Spring cleaning your e-commerce business: 4 tips to get rid of the dust & maximize sales
Learn how to boost sales by giving your eCommerce business a spring cleaning! Five industry experts provide tips to help you review your marketing strategy, inventory management, and sales analysis. Get started with these 4 tips and improve your long-term success as an eSeller.
Hello Spring! With the weather warming up and days getting longer, flowers are not the only ones able to bloom, in fact, now’s the perfect time to get your eCommerce business to blossom by giving your store a spring cleaning!
Why spring cleaning? Well, as the busy holiday season has officially come to an end, now’s a great time to shake the dust loose by reviewing your marketing strategy, manage old inventory, analyze your sales and much more. While many online retailers seem to think that their eCommerce business doesn’t need much examination or that their stores are evergreen, reality is that your store can become outdated quicker than you may think.
To help you get the ball rolling, we turned to five industry experts who are leaders in everything from eCommerce fulfillment to inventory management and asked them to share tips for ‘Spring Cleaning’ your business, which aspects are important to review, how to continue to prepare for peak shopping seasons and much more.
So, roll up your sleeves, put some gloves on and let’s get started with these 4 tips for spring cleaning your eCommerce business.
Analyze your sales, automate tasks & re-evaluate products
What general “Spring Cleaning” advice can you offer eCommerce sellers?
“2021 is expected to be a strong year for eCommerce, just like 2020, so you’ll want to nail customer acquisition, clear your attribution model and analyze your acquisition metric. To do that, you need to know where your best customers are coming from, whether that’s social media, your blog, or marketplace ads. Once you see what’s moving the needle, double down on that.”
“As we emerge from our post Q4 hibernation and get back into the full swing of business, think about the areas of your business that you can potentially automate, or time-consuming tasks that you can delegate. A self-audit can be difficult to do but cleaning up those redundant and time-consuming tasks is a great way to get started on your spring clean. Be it, liquidating old inventory, utilizing a new tool for product research or even cleaning up your Seller Central account, all of the above requires organization and strategy.”
Ian Kaneshiro, Head of Sales and Customer Success, Seller Snap
“I recommend looking at year-to-date, trending profitability for individual products. See how your profitability trends over a time period based on your marketing costs, sales channels, and more. You should have enough data by the spring to know which products are going to hurt you in the long run.”
“Spring is the best time to track your business’ performance and review your products. Sell off the products that have been collecting dust and re-evaluate your inventory. The easiest way to get rid of dust-collecting inventory is to sell them at a discounted rate. After reviewing your sales and product performance, you’ll know where to invest your capital while narrowing down the products that are harder to sell to your market.”
Get creative, utilize old inventory & develop new marketing strategies
What are the important aspects of your business to review each spring?
“If you haven’t already, take a closer look at your buyer journey. Make some test orders, check on your acquisition channels, order process, how quickly your packages come in, and the condition they’re in.”
“Ask yourself, “am I prepared for scaling my business?” Come spring, you can generally begin to see the trends for the year emerge. This is an ample time to review your goals and make sure your company has the infrastructure in place to handle your business at scale. Being unprepared for a growth uptick will hinder your progress.”
Ian Kaneshiro, Head of Sales and Customer Success, Seller Snap
“After the holidays, it’s pretty typical for brands to have more excess inventory than usual. When it hasn’t moved by spring, you need to get creative and there are creative ways to get rid of inventory that don’t involve throwing it out or doing deep discounts. You can bundle aging inventory with top sellers, which doesn’t devalue your product so much. Or, if it’s an inexpensive item, you can include it as a free gift with another order.”
“Every Spring, we here at First Choice Shipping review each department’s operations and identify the areas that need improvement. The most important aspects for us to review are our marketing strategies and new strategies to implement. We review our blog content, social media channels, email campaigns, analytics through services such as Google Analytics, our software development company and more and eCommerce sellers should do the same.”
“This year, go for buyer experience goals since it’s what will set you apart from the competition. Look for more 5-star reviews, shorter response times, and address the most common issues with your content/onboarding process.”
“All Amazon sellers have the goal to sell more products, but the question is, “how?”. Making your brand memorable by way of storytelling is a great way to entice people to buy your products. In a saturated market, it’s becoming increasingly more evident that Amazon PPC is providing sellers with the avenue to really scale their business, allowing sellers to buy’ visibility for their products at the top of Amazon’s search results page.“
Ian Kaneshiro, Head of Sales and Customer Success, Seller Snap
“Strive to improve your customer service this year. The way you treat your customers is what will truly set your business apart.”
What can brand owners do now to prepare for peak seasons?
“Build redundancy into your critical processes, especially fulfillment. If you’re relying on in-house fulfillment, work with a multi-channel fulfillment partner that can cover delivery for all your sales channels from one centralized fulfillment network. This keeps things streamlined, helps you avoid shuffling inventory around or going out of stock, and creates backups for your fulfillment process.”
“In preparation for peak seasons, sellers will want to ensure that they have enough inventory to meet demand. When referring to Amazon and the inventory cap for Amazon’s FBA program, if you cannot replenish fast enough, it’s advisable to consider alternative methods of fulfillment such as, self-fulfillment or hiring a third-party logistics company.“
Ian Kaneshiro, Head of Sales and Customer Success, Seller Snap
“Figure out the tools that work best for your business as far as time management goes. Before peak seasons pick up, determine the best way for your business to get things done quickly without having to max out time – maximum input without maximum output. Time management results in efficiency, better planning, and higher levels of productivity which is crucial for the hectic period at the end of the year.”
Get the dustpan out and boost your sales this spring
Bottom line, taking the time to spring clean your eCommerce business and re-evaluate your store’s performance can really put you on the path to becoming a successful eSeller. While cleaning may not always be fun, revisiting your business will truly help you succeed in the long run, especially if you’re thinking about expanding your business into new markets.
With the tips provided here, there’s no excuse to start making improvements so go ahead and get the dustpan out and apply these best practices today!
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