If being your own boss is something you dream about every night, or if you’ve already started chasing your dream, this article is going to be just for you!
Today, we’re going to look into three awesome tips you can use to build a sturdy foundation for your e-commerce platform, which is going to be able to support you when your business starts to grow.
In this article, we’re going to look into how automating your daily tasks will give you the freedom to focus on your business, how decreasing the number of products that you sell will increase the number of sales, and how it’s extremely important to use social media to grow your businesses presence and sales.
So, without further ado, let’s look into three tips you can follow and implement into your e-commerce business.
- Automate Your Processes
It used to be that using any system that can automate your mundane and repetitive daily tasks would set your business back quite a lot of money.
Nowadays, e-commerce businesses of any size can take advantage of automation in their business as the marketplace is now saturated with cloud-based tools that can help you automate:
- Your marketing;
- Your sales; and
- Even production (assuming you make your own goods).
Better still is that e-commerce platforms realize this and have their own dedicated app stores, so you can easily integrate the software with your chosen e-commerce account.
So, if you’re a manufacturer who sells via Shopify – one of the most popular e-commerce platforms, today – you can easily update your account and install a Shopify ERP app, which will help you automate your inventory and production.
- Limit the Number of Products That You Sell
The instinct of any budding entrepreneur is to sell as many products as they can, to as many customers as they can.
But, resist your inner Del Boy (Only Fools and Horses) and perhaps think about scaling back the number of products that are on offer to the customer.
Mattress sellers Casper realized that other companies were selling a ludicrous number of mattresses, all at varying prices, so much so that to decide on what to buy as a customer was very difficult.
Casper realized, by selling only one mattress (they eventually increased their catalog by several more mattresses) they were able to increase their number of sales by removing that pressure for the customer.
By providing the customers with fewer options, you make it easier for them to commit to buying a product and avoid driving them away from sheer intimidation from the high volume of products.
- Leverage Social Media
There are currently around 2.4 billion users on Facebook, meaning it would be incredibly unwise to not have a presence on the platform.
Not only there, as there are several different platforms, all of which have millions of users just ready and waiting to be exposed to by your company.
Social media can be a way of:
- Building your company and brands exposure;
- Collaborating with other sellers or social media influencers; and
- (On some platforms) having the chance to even sell via these pages.
At the end of the day, social media is such a big part of our lives, that some businesses now choose to get set up exclusively on social media channels and forgo even building a website.
Basically, it’s a cheap and easy way to achieve multi-channel selling.
Conclusion
There we have it! Using these three tips is a sure-fire way to get yourself set-up with an awesome e-commerce platform.
Just always remember to study the marketplace, and see how other e-commerce businesses are running their company, as each one will have different processes or will have taken a certain approach to find success.
Regardless of whichever model you follow, or if you go your own way and become a business trendsetter, never underestimate the importance of automation, limited inventory, and social media.
Especially the first point, as these tools are going to give you the extra time and resources to focus on growing your e-commerce business.
