5 Habits of Successful eCommerce Businesses

Habits of Successful eCommerce Businesses

The competitive landscape of eCommerce is snowballing, with more than 9.1 million global online stores. The most successful businesses focus on and implement similar strategies. This is not an exhaustive list, but common to some of the most profitable eCommerce companies. If you want your business to stand out, modeling the practices of successful eCommerce businesses is necessary. In this post, we will discuss 5 habits of successful eCommerce businesses.

Automation

To implement automation strategies for eCommerce success, consider how automation can improve customer experience. Including automating customer service inquiries, automated reminders to encourage repeat purchases, or automated emails to provide order updates. Some of the most common marketing automation strategies include:

Sending automated welcome emails
Automated cart recovery (abandoned cart reminders)
Win-Back emails to get subscribers re-engaged
Automate customer feedback collection

Look for opportunities to automate inventory management, shipping processes, and product discovery. Automation of these processes can help streamline operations and improve customer experience. Additionally, use analytics to track success of automation strategies and adjust accordingly.

Collaborate and Outsource

It is common for eCommerce owners to get nervous about collaborations. They believe that if they drive traffic to other companies, customers won’t have enough resources left to buy their products. While driving traffic to your direct competitor might do that, other symbiotic collaborations have the opposite effect. An excellent example of an ideal collaboration is Black Milk Clothing and Solestruck. Black Milk Clothing sells clothes for people who want to stand out. Their fashion line nods to niche horror films, Pokemon, and other cult-classic imagery. They collaborated with Solestruck (a funky female-owned shoe company) on a few photo shoots, and people started asking where they could buy the shoes. It was a win-win for both. The key is to find mutually beneficial collaborations. Some easy collaboration ideas to get you started:

Cross promotions
Social media giveaways and influencer campaigns
Subscription boxes with multiple partners
Creating (topic clusters) with other retailers in similar or complementary industries

The other aspect that rings of collaboration are outsourcing business operations that are not part of the core offering to other professionals. Delegating these responsibilities to experts in that field frees time to focus on core competencies of the business, like creating new products, refining customer offerings, and building marketing campaigns that singularly target your customer avatar. The types of outsourcing that the most successful entrepreneurs engage in include;

Social media management
Website design and development
Warehousing
Inventory Management
Order fulfillment
Customer service
Returns management

Track and Utilize Data Analytics

You must track the data. Whether you sell hand-poured candles or reusable baby diapers, data is crucial to making informed decisions. Successful eCommerce businesses have a habit of monitoring data and utilizing it well to refine their business processes. However, it can be daunting to consider all the data points vital to business success. Here are some of the top metrics that eCommerce businesses should track.

Customer Acquisition Cost – Simply put, this is the amount of capital it costs to acquire a new customer
Average Order Value – This is the average amount customers are spending at one time in your store
Sales Conversion Rate – This is the number of customers who made a purchase compared to the total visitors to your store

Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate – This evaluates the number of customers who add a product to their cart but fail to complete the purchase. Tracking this metric can provide insight into troubles or difficulties with the purchasing process.

Top Products Sold – Tracking the most popular products is essential to profitability. Best sellers should be promoted and carefully ordered to minimize stockouts.

Return Rates – This calculates how many products sold are being returned or exchanged.
Regular Inventory Snapshots – Tracking how much inventory you have left at the end of a specific period helps you develop a cadence of reordering to limit overstocking and understocking.

There are so many more metrics that can be tracked and evaluated. That being said, data fatigue is a real issue for many owners. Don’t get overwhelmed by all the available reports; narrow down what is vital for your business. Decide what information you need currently to make better decisions. Focus on tracking and utilizing those metrics first and then expand your usage of data and analytics.

Focus on Customer Experience

As per Forbes, “Customer experience is today’s business benchmark.” It’s never been more important to put your customers first. Customers are setting higher expectations for a complete experience with a brand, not just a transactional relationship. From memorable unboxing experiences to seamless returns policies, customers want it all. Successful eCommerce businesses make a habit of reviewing and revising the customer experience regularly. Here are crucial aspects of the customer experience to establish:

Seamless user experience on your website – this means your website is easy to use, has fast loading speeds, and is visually excellent. Don’t skimp on the product photos. A picture isn’t worth 1k words; it is worth 1k dollars!
Secure and varied payment methods
Excellent customer service – having part-time availability to assist customers is no longer acceptable for brands. If you want to be set apart from your competitors, you must be ready to help your customers when they need it. However, this doesn’t mean you need 24/7 call center support, but you should have a system like chatbots/FAQs and the like readily available before you sell your first item.
Implement Customer Loyalty Programs – reward customers for their purchases and incentivize them to return and buy often. This can be done easily through a customer loyalty program.
Provide Seamless Omnichannel Experience – customers expect brand consistency on every platform. Providing customers with a seamless omnichannel experience improves brand loyalty and trust.

Experiment and Test

One of the most vital habits of successful eCommerce businesses is they are not afraid to experiment and test new things. Innovation in any industry comes from trial and error. Here are some common forms of business experimentation:

A/B Testing: Testing two versions of the same material
Pilot: A trial that would help test a proof of concept to see if you should go further with it
Mockups: A representation of the look and feel of a user interface
Quantification: Asking an audience to rank and rate things to quantify their thoughts into data

These experiments can be applied to marketing strategies, new product development, and even improving the customer experience online. Regardless of what experiments you run, it is important to decide what question you are trying to answer so that you can build an effective test. In other words, you need to think like a business person and a scientist.

The 5 habits of successful eCommerce businesses aren’t rocket science but require focused attention. Companies prioritizing automation, collaboration, outsourcing, tracking data, experimentation, and being customer obsessed stand a higher chance of success. Did you know that Falcon Fulfillment can help with many of these habits? We are experts at order fulfillment, warehousing, inventory management, returns management, customer service, and more. Let us show you how partnering with us can lead to better outcomes and more freedom to focus on what matters most, your customers! Talk to one of our helpful agents today.