Business First Family Business, Accounting, Finance, Investing, Marketing And Management
A successful ecommerce startup understands what they do right. Many ecommerce stores have a variety of activities between marketing, logistics and management that make them successful. Whether you prefer to write in business english or create attractive graphics, you should take steps to make your startup successful. As an entrepreneur, you should invest in activities that allow the startup to grow consistently. There are some common activities that successful ecommerce startups all do well. In this post, we’ll explain what to do to make your ecommerce startup a success.
Measure What’s Important to You
The number one rule when managing a business online is to track what’s happening on your site. Your site provides data that is fundamental to decision making and will determine the success or failure of an online business. How will you be able to know which direction to take your business if you don’t know what’s happening? Successful ecommerce businesses don’t make assumptions and track their visitors’ activity on their website.
There are multiple tools in the market, however one that stands out as a must-have is Google Analytics. Google Analytics or ‘GA’, basically provides data on all your digital traffic that comes to your website. It’s the most popular tool to measure and understand your audience, who your visitors are, where they are coming from and what do they do on your site. This way, if you run a successful affiliate marketing campaign on a network, you can see where the sales are coming from.
In addition to understanding your audience and their behavior, it’s important to determine which specific actions on your site are valuable to your business. These actions could be things like a visitor signing up to your newsletter, filling a form or purchasing something from you, tracking these can lead to smarter making decisions. GA won’t tell you how your business is going without setting them as goals.
Choose The Right Courier Partner
Couriers have become an extension of online stores and it is essential to find the right partner who delivers a complete business parcel delivery solution. It would be a mistake to assume parcel delivery doesn’t represent an important part of the equation as it is, in fact, the only physical touch point brands have with customers and it affects the customer’s experience with the brand.
Previously, brands would choose Post by default, but nowadays costs have gone down and competition has increased. Pricing is not the only factor to consider, here are the other things to consider before choosing the right shipping partner:
- Do they specialize in business parcel delivery?
Business couriers understand the real pain points and struggles a business faces daily, which differ from personal parcel deliveries.
Does the courier offer free ecommerce integrations? Find couriers that easily integrate their service with top ecommerce platforms to help you streamline the shipping process. It’s supposed to make your life easier, not more complicated.
- Do they offer scalability?
Start with the end in mind. While a new home based ecommerce business might start getting few orders at the beginning, it will continue to grow and the volume of parcels sent will increase exponentially. Do you have to physically go somewhere to leave your parcels? Do you have to manually create the shipping orders, or is it automated? Is this service included, or is it extra?
Plan ahead and find a courier that offers free pickups from you regardless of how many parcels you send and allows you to automate the process, this will cost you more in the long run.
- Do they offer additional perks?
Yes, they are shipping your product, as every other courier service could do. But what about any additional benefits you could get from using their services, benefits that you’d probably wouldn’t get with any other courier. There are couriers that offer Frequent Flyer Points, offer carbon neutral delivery to help the environment or special shipping times. Get the most of your shipping and be on the lookout for additional offers.
Think what your current courier service offers to your business, are they helping you grow or are they limiting your growth? Your courier partner needs to make your life easier not give you another headache. There are a lot of companies that offer competitive services. Don’t settle, ask yourself these questions and do your research, don’t miss out on an opportunity.
Harness The Power of Email Marketing
Email Marketing has grabbed quite the attention as other channels in digital marketing. However, it represents a huge opportunity for both leads and retention. Email marketing is a very personal way to reach your potential and current customers in a customized way, depending on where they are in the consumer decision journey.
Something to keep in mind is to avoid buying email lists, these people did not choose to hear from you and will probably find the emails intrusive. In addition, their motivation levels to open your emails or take action will be very low and you’ll run the risk to become SPAM.
Nurture Leads
Take the time to build your email marketing list with quality leads acquired through different channels. User drip marketing to work these leads to potential customers and build a relationship. This will pay off, your leads will be more motivated to open your emails and find out more about your brand. It’s not about quantity it’s about quality.
Great Tool For Retention
It’s well known that it’s cheaper to retain a customer than acquire a new one. However, not many brands take action to keep those customers happy and engaged. Email marketing is a great tool to keep customers in the loop, let them know what’s going on, share valuable tips and send limited-time offers every now and then. It’s all about building and growing a relationship with your customers. Just because they’ve bought from you doesn’t mean they will again. Go that extra mile.
