When it comes to streamlining any ecommerce business and making it both more efficient and more profitable, there is a fundamental four-step approach. The approach begins with planning your business. It then explores how you can both automate and delegate. Let’s explore each step in a bit more depth.
1. Planning Your Ecommerce Business
Take the time to plan every facet of your business. You can’t control everything and there will undoubtedly be surprises. However, when you take the time to plan things like cash flow, customer experience, and conversions you’ll achieve greater success. Planning involves taking a look at both the big picture of your business and your long-term goals, as well as the smaller goals that will help you get where you want to go.
Here’s a quick example of the type of planning that we’re talking about.
What happens when someone visits your website? What do they read? What step do they take after the landing page? For example, do they sign up for your list or do they click to a product page? What you put on each page, including the content and graphics, helps control the visitor’s actions. Plan it out and have more control over the process.
Now go through each aspect of your business and create a plan. Document the steps that are taken. For example, what steps do you take when you are creating your marketing content for the month?
2. Automating
Take a look at the various steps within each of your respective plans. Identify the steps that can be automated. Technology is available to make running your ecommerce business easier. It can also improve your customer experience. For example, explore how you can leverage technology such as a good shopping cart system to improve your customer experience.
Don’t forget about technologies that make your life easier too. For example, a good autoresponder can allow you to schedule emails and have them automatically shared on social media at the same time.
3. Delegating
You know that you don’t have to do everything yourself, right? Once again, take a look at your plans and review areas where you can delegate certain steps or perhaps the entire process. For example, can you delegate your content marketing? Hire someone to write the blog posts or email messages, upload them, and even review your analytics and make topic suggestions for the future.
4. Reviewing
Finally, it’s important that you occasionally step back and review your systems. Are the plans, technologies and support staff helping you succeed? Is there a way to improve your systems? It’s entirely possible to set your ecommerce business up so that it can run without you. Between a good support staff and technology, you can have the time you need to plan how to grow your business, innovate products and services, and lead your business.
