5 Hacks To Increase Your Ecommerce Success

Achieving massive success on your ecommerce business is not easy. You need to know the right strategies to gain more customers and generate a regular flow of sales. Here are 5 hacks that can help you to increase your chances of ecommerce success.

1- Choose A Niche Product Idea

The first step for ecommerce success is to find a product that is able to solve the problem of the users. Now, these users must belong to a specific niche meaning you can target women between 30-50 years of age if you are selling an ageing cream or you can target men between 20-40 years of age if you are selling protein supplements. Whatever your product, you need to choose a niche in order to be successful. Always remember that niche products must serve a specific segment of customers.

Once you are able to find your niche, decide whether you want to manufacture the products yourself or find a manufacturer or supplier for your product idea. I suggest, it is best to find a manufacturer because it will pose less risk and you need not to worry about high initial investment.

2- List Your Products On Major Online Portals and Niche Portals

The next step is to list your products on major online portals like Amazon, Ebay, Flipkart, Alibaba etc. This will give you a chance to display your products across a wide number of niche audiences. These online portals generally charges a commission after you are able to achieve a sale. Hence, there is no cost burden involved.

Besides, you must also list your products on niche portals like Etsy if you are selling gifts and Mercato, if you are selling groceries. This will help you to expand your market extensively.

It is also recommended to list your website on the top business directories because this will help you boost your SEO.

3 – Trust Timeless Productivity Boosting Method – Ivy Lee Method

At the start of a business, you would be Thomas Edison called Charles M Schwab, the President of Bethlehem Steel Corporation, the ‘master hustler’. Schwab, always in the quest for bettering his team’s productivity, hired a consultant Ivy Lee, who explained a simple 5 step method of work planning and execution to Schwab’s company executives. Legend has it that Lee’s method worked wonders.

This one’s the Ivy Lee method:

• Before closing a workday, write down the most important 6 things to be done the next day
• Set a priority/rank to each of the action items
• Next day, start with the highest priority task, and get it done
• Once done, only then move to the next task
• Move unfinished tasks to the next day’s list, and keep on repeating the process

The Ivy Lee method clearly values the idea of deep work, focus, and single tasking, as opposed to the breakneck and stressful lifestyle of multitasking. You can even use Evernote to implement Ivy Lee’s method.

4- Use The Pomodoro Method To Perform Several Tasks With Ease

The Ivy Lee method I discussed above works perfectly for people who have a limited number of time consuming tasks to do every day. There are, of course, ecommerce businessmen who need to complete several tasks everyday, most of which are done in short bursts. For them, there’s the Pomodoro method.

Author and entrepreneur Francesco Cirillo invented this method back in the early 90s. The idea is to divide large work portions into small chunks, and complete each chunk in a short time period. These short bursts of time of high intensity work are called Pomodoros. The focus is on improving your attention span and concentration, helping you get more work done in the process. The system also keeps you motivated with the prize of frequent breaks. Tomato Timer is a pretty useful tool to help you get started with the Pomodoro method.

5- Use Cloud Based Tools

Success in ecommerce is dependent on the quality of digital tools you use to automate tasks. From scheduling meetings to setting up email drip sequences, from storing your data securely to collaborate on documents on the move – there’s a lot to be done, and there are lots of tools to be used.

Cloud based tools offer you the following productivity focused benefits:

• Starting off is easy; just sign up to the cloud based software service and start using the tool, right away.
• No time to spend in infrastructure provisioning, security upkeep, or maintenance of software – the cloud solution provider does it all.
• Getting additional resources provisioned is super easy; no wastage of time in contract renewals, contract upgrades, sign offs, etc.

Here’s a quick look through the most useful and productivity boosting cloud based tools for ecommerce businesses.

• Communications and commerce enablement tools like Asana, Click Meeting, and Shopify.
• Security and network monitoring tools such as Bitdefender Antivirus.
• Financial management solution such as Quickbooks and Surepayroll.
• Marketing automation tools such as MailChimp and HootSuite or Omnichannel marketing tool Omnisend.
• Content Management Systems such as Wordpress.

Final Thoughts

Success in ecommerce is not easy especially due to the rising competition. Most of the ecommerce startups fail within the first year of their launch. Use the above 5 hacks to increase your chances of raising sales and gain more customers.