5 Tips For Strategic Ecommerce Growth
Operating an eCommerce store is exceptionally different from running a brick-and-mortar business. New owners launching an eCommerce site often seek out recommendations on how to best drive sales and growth. You can definitely tell the better quality stores from the average ones, but what goes on behind the curtain that makes eCommerce stores successful?
Whether you’re new to online business or looking for ways to increase profits, these 5 tips for strategic eCommerce growth will help your eCommerce business get booming.
- Build a Content Calendar
If you’re serious about growing your eCommerce business, then having a legit content calendar is a must. This benefits not just your content strategy as a whole but also strengthens your SEO and social media efforts. The obvious benefit is keeping that ADHD brain of yours organized. We all know the cycle, one day you struggle to find inspiration for content or ads, and the tasks that take an hour end up taking your entire morning because you’re drawing a blank or you’re all over the place with too much on your plate.
That’s where having a content calendar helps you stay organized, at least with all your content-related activities. It helps you plan ahead so you don’t have to multitask at a time when you’re not feeling creative, or forcing content when you should be focused elsewhere. A content calendar ensures that you don’t miss anything important, and you don’t have to scramble for ideas at the last minute desperately.
- Automate Processes
There are plenty of third-party apps that connect to all of your software applications, and you can save yourself time and headaches by automating processes that you can then take off your to-do list. Be aware, it does a good amount of time to get things going and your automated business running smoothly, but when you come out on the other side, we’ll have made our workflows more streamlined and our companies stronger. If you’re just starting out, stick with automating basic, repeatable, outsourceable tasks that don’t require much face-to-face interaction. The types of processes where there isn’t a ton of variance or changing factors on a regular basis. Some of the business processes that you can automate for your eCommerce business include bookkeeping, accounting and invoicing, payroll and scheduling, automatically fulfilling orders, pre-ordering office supplies, adding new customers to your email lists, cart abandonment email flows, and scheduling social media posts to multiple accounts. As the software available becomes more innovative, there will be more and more amazing applications that will allow for even greater automation, allowing you the time to focus on more important aspects of your business.
- Get Ahead of Schedule
This is not only great advice for your eCommerce business but life in general, so you're welcome! Taking the time to really flush out your processes and scheduling really sets you apart from the competition in a way that may not be simple to see. Getting things planned out a few months, if not quarters in advance, allows you to take daily and weekly tasks off your plate. Set up your social posts, emails, strategy, and really anything you can think of to automate, and then go to town getting the content done. We don’t focus on Black Friday in November, we are creating that content in August. That’s is a huge help because we don't have to worry about deadlines or in a hurry to complete something that will end up feeling rushed. This one takes som dedication, but the benefits are some of the best you can reap. Get ahead of things so you have more time and energy.
- Find The Right Partners
This one could quite be the hardest to do, as i’s not entirely dependent on you. You need to surround yourself with people who have the same goals and aspirations for your business as you do. We have been through this many, many times in past lives, (hence our “Not An Agency” moniker) and it is a vital piece to knowing and growing your business. You can find anything you are looking for on Google, it doesn’t mean the quality of work will match the ease of finding the resource. Focus on leveraging the people you know and trust, and of course getting recommendations, but doing the due diligence to ensure your making the best choices for the brand you can. We would love to shamelessly plug ourselves here, but the reality is that you reading this, probably don’t know who we are either, and have no reasons to trust us over whoever shows up first on the Google search page. But, we’re awesome. ANYWAY, having partners in your corner that genuinely care about your brand and its success are worth all the google searches in the world. The same goes for your customers. If you have fans of your products, they will naturally advocate for you and your brand. Find the right partners, as best you can, and you’ll be way ahead of the game.
- Focus On One Big Thing At A Time
I am of the belief that we all have at least a little bit of ADHD. You can claim you're the greatest multitasker in the world, but all that really means is that you’re probably doing a lot of things not as well as you could be doing one thing at one time. This goes for your brand and business as well. Trying to go “all in” and do everything at once, is a recipe for disaster. All of these changes and testing of concepts takes time, so give yourself the space to see results in once area of growth before throwing the proverbial spaghetti against the wall, and rolling out new products, new campaigns, new content, new year new you, all at the same time. You’ll get much more out of sticking with and planning out your strategy for growth, while watching to see what’s working and how it’s impacting your business. This goes back to the previous step, but having the right partner that will help temper you and keep you on track while scaling is a huge plus. Just like in life, stress is a killer in business. Manage your stress by making large changes one at a time and with purpose and drive. This will help you mentally and professionally.
Those are 5 ways to help you strategically grow your ecommerce business. These are very high level items that you can implement going forward to significantly help you get into a growth mindset and focus on scaling your business. If you have any questions or comments, or would like to have a conversation about any of these, or maybe some we missed, feel free to reach out to us at support@porters.io, we’re always happy to have a chat!
