The ecommerce industry has grown exponentially in the past few years, with digitization taking over the retail industry. Almost every brick and mortar store now has an online presence as well. The recent pandemic brought to light opportunities to grow but also created obstacles in terms of competition for businesses. So it became imperative for businesses to scale and stay above the competition. Retail stores saw $4.9 trillion in sales in the year 2021 and this number is expected to see a 4 times growth by 2025.
Taking your business online is the first step to growth. Ecommerce gives you the opportunity to reach a larger audience, hence scaling your business is the next step. Before we dig into how to scale your ecommerce business, let’s understand what ecommerce scaling is.
What is ecommerce scaling?
Scaling your ecommerce business means adding revenue with minimal to no additional resources. Hence, you will be increasing revenue of your company with little or no increase in expense. Scaling helps a business get the most out of its existing resources.
How to scale your ecommerce business?
Use automation
Irrespective of the stage of your ecommerce business, you need automation to grow. Automation not just saves you time, money, and effort it reduces the chance of errors that may arise from manual tasks. So automate your sales cycle and enhance user experience with very little margin of error.
Outsource order fulfillment
As you grow your business, self-packing and shipping every single order becomes a challenge and takes up too much time. Hiring a fulfillment firm to process, pack and ship your orders will save you time and help you scale and focus on your product. While it may seem heavy on your pocket initially, it will help you grow and eventually become a negligible cost considering the growth it opens up for you in the long term.
Implement of predictive analytics
Implementation of predictive analytics in order to forecast the future demand is a very crucial step as it helps in predicting your customer behavior, personalizing product offerings to your customer and even enabling dynamic pricing.
It works on the previous qualitative and quantitative data of your company by identifying links between multiple client data elements like online behavior data, demographic data, purchase history, social media actions and many more.
It analyzes the past data and then compares it to what is actually happening in the present. It will help you understand your user and plan your marketing and sales activities in order to scale your business.
Building an efficient eCommerce company structure
Building an effective and efficient company structure is very important for your business in order to achieve your goals. As your business grows, you need to make a team for different departments; such as; sales and marketing, product development, HR, business analytics, customer services and many more as growth increases.
Building a strong team that can take care of critical tasks not only helps in growing the business but also gives you time to take the business to the next level.
Customer retention strategies
A Harvard business study showed that it costs 5 to 25 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain one. Customer retention is one of the biggest struggles ecommerce stores face.
And one of the primary reasons customers move to a competitor is a company’s lack of customer service. Some ways you can use to retain your customers are:
Email marketing campaigns: Emails are still one of the best ways to maintain connection with your customers.
Introducing customer loyalty programs: Loyalty programs are a viable strategy to urge customers to repurchase or expand the recurrence of their buys. The prizes offered are an inspiration for them to shop.
Making customer service a top priority: Satisfying your customer is of utmost importance. Being available for your users increases your customer satisfaction.
Personalization/customization is the key: Personalize your messages on social media and mails as everyone loves customization. It makes your customer feel connected to your brand.
Connecting through social media: Be active on social media and engage with your followers to know what they actually like or dislike.
Summing it up!
Scaling your ecommerce business is very important if you want to increase your revenue with a minimal or no expenditure. The article above guides you on how to scale your ecommerce business. To scale your online business, you first need to understand that the customer is king and your top priority would be your customer satisfaction.
Automating and outsourcing would help in cutting unnecessary costs and building an effective and efficient team would help you to optimize your business and a smooth workflow.