Is your eCommerce business plateauing?

You’ve hit a plateau.

You successfully got your online store going, got to a healthy 300 orders per day and learned so much in the process. But you are ambitious and want to continue to grow.

– Should you upgrade your Shopify subscription?

– Should you move to Magento?

– Should you be throwing more money at Facebook Ads?

– Or start selling on Amazon?

 
These are the daily questions going through the minds of many eCommerce sellers as they fight to grow their dream. Every one of those steps means spending more money – money that many don’t have, or have to seriously justify spending.
 
So how do you raise revenues without wasting too much money or time? Surely this is the impossible dream?
 
There are 2 ways to create a lean business model that can then grow effectively: cut costs, or raise sales. Or both.
 
But how?
 

Buy More Features

 
The carrot dangled by many hosted eCommerce platforms is that by increasing your subscription, you’ll finally get the features that take you stratospheric. It’s just a shame that often isn’t true.
 
What is true is the need for more features, but you often have to pay oodles more to get them. Value for money doesn’t always apply. Your job is to identify 1 or 2 really things you need and go for it.
 
Have you thought about selling your goods B2B? If so, then you’re going to need locked down pricing (where accounts have to login to purchase) or customer special pricing or volume discounting. You’re probably going to need an invoicing/pay on 30 days function given that is the norm in the B2B world.
 
Have you thought about creating another website to target a different demographic? Your shoes, your flower bouquets and your instant coffee multipacks could be sold to many different niches who would love a website targeted at just them.
 

Raise your revenues – Multichannel Selling

 
Selling on eBay or Amazon will give you an instant hit of customers and raise your revenues greatly. But as many sellers will tell you – it comes at a price.
 
Literally.
 
From losing margin on your products, to sitting right alongside your competitors with no discernible brand, to an intense need to scale up fulfilment operations – you’re going to be run ragged and lose margin at the same time.
 
Listing products across multiple sites and marketplaces, and logging in daily to process the orders can also be an incredible time drain. There is software/middleware available to help with these tasks, but be prepared to pay even more in software subscriptions.
 
This is the reason so many other awesome – and more friendly – marketplaces are appearing such as Down Your High Street and OnBuy.com. These sites genuinely want to support and enable traders to grow, without stealing your intellectual property, or threatening to cut you off their listings if you miss one delivery.
 
And software like Shopit can list products on your site(s) and these marketplaces – all centrally.
 

Target International Sales

 
Already had an order from Ireland and Portugal? Maybe you’re missing a trick in becoming a leader in a different country rather than fighting over a saturated UK market.
 
Yes there are language challenges but as with most website work – once the product descriptions are written, they are written for the next 5 years, so translation becomes an excellent investment.
 
Yes there are logistics and fulfilment issues, but shipping from the UK has never been so easy with major carriers such as Hermes, DPD and DHL offering speedy international deliveries. And customers don’t always want their goods the next day. If your brand is good, a 5-7 day delivery can be fine – as Chinese marketplace Wish has proved.
 

All this sounds like a lot of work

 
If the idea of running multiple brands, multiple language sites sounds like hard work then – you’re wrong.
 
Software like Shopify Plus makes building and managing (a maximum of) 10x websites easier and more scalable an operation. However, at £2000/mth subscription it’s also very expensive and not much more than their standard platform.
 
This is why our next generation software Shopit gives customers the ability to create and test unlimited websites – all on a PAYG model based on traffic – de-risking your launch of kidsshoes.com or your German website with no fixed upfront costs.
 
If your orders numbers grow and fulfilment sounds like a challenge, that’s where Parcelhub’s network of international carriers AND their proactive tracking support solution comes into play.
 
We can all picture the hassle of 10 parcels a week going missing/being left next door, so what if you were now shipping 10,000 orders a week? This is where Parcelhub steps in between you and your courier/customer and proactively deals with customer service issues BEFORE they even happen.
 

Scaling has never been so easy – or affordable

 
Technology is meant to drive innovation, and innovation drives prices down.
 
A Shopit and Parcelhub partnership is that conversation you overheard. It’s that business infrastructure your competitor heard about first and implemented to stay ahead, stay profitable and successful.
 
It’s that partnership you need.