Starting a new business is never easy. But there are so many opportunities in the online world. If you’re looking to start your own E-Commerce business, here are three practices to put in place right from the start to help you see the success you deserve.
Always be reliable for customers
Whether this is your first attempt at launching your own business, or you’re already an established business owner, the key to success is creating a trusted, reliable partner for your customers, suppliers, and stockists. It is difficult to scale your business and gain a good enough reputation to draw in new customers without reliability and consistency.
Think about what you’d expect as a customer, and always look to provide this for others. When you reach that quality, keep going and don’t let it drop.
The easiest way to create reliability and consistency is through implementing automation and doing regular checks. Automation can free up a lot of your time – which is super valuable while managing your own business. Take a look at the types of services your competitors are using first to see if the same systems would work for you.
Examples of systems you could implement include email campaigns that can build your customer reviews or using a bulk editor to ensure all your pricing is the same across different platforms.
You could also think about using a logistics warehouse to ensure all your stock and packing is done to a high standard, consistent level. A 3rd party logistic warehouse fully manages your product inventory, picking, packaging, shipping, and returns so you can focus on marketing, customer service, and operations, giving you even more time to focus on your reliability.
Get streamlined
The more systems you can have that speak to one another in the backend, the easier it will be to manage your business. Customer data should move through your CRM; order data will move directly from the website to the warehouse, etc.
Using an eCommerce platform that has the capacity for multiple integrations will help in the long run; when you start to scale your business, you can add integrations easily, rather than having to find a more advanced platform at more expense.
Creating more streamlined processes will ensure you’re reducing the chance of error through manual data entry. It also means picking and packing can start immediately, rather than waiting for the information to be forwarded on and payment confirmed.
Invest in customer service
For the first few years of business, you’ll need to re-invest your profits into different areas of your business – and the most important? Customer service. Making and keeping your customers happy is the key to your success. And investing in customer service can really help. It’s a common fact that repeat customers cost less to keep than new customers cost to obtain.
Implementing a customer loyalty program or investing in an additional member of staff will help you to ensure your customers are attended to – even when business gets busy. Those that are there from day one should always be a higher priority than newbies.
There are hundreds of practices that will help you to strive in your business, but the focus should always be on making things easier and better for the customer.