How to Accelerate Your Small Business Growth With eCommerce

Selling on the web can be a very profitable business. With loads of information and tools for running an online business readily available today, there’s every reason to want to sell something – whether goods or services – on the internet.

Here, we share five key reasons to add an e-commerce store to your small business for increased sales and profits. We’ll also show you a simple strategy to help you get started with e-commerce the right way.

Why add e-commerce to your small business

Whether you run a small brick-and-motor business or have a non-monetized blog that you can convert into an e-commerce hub, the advantages of selling on the internet are plenty.

Effective collection and implementation of customer feedback

When running an e-commerce business, one benefit you’re likely to enjoy the most is how easy it becomes to collect customer feedback. Usually, customers will find it more convenient leaving feedback about their experiences with your products or services on your site than it would be for them to tell you on your face like in the case of physical businesses.

In addition, you are better placed to track the performance of all products on your online store which is a key part of improving your bottom line. For example, using the information gathered as part of your product and market research, you can remove the least selling products while enhancing the quality of the best performers.

Access a wider global market

Until recently, many small business owners and especially those operating physical shops primarily targeted local markets and competed entirely at the local level. However, a lot has changed since the inception of the web and in particular the continued growth of the e-commerce space.

Today, the business environment is more democratized than it’s ever been and this means the playing field is quite leveled for everyone regardless of their size and scale.

For example, small businesses can now leverage the power of search engine optimization and social media to compete more favorably with their stronger competitors. The trick to succeeding now depends majorly on factors like how well your business handles customers, product quality, and pricing to name just a few. The era of big and more moneyed businesses bullying their smaller counterparts using tactics like bumper billboards and offices in high-end buildings is rapidly fading away.

Availability of affordable business tools

A common challenge that many small businesses face today especially when starting out is the lack of enough money for capital and other vital resources like tools and workforce. However, it doesn’t have to always be this way especially with tens of free and affordable resources for operating small online businesses hitting the market every day.

When running an e-commerce site, the first phase entails acquiring a suitable domain name and a reliable hosting solution – you can check out great hosting deals on Hosting Foundry. From here, you can install the free WordPress CMS, add a few plugins like WooCommerce, and set up a simple store for your store. Obviously, there’s more work to do than this simplified breakdown but the point we essentially want to put across is that you don’t need to break the bank to get your e-commerce business up and running.

A simple e-commerce strategy for your small business

In this section, we share a few effective tips to help your small business prepare for the launch of an e-commerce site. Having a sound strategy is key in boosting your chances of achieving success once your store is operational.

Take time to learn about your target market

As we mentioned earlier, opening an online store gives you a wider reach and access to a bigger customer demographics – in some cases up to the global level.  However, this doesn’t mean you need to target everyone and promote your products indiscriminately.

If you want to succeed with your new business, the trick is to curate your audience and choose a specific market segment you’ll be promoting your products to. This helps you to easily choose the best products to add to your store and the advertising methods to use for effective results.

Take good care of packaging

How you package your products can determine the success or failure of your e-commerce store. As such, be sure to plan out your packaging carefully and ensure it doesn’t turn out to be too expensive to increase your overall cost of production.

Provide convenient payment methods

There are only a few things that are as painful as driving the customer to the payment page only for them to abort the purchase due to a lack of feasible payment method they can trust. Be sure to provide numerous options here, taking into consideration popular gateways like PayPal, Stripe, credit cards like MasterCard and Visa to mention but a few.

Conclusion

Are you looking to grow your small business and rake in more profits? If you aren’t using e-commerce, chances are high that you’re leaving a lot of money on the table. Implement the simple tips we’ve outlined in this post to set your new business up for success.