Discover the essential strategies for optimizing your catalog, choosing the best sales channels, exploiting the potential of BtoB sales and adopting an omnichannel approach. Don’t let the competition beat you to the punch, take the lead with e-commerce best practices that will make all the difference in boosting your business.
Sales and distribution dynamics are constantly evolving in e-commerce. Add to this increased competition and changing customer expectations, and every e-tailer needs to embrace innovative and effective sales strategies.
To help you make the right strategic choices for your online business, we surveyed 300 e-tailers. In this article, we invite you to discover some of the best e-commerce practices to adopt.
Analyze your catalog and its capabilities to sell effectively on your e-commerce site
Among the first e-commerce best practices to adopt, we find theanalysis of your catalog, but also of your capacities. This step enables you to clearly identify how to adapt not only your logistics, but also the management of your e-commerce as a whole, and therefore your sales.
First of all, it’s important to understand the composition of your catalog. If you have 500 or 3,000 items, you won’t have the same approach to sales and warehouse management.
Next, you need to identify products that require special logistics management, such as those with best-before dates (BBDs), specific packaging requirements or customized products. In the same way, the very nature of your products plays a crucial role in your management, so analyze your catalog according to the physical characteristics of your products, such as their weight, size… This will help you determine not only whether you have the necessary resources to manage these products efficiently, but also which sales channels are the most suitable, and even the most profitable, for your business.
Analyzing your capabilities is the other facet of these first e-commerce best practices. This involves taking into account your human, technical and financial resources.
On the human front, you need to assess your team’s skills and ability to handle the volume of business. Technically, evaluate your current tools: are they adapted to your sales volume and the complexity of your catalog? Can you integrate new functionalities, or do you need to consider upgrading or changing your tools? Finally, from a financial point of view, it’s essential to examine your budget.
This introspection will not only give you a new vision of your business, it will also enable you to choose your sales channels wisely! Nevertheless, such an analysis raises a number of questions. How can you optimally manage your warehouse with products subject to shelf life expiration in food logistics? How can I ensure that my references are traceable by batch or serial number? Or how do you manage replenishments when you have several hundred references in your catalog?
Choosing your distribution channels: what are the best e-commerce practices?
The choice of distribution channels is a strategic decision that can determine the success or failure of your business in the marketplace. Did you know that the majority of retailers sell via 2 or 3 channels? And with good reason: the world of online sales offers a myriad of channels, each with its own advantages.
CMS
Firstly, content management systems, commonly known as CMS, are an excellent resource. These platforms give you total latitude in terms of the design, content and functionality of your e-commerce site.
Having complete control over your site means you can customize it to faithfully reflect your brand’s image. Find out how to choose the best CMS in our article.
Marketplaces
Secondly, marketplaces are another popular avenue for e-tailers. They offer increased visibility for your products thanks to their broad user base, which is particularly advantageous for small businesses looking to make a name for themselves. Specialized marketplaces can also offer a targeted audience, increasing the likelihood that your products will meet the interest of the right audience.
Whether it’s adopting a strategy on generalist marketplaces or operating on specialized marketplaces, the latter are probably the best e-commerce practices to adopt, in view of changing consumer buying habits.
Private sales
Finally, private sales are an interesting sales channel. By offering significant discounts, they are an excellent way of quickly clearing out surplus or end-of-season products. Attractive discounts can also attract new customers and strengthen the loyalty of existing ones. Because of their ephemeral nature, they help increase your brand’s visibility and awareness.
Each of these channels has its own strengths, and choosing which ones to use comes with its own set of questions. How many channels do you need? What are the best e-commerce practices for selling on each of them? How do you manage the logistics of each of these channels? Do you have sufficient logistics in place to meet the demands of marketplaces and private sales? And, if not, how can you improve it?
Consider BtoB as a growth area
The BtoB market can offer enormous growth opportunities for your company. Considering BtoB as a development axis can enable you to broaden your customer base, increase your sales volume and benefit from long-term contracts. There are a number of e-commerce best practices for choosing how and why to enter the BtoB market.
Let’s take the example of a company that sells electronic devices. It could sell individual computers to individual customers, while selling them by the fleet to a company looking to equip an entire office. It’s the same product, but the target is different.
BtoB is not just about selling to professionals for their own use. You could also become a supplier to a company that processes or resells your products. For example, you could supply ingredients to a restaurant, or decorative items to a retail store which then sells them individually. Again, it’s the same product, but the target is different and the end product is different.
In both of the above cases, we’re talking more or less about direct sales, i.e. your product is addressed directly to the target audience. There are other opportunities to explore for expanding your BtoB market. An interesting strategy is to sell your stock to companies who will resell your products individually.
Considering the BtoB market as an area for development offers many opportunities to expand your customer base and boost your revenues. But, once again, many questions arise. How can you combine BtoC and BtoB sales within the same logistics chain? Which companies should you address your BtoB sales to? How do you choose the BtoB channels best suited to your situation?
Adopting an omnichannel strategy: essential e-commerce best practices
Embracing an omnichannel strategy in your e-commerce business can bring many benefits and contribute to your success. Our study reveals that 78% of e-tailers are moving towards an omnichannel sales strategy.
Omnichannel e-commerce means selling your products or services via several sales channels, such as your website, marketplaces, social networks, or even physical stores if you have them.
One of the main benefits of omnichannel marketing is the possibility of gaining visibility with a wider audience. By being present on multiple channels, you increase the chances of being found by potential new customers. What’s more, it allows you toreach different market segments and reach consumers who prefer to buy on a specific channel.
Another reason to adopt an omnichannel strategy is toincrease your sales volume. By being present on several channels, you expand your sales opportunities and make it easier for consumers to access your products or services. You can also diversify strategic risks in the event of difficulties on a specific channel.
What’s more, it’s essential to deliver a consistent and harmonious experience to your customers, whatever channel they use. This means that your marketing messages, customer service and brand image must be consistent across all channels. You also need to offer flexible payment and delivery options to suit customer preferences.
In short, adopting an omnichannel strategy in your business brings with it a host of e-commerce best practices that you shouldn’t overlook, enabling you to broaden your visibility, increase your sales and diversify your risks. However, new challenges are emerging! How can you synchronize your inventory across all your sales channels? How do you collect orders from all your sales channels?
Adopt best e-commerce practices with Shippingbo
To combat increasingly intense competition and meet ever-changing customer expectations,adopting good e-commerce practices is essential to success. Whatever your choice of logistics model, it’s crucial to guarantee the reach of your distribution channels and seize all the growth levers at your disposal.
By choosing your sales channels wisely and adopting an omnichannel strategy, you can not only maintain your e-commerce business, but also see it flourish. However, implementing such strategies often raises a number of questions. That’s why we interviewed 300 e-tailers to find out about their best practices and share them with you.
Discover ALL the results of the study by downloading it now!
