Entry to eCommerce Made Easy – 4 Ways to Quickly Scale Up Your Efforts
Looking to break into the world of eCommerce? It’s never been easier than now. Thanks to free and low-cost turnkey platforms, entrepreneurs can easily create their own digital presence and start conducting business quickly. However, with the lower barrier to entry comes increased competition, making it crucial to manage your efforts carefully and strike while the iron is hot. In this article, we’ll outline four ways to help quickly scale up your eCommerce efforts.
Go Cross-Border
One of the best ways to scale up your business is by opening it up to new markets. If your products or services have universal appeal, consider going cross-border. To check interest, implement SEO and analytics and review your site’s traffic data for visitors from outside your country. Many of these visitors may be interested in what you offer, so it’s worth considering servicing their territories.
Thanks to improvements in shipping and fulfillment, cross-border commerce is now easier than ever. Make sure to research which payment methods your target markets prefer, as each region will have its payment preferences. For example, parts of Europe, Scandinavia and Southwest Europe favor bank transfers for payments while developing countries in Asia may demand cash-on-delivery options. Allow the consumer to pay in the way that he or she prefers, as unavailability of their preferred payment method is a primary reason why shoppers abandon their carts.
Partnering with a payments service to process these payments is also convenient since it enables you to avoid regulatory navigation for each target country.
Get and Keep More Customers
Aside from going cross-border, consider focusing on growing your customer base from your current market. Ramping up your marketing efforts can help achieve this. E-commerce is rarely, “build it and they will come,” so it’s essential to reach out to customers and encourage them to do business.
Several engagement campaigns could be initiated, such as curating and sharing content via your social media pages or starting a newsletter and sending customers helpful content related to your product line or industry. Sending out promo codes to encourage purchases is also beneficial.
Marketing automation could make this process even easier. Targeted event-based campaigns such as prompting modals to visitors as they exit your store or sending reminder emails to users who abandoned their carts are just a few possibilities. By keeping conversion rates high, your customer base will grow, and your business will scale up accordingly.
Improve Your Supply Chain
Another aspect to consider when scaling up your eCommerce business is improving your supply chain. Start-ups can often become overwhelmed when business unexpectedly picks up, making it crucial to have a good handle on your processes.
Analytics is one way to anticipate demand. By monitoring which products get browsed and bought and analyzing customer behavior on your site, you’ll gain insight into customer behavior and optimize your catalog and inventory. Removing poorly performing products and focusing on bestsellers or overhauling your catalog and focusing on more upscale products—if the numbers point to such a trend—may also be a good option.
Understanding the ebb and flow of stocks helps ensure that you’ll not only be able to deliver your products readily but also avoid tying up resources with extra units held in your stockroom.
Improve Customer Experience
Ultimately, providing a hassle-free user experience is key to success in eCommerce, particularly as it has shifted to mobile. With mobile commerce predicted to account for 45 percent of all eCommerce activity by 2020, optimizing your site for mobile is critical.
Along with creating a mobile-friendly site, consider creating a dedicated mobile app to provide a quicker experience for users. Best practices in designing your user experience include making your search bar visible and creating easy-to-use sorting filters. If you’re targeting multiple markets, localizing the experience is essential by providing translations of product descriptions and currency conversion for prices. Don’t forget to be upfront about added fees such as taxes and shipping costs, which may vary depending on the customer’s location.
Minimizing the number of steps customers need to complete a transaction is also a must, as checkout issues are a top reason why customers leave. By working on your interfaces, you could eliminate the friction points that customers hate.
Providing a superior UX will make your eCommerce business stand out, win you more customers and help you scale up efficiently.
In conclusion, these four ways to quickly scale up your eCommerce business will ensure that you’re keeping up with the fast-evolving industry. Lower competition barriers means that managing and scaling up your business efficiently is more critical than ever. As you implement these tips, keep in mind the importance of checking results regularly and making necessary changes when required. With the right strategies in place, your eCommerce business will thrive and will scale up expeditiously.