Scale Up E-Commerce

All e-commerce businesses hit a plateau at some point. They grow rapidly but, once they hit a certain amount of revenue, they can’t seem to scale beyond it. Plateaus are scary but completely normal and totally fixable. With a good e-commerce strategy, businesses can expand their horizons, remove bottlenecks, and grow faster than ever.

Customer Reviews

Businesses aren’t the only ones that use analytics. Customers crunch the numbers, too. Before buying anything, most people look at reviews, read forums, ask their friends and gauge the public opinion on a product. This phenomenon is called social proof — it’s the idea that people look at how others behave before making decisions. Social proof is a powerful tool and, if a business just needs more customers, it’s a great place to start.

The best way to build social proof is to maximize word-of-mouth marketing. If a customer hears about a product or service from a friend, they’ll probably purchase it. Reviews and testimonials are in close second by providing the personal experience that customers need to make decisions. 

All reviews and testimonials start with a good service, but many businesses that have an awesome product don’t collect the positive feedback their customers want to share. Apps like judge.me and stamped.io handle review collections for businesses. They prompt users to leave reviews, often with coupon incentives.

Reviews and testimonials are the smooth, buttery voice of a good product — they convince new customers to buy the goods they need. With well-planned social proof, any business can grow its demand.

SEO

Whether a store has a physical location or lives entirely online, search engine optimization (SEO) is vital for every e-commerce business, big and small. When executed properly, it’s free leads directly to the business’s site.

Stores with a brick-and-mortar location should focus on Google My Business, a service that lets merchants control how their store displays in searches. Without a doubt, Google My Business is the single most important SEO tool for local searches. The interface is very easy to use — businesses just add their business information, upload photos, get customers to leave reviews and let Google do the rest.

Order Fulfillment

Most e-commerce businesses face a huge bottleneck: order fulfillment. Small stores struggle to single-handedly package and deliver countless orders to customers and big businesses aren’t spared, either. Multichannel e-commerce is extremely difficult to pull off, especially when dealing with B2B, B2C and bulk sales. Order logistics slow growth, so improving fulfillment can jumpstart a business.

Most businesses can streamline their deliveries through a dedicated fulfillment service, like Shopify Fulfillment Network or Rakuten Super Logistics. These services handle deliveries, returns, inventory and more so that merchants can focus on the product.

Creating the perfect product is hard, but shipping it out to customers is a completely different challenge. It can help to outsource the job or install an app to streamline logistics. 

All-in-One Platforms

Many major e-commerce stores grow exponentially when they switch to an all-in-one e-commerce platform. One of the most popular options for major enterprises is Shopify Plus, which offers great features like automation, fraud protection, headless e-commerce and more. It’s a great way to get all the growth services a business needs in one neat package.

The best way to build an enterprise-level e-commerce platform is to connect with a platform partner. Usually, the company behind the platform runs a rigorous multi-year screening process on each of their service partners, so businesses are guaranteed a quality agency experience. Shopify Plus is arguably the most meticulous and selective.

Outsourcing the technical stuff and streamlining or automating the business’s systems makes it easier to grow an online business. Using e-commerce platforms allow owners to focus on the more important aspects of their business.

Sean Elstins is the COO of Phoenix-based Fyresite, the only web and app development agency that has been selected as a qualified Shopify Plus partner in the State of Arizona.