Efficient Ways to Streamline Your eCommerce Business

Running an online business is no joke, there are a huge number of tasks to complete in a day and even when you think you’ve completed everything, you’ll find something else to do. Most people start out their business and work themselves to the bone, don’t have time for anyone else, and get to a point where they are so exhausted their company ends up taking a bit of a hit. There are a few ways to avoid this situation but it has to start from you, the company owner. Accepting help is the sign of a strong leader and everyone has to do it at some point. When it comes to running an online shop there are a few steps in which you can improve your company, here we take a look at a few ways in which you can streamline your eCommerce business.

Website

Let’s start with the absolute basics, something that is so fundamentally important to owning a successful online business you’d be crazy to not ensure it’s perfect from the get-go. Your website is the front of your shop, the doorway for customers to walk through and the persuasion they need to part with their money. What does this mean? Well, it means that everything has to be perfect in order for a customer to buy your product. If the website takes too long to load then potential customers get bored and click off to find something else. If the quality is poor then the image you’re giving off is one of low quality or a company that can’t be bothered. If it’s difficult to navigate and people get lost looking for something then they aren’t going to purchase anything. Everything stems from your website so ensure it’s quick, concise, and easy to use.

Checkout

Once a customer reaches the checkout stage of your website they have a few things they need to do to finalise the sale they have started. At this stage, the smallest mistake can ensure that they’re going to leave their basket where they stand and go to another retailer.

Firstly, the simplicity of the process is hugely important. Having a form to fill in followed by a few more hoops to jump through to finally reach a payment page with 15 different options is a system that is far too complicated and will reduce your customer conversion rate dramatically. The public wants simplicity and the easier it is to buy the easier you will sell.

The next important stage of the checkout is your shipping. It’s known that a fairly large percentage of potential customers will cancel their order if they can’t get either the same day or next day shipping. The professionals at Cahoot.ai also state that the price is going to hugely affect your customer base. The ultimate combination in this situation is to have cheap and fast shipping, this way you’re going to have the best possible chance of getting that final sale.

Automate Your Orders

I’m always so shocked when I find an eCommerce shop that is still running with a manual orders system and the reason being is that it’s so vastly out of date I’m surprised anyone can keep up. With the technology available to everyone in 2020 there isn’t an excuse to have anything other than an automated system.

What this does is takes the information given by your website and updates everything/everyone that needs to be updated. If you’re selling a physical product and 14 are sold in one day on your eCommerce site then the packing team will be automatically notified with the correct addresses for shipment. The stock system will be notified and the number automatically updated on the website, more importantly, if any more stock needs to be ordered that can either automatically be done or a manager can be informed. Finally, the payment will all be within your account and a receipt will be sent automatically to the customer.

Each and every system within this process has been sped up just by making sure everyone is notified immediately when a product has been purchased.

Customer Service

Whilst the majority of orders are going to be seamless, there will be the odd occasion where someone might need help at the final hurdle. If there is no one there to help them through the difficult patch then they’re going to up sticks and leave. However, if you hire a customer service team to be available 24/7 then you’re going to ensure nobody has an issue with your website.

Sales are the most important thing when it comes to your eCommerce website and anything you can do to improve the percentage of sales is a good thing. Automating your servers is a must in this day and age, nobody expects slow service especially when it comes to delivering the goods. Some may call it impatience but I call it upholding a professional code of conduct.

Share on Facebook

Tweet

Follow us