Insanely Clever Marketing

Selling Online Isn’t Hard – So Why Make Life Difficult For Yourself?

Posted by Penelope Herbert on December 5, 2016 · 1 Comment 

Selling online and running an online retail business shouldn’t be hard. But a combination of a lack of experience and sheer stubbornness can make it that way for the majority of entrepreneurs who start up in e-commerce.

The main problem with selling online, as with so many retail businesses, is in managing the products. Often, if you start your business from home, the entire house can be inundated with stock, leaving you clambering over boxes of shoes and TVs, just to tuck your children into bed at night.

The good news is that there is a better way. Here’s how to make selling online a lot easier for both you and the people around you.

Get The Technical Side Sorted

Many online retailers have set up shop without any technical expertise or help whatsoever. Thanks to helpful online tools, like Ebay, many don’t have to. But without a tech person by your side, it gets harder and harder to progress in the industry and implement the features you need.

Many entrepreneurs go directly to web developers to get their platforms sorted, even if they have a tiny budget. Often, once a website is up and running, it’s clear to the owner what else needs to be done to make the site more user-friendly and engaging.

Then, of course, there is the ordering, warehousing and HR. Trying to manage the whole lot using spreadsheets is practically impossible, especially if you happen to have a large team or are shifting a lot of stock.

What most online retailers need is proper ERP retail solution that can integrate all of those separate systems into one, easy to navigate package. Fortunately, the technology and the support for small businesses to manage their back-end operations has expanded and improved dramatically over the last few years.

Now, at the end of 2016, many of these tools are better and cheaper than ever, taking away the need for online retail business owners to spend hours doing boring admin work. Again, just like getting the website up and running, this is one part of selling online where investing in technology has a big payoff.

Funding Can Be A Breeze

Entrepreneurs looking to make waves in the online retail space have a habit of thinking big. But that’s not the advice of ecommerce star Caroline Stanbury, founder of a luxury gift online retailer. She says that when she started selling stuff out of her shed, she wasn’t thinking big at all.

Instead, she was focused on nailing her processes and working out what it was that her customer wanted to buy. She sees so many entrepreneurs desperate for immediate success. Her advice is to prepare in advance for when momentum picks up. When ecommerce businesses are growing, they seldom fail to find funding.

What About The Work/Life Balance?

Stanbury admits that it wasn’t always easy to juggle an ecommerce business with her family life. Planning for childcare and schooling was a significant problem. But, she says, that there are rewards too. Like teaching your children about having a strong work ethic, and the fact that they are proud of their mother.

All images courtesy of Pixabay