5 Key areas to expand in your eCommerce business

If your business has seen the same upturn as many online businesses in 2020, you’ll be about ready to expand. There’s more to it than just renting a larger warehouse and hiring more staff. There are many more things to consider, including what should be number one on that list and how you finance that expansion.

Although your business may be enjoying unprecedented success, that is certainly not the case for other sectors within retail. Many high street businesses are struggling or failing, and this is very much the picture that conventional lenders see. This has made them very risk-averse, and it means that you should seek a specialist eCommerce loan for your business.

Once funding has been secured, the question arises of where best to spend it. Of course, there are the larger premises and more staff to think bout, but there are five other areas you might also want to consider as priorities.

#1 Image and graphic design

They say a picture paints a thousand words, and nowhere is that more true than in online retail. When a customer can’t get their hands on a product to check it out, the image is all they have to go on, so they need to be of the best quality … and there needs to be plenty of them.

This will probably go beyond whatever resources you at the moment, so it may pay you to get some professional shots done of your stock. After all, your competition probably will.

#2 Website design

Although you probably do a lot of your business through Amazon or eBay, a fair amount will still come in through your website. Now is the time to invest in the design and to improve the UI and UX of your site. The bar for this is often set by Amazon, so your site needs to be as easy to use if you want customers to come back.

#3 SEO

Getting natural traffic for your site is the holy grail in online retail. In a world dominated by two big players, getting people to your site without paying every single time can make a massive difference to your bottom line. Engaging a company to move you up the rankings is definitely part of a long game but has been proven to bear fruit over time.

#4 Hosting

With the upturn in business and the planned increase in traffic from SEO, the last thing you want is for the website to crash because it can’t cope. Many small online retailers have exactly the same type of hosting package as your everyday blogger. If eCommerce sales volumes increase any more, these packages will not be fit for their purpose. So, you should look to upgrade your package or ask your hosting company for a bespoke solution.

#5 Advertising

 Short term solution but one with, if done correctly, near-instant results. It should bring a sudden influx of traffic that should bring in sales and test out the effectiveness of other changes that have been made.

In conclusion, it’s not about the thing you can see immediately that you need to consider when expanding a business but look at every piece that makes up your business and see what can be improved with any new funding.