Few would argue that the hardest part of starting an e-commerce business is ensuring its success. For what it's worth, you can quit your day job and focus on your business full time.
However, once you get a high enough profit margin to make yourself icing on the cake, you will almost certainly have to face many new challenges. If not handled properly, these challenges can turn into full-blown migraine headaches. Fortunately, there is a cure for everyone! Let's dive in.
1. The fulfillment of e-commerce is too much for you
When you're just starting out as an entrepreneur in a small business, you usually do everything yourself. You are responsible for everything from sourcing your product to packaging it to shipping it, and giving up control over any part of the telephone number list process seems unfathomable.
But when you become successful enough, you have to do it.
The first thing to do is order fulfillment – after all, you are not a small business owner because you are good at packing orders! You have great ideas, you can fill gaps in the market, you can connect with customers. Fulfilling orders is the most important thing - what used to be confusing to customers was delayed shipments - but you don't need to do it yourself. This is when you need to turn to a third-party fulfillment center (3PL) to do the telephone number list hard work for you.
While giving up this control can be scary (after all, clients won't blame your 3PL for mistakes, they will), you can prevent problems by knowing exactly what your needs are from the 3PL. Each company offers unique professional services and a variety of services - such as specialization for small packages and a vast network of international warehouses, or specialization for low order volumes and strategically located warehouses across the United States. To fully meet your needs, try using the question list to make sure you know what to look for when you start your search.
2. The free version of any tool you use won't cut it
"You get what you pay for" is the adage, and it tends to be word for word, but sometimes you can get quality stuff with labor (by learning how to do it yourself) rather than money. (by paying someone who is already an expert). However, at some point, $0 qualified quality just wasn't good enough.
One of the many problems startups are trying to solve is a website—to be fair, there are plenty of great options from WordPress to Squarespace. But in order to stand out and have the quality you need for a growing ecommerce business, you need a customized website . By paying someone to create a website for you, you can prioritize fast load speeds, mobile optimization, and other integrations that a prefab might not offer. This is critical because slow page loads and inaccessibility on mobile devices are the two biggest conversion killers.
There is one more situation that may apply: a third-party site hosts all your products, such as Amazon or Ebay. These won't have any of the issues listed above, you'll get the benefits of a fixed audience, but you'll be subject to all their policies, including any fees and advertising algorithms they decide to implement. If you feel like your platform isn't enough, it's time to have your own website.
In addition to upgrading your website from a free to a paid version, you'll also want to consider more than free but limited marketing tools (such as MailChimp or Ahrefs) and buy a premium, more powerful version.
3. More hyped influencers
You've no doubt read articles praising influencer marketing over the past few years - and indeed, they do help small businesses. Find the right influencer target audience and you'll get a lot of exposure.