Mistakes happen, failure happens too, and every once in a while all businesses encounter certain problems.
As a business owner, you are prone to experience difficulties on your path towards success. Especially if you are in the eCommerce industry.
This industry is slowly becoming oversaturated with millions of online store owners from all parts of the globe. Hence, experiencing stalls and difficulties in this field shouldn’t come as a surprise.
But what can you do when you get stuck in a rut? You can’t sit tight and wait out. If you don’t take responsibility, if you don’t take action in times of adversity, you will never be able to recover.
So, let’s see what you can do during the difficult times of your business’s life. Consider the tips below and fight the rut with fortitude!
Retarget your loyal customers
The biggest misconception of most businesses nowadays is that the growth halt they experience is due to the lack of new customers.
No, your business hasn’t stopped growing only because you don’t have enough customers. Do not force all your resources into finding new customers. That could be a costly endeavor with detrimental effects.
Instead, try to invest in a good customer retention strategy. In this adverse hour, you need to rely more on customer loyalty, and less on a higher-risk attempt to gain new customers.
If you don’t think that your loyal customers can get you back on track, you are wrong.
Customers who have already shopped on your website not only add more items to their shopping carts than the newcomers, but they also generate more revenue each time they visit and always have a higher conversion rate.
This might seem obvious, but so many owners turn to new customers when it’s really time to seek help from the current ones.
In addition, it is much more cost-efficient to go after your existing customers than to acquire new ones.
The people who have already shopped at your store before know what your brand represents. They also know how to use your products, so there is no learning curve.
Therefore, you need to focus on improving their experience. Reward loyalty. Because the loyal ones are the lifeline of your business.
Make your products shine
People sometimes get bored of seeing the same old things on a regular basis. And, this also applies to the eCommerce world.
When you are muscling through a period of low sales figures and everything that follows along with that, you need to do everything to make your products seem better and nicer.
But, that doesn’t mean that you need to completely change your brand’s image and website design. What you should do, however, is to make your product photos and descriptions better.
No one will advise you to upload photos and images that do not accurately represent what you are selling. However, are you sure that every product photo and description is as good as possible?
Did you do everything to make your products shine?
Firstly, you need to check your product images. They need to be top-notch because people rely heavily on the visual appeal before they buy.
If you are not so sure that you have great product photos, think about a photo session. If you rely on stock photos, you might want to introduce your own. Stock photos aren’t necessarily bad, but you should be more authentic if you want to make your products shine.
Of course, you could use a professional camera to take high-resolution photos. But, you should also introduce some novelties.
These can be ghost mannequins if you are selling clothes. Or, you could maybe look for the best clipping path solution if you are selling accessories. It all depends on your niche.
Whatever you opt for, the photos need to look top-notch.
When it comes to product descriptions, you need to write detailed descriptions that accurately tell someone what your products are, how they can help, and what they can expect of them.
SEO plays an important role even here. So, that is yet another thing that you should think about. But, let’s not complicate things now.
For a start, try to improve your images and descriptions, and optimise as much as you can.
Niche down
Do not build your business around a large number of products. Instead, build your business around products that are selling like hotcakes.
Many make this mistake of broadening their offer way too much. Do not do this, especially during the times when you need to bounce back by raking in more revenue.
Do not stretch your business too thin by trying to do too many things at the same time. Instead, focus on one niche and emphasise the products that are doing well.
Back in 1996, after operating at a financial loss for years, Steve Jobs came back to Apple – a company that was suffering. In order to revive them, Jobs killed off many projects and only focused on innovating personal computers. That is how iMac was born.
Think about that. Your company may not be as big as Apple, but there are definitely things that you can learn from this story.
Try to cut unnecessary expenses
It sometimes isn’t easy to cut unnecessary expenses. But, during the time of stagnation, you simply have to do it.
Even if it means letting someone go.
It all depends on the size of your company, but try to find things or assets that are costing you good money while not actually returning much of an investment.
For instance, many companies are trying to save money by hiring remote workers that come at a cheaper price instead of having in-house teams of a dozen people.
In addition, people are slowly realising that it is important to reap all the benefits that technology offers. It may sound unfair, but why should you pay an accountant to do a job that you could do with the help of a program such as Excel.
After all, it will pay off way better if you invest in Excel consulting services to train you or someone from your company than the amount you would have to pay a person to handle finances or sensitive customer data.
If a program can handle data consolidation and trends identification, and if it can also sort data into charts that will tell you where you are wasting your resources and doing something wrong, why not invest in it? It will be way cheaper compared to having a full-time employee.
Offer more discounts
Do not allow your business to keep a backlog of unsold items. Do everything you can to get rid of products that aren’t doing so well. This way, you will be making way for better-selling items.
So, offer more discounts. This will bring you revenue that you can then use to deal with more important matters. And, one of these more important matters might just be creating a new marketing strategy or manufacturing a product with huge potential.
Everyone loves getting a good deal, right? You probably love buying something just because you managed to get a great bargain. So, why not apply this same concept to your store?
Once you have cleared out products that are performing badly in terms of sales, you will have more space for high-potential products that will sell way better.
Remember, clogging your business with unsold items is a sure way to demise. Do not take that path.
Final thoughts
Do not be afraid, stagnation happens even to the best out there. Just be persistent and don’t be afraid of necessary measures that will help you revive your company.
After all, this time of adversity may just be a blessing in disguise. So, take action. Now is the time for that.
