerce Platform with Social Media Strategy
While you’re thinking of different eCommerce marketing strategies, integrate it into your entire marketing efforts. There’s no better way to generate leads than directing your traffic from other social media platforms to your eCommerce platform. Moreover, social media platforms have the best ability to reach your target audience and build a channel of connection with them, so make sure your marketing efforts are always complimenting each other.
8. Maximize Email Marketing Benefits
Speaking of marketing strategies, email marketing needs to be discussed on its own when it comes to eCommerce. You can’t neglect the value of integrating email marketing into your strategy. It’s the best tool you can use to build and maintain the connection with the leads you’ve acquired, from welcoming emails to confirming their purchases, reminding them of abandoned carts, sending promotions and offers, and keeping them updated with your news. Email marketing is the single most important tool you’ll need to utilize to the maximum.
9. Test, Analyze, Optimize
With all your efforts directed in the right place, you’ll only know what works and what doesn’t by monitoring your progress and testing different approaches. Keep testing how you present your products and keep experimenting with different strategies. With every different test, collect the data and analyze the efficacy. Check the conversion rates or repeated pitfalls during the customer journey; this will give you the insights to optimize your eCommerce operations and management strategies.
Despite the practicality that eCommerce platforms offer in the world of business, or perhaps, as a result of it, managing a successful eCommerce business is no walk in the park. From product strategies to strong competition, many obstacles are standing between you and success. Instead of discarding all of your plans, it would be wiser to follow the experts’ tips and make simple adjustments to your managing process first.