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The world online is becoming more popular and used every single day. Gone are the days are going round the shops in town, having a browse at what there is. Now it’s all online, there’s no need to even leave your house! More e-stores are being created every day, making online stores and shopping, very popular. However, it isn’t always as easy as just having a store online, you need to know how to manage it too. Below, are some handy tips and tricks, to help manage an online store.
The first and most important thing for ecommerce management, is to make sure you’ve got your online store, up and running. With an online store, you want to make sure it’s easy for customers to browse and use, as this makes the overall customer experience better. As well as this, you want to make sure all features work and that it looks professional. A Gantt Chart excel template can help you manage these tasks. This online store is representing your business and therefore, it needs to give off a good impression and look professional.
Manging an Online Store Tips
Here are some tips and things to consider doing, when it comes to ecommerce management and ensuring you get the best from your online store, as well as the customers.
Outsource Order Fulfilment
Once you’ve got your online store up and running and the customers are coming in, you’re going to want to save all the time that you can. This includes things such as buying and storing stock, packing items up and delivering them. All of this, can take up a lot of your time and with a business, you want to focus your time elsewhere, in ensuring it’s successful. The way many companies get around this problem is to either employ someone to do order fulfilment or use a drop shipping merchant. A drop shipping merchant takes care of all of the packaging and postage for you. It’s simple as when you receive an order, you pass it straight onto the supplier and they will handle all of it for you. On the other hand, you can also employ someone to do all of this for you.
Abandoned Cart Emails
Often, people will add items to their checkout, but not proceed to payment and leave it abandoned. This can be for a number of reasons, but sometimes, a gentle push, can make the customer go back and proceed with their purchases. Sometimes you may forget about it, and therefore it reminds you to go back to it. The abandoned cart emails send these people an email or notification, to say they’ve left something in their cart and reminds them to either delete it or process the purchase. You’ll never know if you don’t try, so it’s worth doing as it may result in more sales.
Manage Social Media
Social media is a massive part of most people’s lives these days, so it’s important to manage your businesses social media, well. Although your online store isn’t social media, you can use the powers of social media to benefit your business and store. So, as well as managing your online store, make sure to manage your social media. Make sure it looks professional, fits in with the brand, post regularly and engage with others. All of these things will help to build your business on social media, get your name out there and build a reputation. This can help to gain more sales too as it gets your name out there.
Order Management Provider
Once your online store is up and running and you’re getting plenty of visitors in, you want to make sure you’re managing orders well. A business altogether can take up a lot of time, so you may not have all the time to focus on your order management. As a way to manage your online store, you can use an order management provider, to help out with this. They will assist with all the orders, from the point of receiving them, getting the money and shipping them out. They’re great to use to help save time and use your focus elsewhere on the business.
Keep the Interest
Once you’ve got your regular customers coming in, that’s great! But you want to make sure you keep the interest there, so they keep returning. Things such as a customer loyalty program, can encourage customers to keep returning. Also consider sending exclusive discounts to regular customers and even personalise them, for their birthday etc. By keeping the customer happy and interested, it’s likely they’ll keep returning.
Pay Attention to Customers and Get Customers Attention
Make sure you’re paying attention to your customers wants and needs and given them an amazing customer experience. When it comes to a business and especially ecommerce management, you want to make sure you’re focusing on your customers. They’re the most important part to your business, so pay attention to them. Consider what they’re wanting and what they like and you can use this to your advantage in the future. Also make sure their overall customer experience is excellent, as this will leave them happy and want to return again.
Also do things to catch the customers eye and draw them in. You could perhaps monitor customer favourites and send them emails with exclusive discounts or even display these on the online store, for when they first visit it. Anything that can catch their attention, will help to draw them in.
Staff Training and Motivation
Finally, if you’re a business with employee’s, make sure you’re keeping your staff up-to-date and motivated within their roles. Ensure you’re providing training for them, to help them with their own development and for the sake of the business, ensure they’re always kept up-to-date and make sure they’re happy. As your staff often deal with customers, it’s important to make sur they’re performing at their very best and that they are also happy and motivated, in their jobs. If the staff are happy and doing a good job, then this has a positive impact on the customer and business too.
Hopefully these tips will help out with managing an online store, saving time, gaining and keeping customers and building yourself a good reputation.