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How To Scale Your Ecommerce Business Into 2023

A group of people strategizing the scaling of an ecommerce business in 2023.

Ecommerce is one of the most profitable business endeavors one may engage in after its demand has increased drastically, thanks to the pandemic. Ecommerce forecasts show that its popularity is only going to increase year-over-year.

By the end of 2022, global e-commerce sales are expected to increase from $4.28 trillion (in 2020) to $5.4 trillion, which is more than 25%, and a trillion dollars in just two years. It is a flourishing, competitive environment, and it won't be wrong to say that the boom in e-commerce will continue for a long time.

Since e-commerce is flourishing, competition is intense as well. You can either adapt or fail miserably. Therefore, as the owner of an online store, your attention should always be on the future, looking for growth prospects wherever and whenever possible. Even if your company is expanding on its own, you still need to take several steps to keep up. 

 

So let's scale your business to its utmost potential. This guide examines the most crucial areas to concentrate on to help you successfully scale your e-commerce business into 2023. 

Why Should You Scale Your eCommerce Business?

E-commerce scalability is the ability to expand your e-commerce platform to match the demands of your company's online development. Once you have set a strong foundation for your e-commerce business, you should be looking for ways to scale it in order to increase your profits. 

Scaling a business successfully makes all the difference between experiencing a sudden increase in sales and having every procedure fall apart and experiencing a sudden increase in sales while managing every order efficiently and providing excellent customer service. 

Scaling your business sustainably will require proper planning, knowledge, and financing, as well as being equipped to tackle any difficulties that may arise. 

In addition, a Google study found that 53% of mobile users will leave a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Having an eCommerce site that can easily scale to fit your web store's increasing traffic is therefore essential.

What is the difference between scaling and growing your business?

Most people mistakenly think that scaling an online business is the same as growing one. What makes the two different, then?

Growing a business is the process of generating more revenue by utilizing additional resources such as employees, investors, and product offerings. In this way, the company expands in size but may not always turn a profit.

Take the situation where you already have 4,000 customers and gain 10,000 more. Then, in order to help you serve your new customers, you will need to hire more customer service agents and delivery personnel, among other things. Therefore, operating costs will increase as your business grows.

Scaling, on the other hand, is the process of increasing profit without significantly raising costs. In other words, you generate more money while maintaining or even decreasing your overhead.

By scaling your business, you can serve the newly gained 10,000 customers we discussed in the above example without materially raising your costs. Additionally, because the process has been automated, just two or three customer support agents are now needed instead of ten more.

11 Tips to Scale Your Ecommerce Business into 2023

1. Planning

The ideal course of action would be to plan and prepare for your e-commerce company's expansion. The initial step is to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of your business, look for opportunities to expand your reach, and establish goals. But setting unachievable goals and objectives is useless.

Your objectives should be driven by facts instead. So take some time to research your competitors, identify the areas in which you can make adjustments to better support your goals, and then develop a step-by-step plan describing the steps you'll need to take to get there.

2. Put automation in place.

It's common to discover that you spend more time on some tasks while neglecting others. Automation is your way out.

In fact, the future of e-commerce is automation, which can help you save time and money by minimizing the time and resources you usually spend on repetitive tasks. By automating processes, you can make the most of your resources and free up your time to focus on other important activities, like developing a content strategy or advertising campaigns. For example, if you’re able to get automation out of the way, you’ll have more time for things like hosting a podcast or running webinars, which can not only spread your brand awareness but also your name as an expert.  At best, automation establishes the basis for increased sales.

For example, you can automate your email to send automated introductory emails, promotions, surveys, abandoned cart emails, and re-engagement emails using an e-commerce platform.

3. Develop an SEO plan.

The future is bright for SEO. Nowadays, there are specific SEO best practices for each industry that you must implement. Your products or services need to appear at the top of the search results since customers are constantly looking for solutions to their problems. Also, ensure that your product listings are optimized for both voice and text-based searches.

In fact, you should go a step further and make your product videos search engine friendly as well. You can use transcripts and thumbnails to further improve the videos' SEO. Developing natural backlinks is the final step in raising the Domain Authority (DA) of your website. 

These all-encompassing SEO initiatives will put your brand in clients' minds, increasing brand recall. 

4. Deliver top-notch customer service

It is essential to provide your customers with the greatest possible buying experience. Your customer service department resolves the grievances and promotes your brand. If you want clients to remember you, it is crucial that you pay attention to this area. Make sure to manage refunds and replacements properly because happy consumers are more likely to think highly of you and come back.

5. Use social media to interact with your customers.

According to research, users of social media platforms spend an average of almost two hours every day using them, and communicating with businesses has become a popular social activity. Social commerce is one of the biggest trends in the future of retail and brands should focus on spending more resources to build a strong online presence and community.

Social media could be a useful way of increasing brand awareness, but it's also crucial to use these channels to interact with your present clientele and foster enduring brand loyalty.

Think about collaborating with an influencer whose work and audience also appeal to your target market. Then, remember to reply to and interact with everyone who engages with your business on social media.

6. Gather reviews and ratings.

We cannot talk about an e-commerce business scaling without mentioning reviews. According to a Bizrate Insights poll, one of the key factors influencing whether buyers will buy a product is its rating or review score. Additionally, before making a purchase, the majority of customers check up to 10 reviews.

Reviews do more than just affect customers' purchase decisions.

  • Boost customer confidence: Most customers are more likely to purchase from you after reading reputable evaluations.
  • Increase CTRs (click-through rates): If a buyer is on the edge about making a purchase, a large number of convincing reviews may persuade them to do so, resulting in increased sales.
  • Enhance the customer experience: Insights from consumer feedback helps to improve the customer experience. You gain an understanding of the client's journey and learn about your strengths and opportunities for development.
  • Improve your search engine rankings: Responding to reviews demonstrates to Google that you appreciate client feedback. As a result, the search engine promotes positive and high-quality customer reviews by increasing their prominence.

7. Retarget your customers

You should not just focus on bringing in new clients, but also the ones who were almost ready to make a purchase. Retargeting prior visitors who left without making a purchase is a smart marketing tactic. The typical cart abandonment rate is well about 70%, according to statistics. That is a lot.

To prevent this, persuade customers to finish their purchases through persuasive, well-written emails and targeted social media advertisements. Despite how simple it may appear, many e-commerce platforms, like Shopify, offer you to automate the abandoned cart recovery procedure.

8. Sell your products on multiple marketplaces.

If you're simply selling your products through your website, you're missing out on several opportunities to boost your sales by selling on different marketplaces, which is becoming more and more common in 2022.

This goes beyond just enrolling in the Brand Services program at Amazon, but you should use it if you haven't previously. This way, numerous smaller firms can collaborate through niche web markets in order to target specific customers.

9. Collaborate with influencers.

Customers are more likely to purchase a product from a brand that another person has suggested. According to Forbes, word-of-mouth advertising is more successful than brand advertising. Because of this, you should collaborate with influencers who have the same audience as you. 

Don't, however, limit yourself to pursuing the most well-known influencers. Partner with people that can add the most value to your business and who will probably connect with your products.

10. Create a strategy for affiliate marketing.

In addition to influencers, affiliates can increase awareness and bring traffic to your website. You can't establish personal ties with each influencer. Therefore, you must let individuals join you voluntarily. Affiliates will promote your company in return for a commission. It is a simple strategy that requires little work to expand your online store.

11. Invest in paid advertising.

All forms of paid advertising on internet platforms are collectively referred to as “paid marketing”. Paid advertising includes everything, whether it be search engines or social media advertising. It is a comparatively easy method of brand promotion. Although it can produce speedy results, it is very expensive. You must, therefore, exercise extraordinary caution and judgment.

Conclusion

Even if expanding an online store is difficult, it can be facilitated with careful preparation and sensible tactics. We hope the tactics described in this article will help you if your e-commerce business is at the expansion stage.

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