During the pandemic, you might have found yourself creating your own small e-commerce business in lockdown. And, while it started small, maybe it’s becoming a reliable source of secondary income, and it might be in your best interests to make it a much bigger concern.
So, you’re now in the situation where you’ve passed the start-up stage you could manage with the current size, but you want to help your business grow and flourish further, but you don’t have much of an idea of how you might do that. Here are two ways (that bigger businesses already use) to help your business grow bigger and better than ever.
Outsourcing services
Outsourcing services can be the perfect way to save money and get additional, professional help on your side. There are many options available, such as outsourcing your receptionist, your customer service, or your entire IT department.
This way, you can ensure that you have a team of well-educated professionals on your side and you can cut out the risk of employing someone who you might not know can do the job, therefore becoming a potentially bad investment.
Outsourcing (read our definition) isn’t just limited to professional services, however, and with ecommerce fulfilment you can rent the services of a warehouse team, to store, pack and dispatch your items, so you can just concentrate on the core business tasks without needing to clutter your home or spend hours packing orders.
Service model
Choosing your service model is another great way to help your business expand. This means that you can focus on your customer and give them an experience that they enjoy, which will increase your chances of a return visit or good review. There are two types of service models, however, and they are on a spectrum, meaning that you might have to do a balancing act to help it appeal to your target audience further:
- Transactional service model. A transactional service model can be a good stance to take if your client prefers a harder sale technique. It is, at its very simplest, focusing on making the best transaction per customer. For comparison, it’s a bit like the service that you would expect to get at a car sales place.
- Relational service model. A relational service business model is a more friendly approach. It’s a far softer sales approach and will often rely on the loyalty of customers and the satisfaction with their experience and product to make returns to the business. This is generally used in beauty shops that sell soaps, such as Lush.
Concluding thoughts
When it comes to growing your ecommerce business further, you want to make sure that you make the best decisions, so you don’t have to go back on yourself. It is natural to want to jump straight into the process, but you need to consider two very important factors: how you can save money when expanding your business, and how you can help your sales increase by appealing to your audience.
There are many ways in which you can do this, but the two above are probably the easiest and most direct ways of helping your business grow in the future.