Why Switch to E-Commerce?
In recent years, many brick-and-mortar businesses have expanded to e-commerce. And while this shift has expanded their reach and increased sales, it also poses new, unique challenges and increased competition.
So here, we’ve compiled a list of some best practices for – and common pitfalls of – making the leap to e-commerce.
And as you read the list below, you can brainstorm ways to address these in your business.
E-Commerce Best Practices
In order to get started, there are a couple of things you want to make sure you understand and set up.
- Know the tax structure and where you are as well as what you would like to do with your business.
- Understand the shipping options for the most effective and efficient choices.
- Set up Shopify plug-ins to automatically share your products with large retailers, like Amazon and Walmart.
- Learn about digital marketing and how to share your products with a larger audience.
- Identify what makes you stand out from the competition. Once you've pinpointed that, expand on it.
- Hire a dedicated bookkeeper who can help you keep track of inventory reporting, varying tax bills, shipping costs, Shopify fees, and more.
After you have all of that figured out, here’s a quick list of other best practices to implement.
- Be Customer-Centric
- Be Mobile-Friendly
- Leverage Social Media
- Keep Up & Trends
- Provide Excellent & Speedy Customer Service
- Stay on top of SEO & CRO Best Practices
Common E-Commerce Pitfalls
You’re also going to want to avoid some of the most common pitfalls when shifting to e-commerce.
- Having poor inventory management and reporting as productions ship nationally and internationally.
- Failing to understand shipping costs as determined by the amount of product shipped and the shipment destination.
- Not understanding the taxes based on the location where the transaction is made.
- Not being aware of all fees.
You’ll also want to keep these potential website mistakes in mind.
- Excessive Clutter on Pages
- An Unclear Idea of What You're Selling
- A Lack of Ease in the Checkout Process
- Lacking Keyword Strategy
- An Understaffed Team
Grow Your E-Commerce Site With Help From BELAY
Having systems in place before you launch your e-commerce site will help you gain reliable financial, social and website assistance from the beginning and throughout.
While business owners are more than capable of managing these tasks, it can get to a point where too many hours are being spent on tasks – when they should be working on strategic plans and relationship-building instead, and BONUS! They can actually save money by hiring someone, too.
Interested in learning more about how BELAY’s modern staffing can support your e-commerce business? Learn more about the right fractional solutions for you from one of our Solutions Consultants today.