How to manage an e-commerce?

Creating and managing an online business, and above all a successful one, is not an easy task. It requires a lot of planning, investment and hard work, but if all of this is done well, the return could be quite good. If you have already managed to achieve good results in the world of traditional business, then managing an e-commerce business in a professional manner will be quite easy for you.

Today, companies around the world that are looking to position themselves more effectively on the Internet cannot limit themselves to just a corporate website that provides information. Today, e-commerce has gained power and has established itself as an excellent business avenue for those who want to take advantage of its possibilities. This does not only occur with large companies or brands, it also covers entrepreneurs who start their business through online commerce.

In this article we are going to teach you how to manage an e-commerce in eight steps. Keep reading to find out everything:

How to manage an e-commerce in 8 steps?

1. Conduct an environmental analysis

To face the challenge of launching and managing an e-commerce, it is essential to draw up a business plan. Every professional project needs to take the first step by carrying out an analysis of the environment that allows to know the details of all the factors that affect the project, and based on this, to determine the commercial strategy to follow.

Environmental analysis is divided into two main elements:

✔ External analysis: you must evaluate your competitors' digital strategy, from their e-commerce platform to their social networks.
✔ Internal analysis: the company and resources such as products, economy, brand image, positioning, among others, must be evaluated.

2. Identify the competitive advantage

Once the niche to which the business is going to be directed has been identified, it is necessary to identify what the competitive advantage is compared to competitors or potential competitors. It is important to identify the competitive advantage of interest to the public to which the business is going to be directed in order to then communicate and position itself in the market.

3. Ensure user experience

When creating an e-commerce from scratch, several factors need to be taken into account, such as design and usability. But, above all, we must aim and try to provide a user experience that is friendly, simple and attractive.

At this point, designing a good user experience is essential and can be created through attractive templates that are adaptable to any device. In addition, a good description of the products must be made, including their color, size and shape, their characteristics, type of material, their functionality or efficiency and the benefits that the product provides. This way you will make clear what its value is.

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4. Choose the right platform

Hiring a good hosting service is essential to provide a good experience in any e-commerce , but we also know that the challenge is much greater for companies or brands that have been operating in physical stores for years, as they have to adapt the entire offline business system to the online business.

Once you have created the e-commerce website, you face two realities, the first is direct intervention through the website, and second, entering a Facebook marketplace or an online shopping center like Mercado Libre.

5. Offer different payment methods

Part of the success of managing an e-commerce site is based on the ease with which users make payments. A user may abandon a purchase if they do not find payment methods that are adapted to their needs.

6. Consider logistics services

In many countries around the world, the growth of e-commerce has influenced changes in product storage and delivery, promoting the development of new processes in the logistics of physical stores. Ultimately, the goal of all this is to offer customers a satisfactory shopping experience.

When managing an e-commerce you must take into account the following logistical aspects:

✅ Warehouse: If your business is aimed at offering services, this point is irrelevant, but if it is the opposite, and we sell products, you must have a place where these products are stored and distributed.

✅ Stock control: the best way to maintain good stock control is to have a good enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

✅ Shipping: It is important to ensure that you have an efficient delivery service in which the product arrives in perfect delivery conditions and in the shortest possible time.

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7. Define communication strategies

Once you have set up your e-commerce , it's time to sell through a good campaign and communication strategy. To make your virtual store visible among the thousands of e-commerce sites on the market, it is necessary to invest in SEO positioning.

An excellent strategy to boost the SEO positioning of your e-commerce is to integrate a blog into it. There you can add articles with content related to what you sell, using keywords and links that redirect to the products or services.

On the other hand, social media is a great tool to promote and publicize your communication strategy. With social media you can generate traffic to your website.

8. Measure the results of the strategy

It is extremely important to measure the behavior and results that your strategy is generating within your e-commerce, in this way you will be able to correct and improve the strategy. To do this, you can use key performance indicators (KPIs), which are those that allow you to analyze the results of a website. For these analyses you can use platforms such as Google Analytics, SEMrush, among others.

The main KPIs that must be taken into account for any e-commerce are:

✅ Traffic sources
✅ Conversion rate
✅ Buyback rate
✅ Recommendations
✅ Shared
✅ Interactions on your website

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, online business growth has slowed, which is why managing an e-commerce is a necessary factor as a tool to improve online sales.