The internet has given many people a fantastic opportunity to start their own sales business and bring the dream of creating and selling their own products to life. Where once you’d have been stuck either trying to save to open a brick and mortar store or trying to get noticed among the multitude of similar products being sold on eBay or Etsy, you can now open your own ecommerce store without needing vast amounts of startup cash or an expensive advertising campaign.
However, at some point running a small ecommerce store might not be enough. When you’ve built a large following on social media and your sales have started to grow to a respectable level, you may start to think about expanding. Perhaps offering different kinds of transactions or taking your business into the global market. Here is what you need to do if you are ready to grow.
Licensed Image from Shutterstock – By sdecoret
Employ Staff
If you’ve been running a solo enterprise so far, it’s a good idea to employ some staff before you try to expand. If everything goes well, you are going to be taking a lot more orders, making a lot more stock and generally doing a lot more work. You are going to need help to meet all of your orders and keep your customers happy.
Employ as many staff as you can afford before expanding to make sure that they are well trained and familiar with your systems before you start to get busier.
Increase Your Inventory
Manpower isn’t the only thing that you are going to be needing more of. Even if you make all of your products to order, you will need to increase your supply levels ready for extra orders, so you are ready to go as soon as they start coming in.
Offer Alternative Customer Service Options
Whether your business is tiny or massive, customer service is the key to your success. Offering excellent customer service can get you noticed and remembered, bringing in new customers and ensuring current ones keep coming back.
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As well as being friendly, polite and helpful it’s essential that you offer your customers options to make their experience as comfortable as possible. Consider offering them the chance to make orders or contact you by phone by integrating https://www.ringba.com with your systems.
Increase Your Social Media Reach
Social media is going to play a huge part in taking your ecommerce business to the next level, whatever that may be. Especially if you are planning to crack a new market abroad. If you’re not already on the main platforms, start now. Make sure you use your branding and set up profiles for your business. Then, start making useful contacts. Check out https://catalystforbusiness.com/pinterest-marketing-strategies-ecommerce-merchants/ for some tips on using Pinterest.
Prepare to Tackle Global Markets
One of the best things about small ecommerce businesses is that they are small. Like a friendly local shop. Somehow, you need to stay local, while going global. Take a close look at the markets you hope to tackle. Find out about their local customs and make sure you can offer them a local service.
Expanding your eCommerce business gives you the chance to create something extraordinary. Take your time, think about your options and only ever move as fast as you want to.