The e-commerce industry is absolutely booming – and it’s been this way for a long time. More consumers are making the switch from traditional retail shopping to the online variation. It’s fast, convenient, and often gives them a much broader choice compared to what they have in the physical world.
As a result, loads of small e-commerce businesses have popped up in the last few years. It’s a very easy business model to start, and it can lead to expedited success. This is where a key stumbling block lies; growing your small e-commerce business. Doing so isn’t always about what you should do, but more about what you shouldn’t do. To help you out, here are a few things to avoid.
Don’t Overspend On A Storage Warehouse
Possibly the biggest thing you’ll notice – when your company grows – is that you need to create more stock supplies because of the increased demand. This inevitably leads to you needing a bigger place to store your goods if you’ve just been keeping them at home. Most people make the immediate jump to a large warehouse because they assume business will keep on booming. However, you could just end up with a large building that’s not even a third full of stock, rendering the rest useless. Instead, bridge the gap with something like one of the storage containers sold by Conex Boxes. Get yourself a few large containers, keep your stock in them, and you’re good to go. Then, if you continue to have increasing demands, you can add more containers or eventually move into a large warehouse. The whole point here is that you should gradually upgrade your storage facilities rather than making a huge lead.
Don’t Pack Your Website Full Of New Items
It’s easy to get ahead of yourself when your e-commerce business takes off. You start thinking of ways to make more money, and the idea of creating new items pops into your head. You look at your top-selling products and try to create new things that are similar. The theory is good; if people have been buying the old stuff, then they’ve now got an extra product to buy too! Unfortunately, you run the risk of saturating your website and bombarding people with new products that they don’t need. Before you start adding new things to your store, consider the customer feedback. Ask your customers if anything is missing from your site. This is an opportunity to gain ideas for possible new products. When you see what the people are asking for, then you can maybe release a couple of new things that you know will sell well. Don’t just automatically make thousands of new items in the hope of making more cash – it rarely ends well.
Growing your small business is all about taking baby steps and not getting carried away. When you get ahead of yourself, you make judgemental errors that cost you a lot of money. Don’t make rash decisions, think things through very clearly, weighing up the pros and cons of each. In most cases, there are stepping stones that can carefully lead you from A to B, rather than trying to make the massive leap immediately.