Is your store stagnating? Are your sales figures no longer growing? Does it feel like there’s just no momentum behind your ecommerce store? If so, it might be time for some tough love. Here are 6 reasons why you can’t scale your ecommerce store. Because we care.
Your customer base is too small
We’ve seen it time and time again. Someone comes up with a great idea for a business based on a small niche, makes a business based on this niche, and then fails to ever expand beyond that. We’re not saying that your shop needs to sell everything (the aim isn’t to be Wal-Mart), but you shouldn’t limit yourself to one audience that will never grow.
You aren’t pursuing enough funding
Funding makes the ecommerce world go ‘round. We’ll put it this way: your business isn’t going to grow if you don’t have any cash to invest into it. And while you can hope for your revenue to grow enough to allow you to invest money back into the business, the smarter (and more proactive) idea is to be constantly on the lookout for great sources of funding.
Your customer support isn’t good enough
It can be really easy to focus on the practical side of an ecommerce business rather than the personal side. Customer support and satisfaction doesn’t feel as urgent when you are separated from your buyers by a screen. But don’t let that illusion get the best of you! Invest in customer support no matter what. It makes a huge difference.
You don’t have a community
Buyers want to feel like they’re part of something more than just a transaction. That’s why the most successful businesses develop a sense of brand loyalty – or, in other words, a sense of community. A great way to do this is via social media. Get to it if you haven’t already!
Your business seems unprofessional
This might sound harsh, but a lot of early-stage ecommerce businesses fail because they don’t go the extra mile to actually look professional. Make sure your pictures are high resolution. Make sure your copy is coherent and spell checked. Have a friend look over all of your stuff to see if it looks like a legit business or not. You might be surprised.
You rely on seasonal business
You might not know it, but it’s possible that your business relies on seasonal buying activity. One way to check this is by looking at a graph of your sales over time. If it continually spikes and falls based on predictable changes in time, you may want to look for ways to fill in those seasonal gaps.
