5 New Year's resolutions to maximise your online sales
How is your eCommerce company going to maximise its sales this year? Join us as we run through 5 resolutions that could make all the difference.
As you clear away the remains of New Year's Eve, your mind will inevitably turn to work. How are you going to maximise sales for your eCommerce store this year?
Research has shown that "approach-oriented" resolutions are easier to keep than "avoidance-oriented" ones. What this means is that promising yourself to eat more fruit and veg is more likely to succeed than promising yourself that you'll cut out pizza.
How can we translate this into resolutions for your business? Well, it's important to set yourself goals that are manageable, measurable and malleable. You don't want a goal that's too big, too vague or too rigid.
In that spirit, here are five resolutions you could make this year to help your business bloom.
1. Make your meetings count
Do you find yourself haunted by the phrase, "This meeting could have been an email"? Do you attend meetings with one eye on your ever-expanding to-do list? You're most certainly not alone.
This year, why not try to reduce the number of meetings to make those that do happen really matter? You may find that it gives a much-needed leg-up to productivity.
This is something that Shopify implemented at the start of 2023: a so-called "calendar purge". The eCommerce titan made staff cancel any recurring meetings with more than three participants. Oh, and Wednesdays were a no-meeting zone.
While "Make your meetings count" might sound vague, you can concretise it in line with your company's resources and personnel. Look at how many weekly meetings you have now and make precise, surgical cuts. We strongly suspect you won't regret it.
2. Reflect and refine
Today's cloud-based economy is rich in data. Every business owner is like a dragon sitting on a treasure trove of the stuff. But too often, they don't put it to work.
Data alone is about as much use as a velvet raincoat. But with a bit of reflection and analysis, data can turn into insights, and insights can turn into actions.
Now that the year is nearly over, take a good look at your sales data and extract some insights for 2024. Which products did well? Which flopped? Which performed differently across the year? Were there seasonal trends? How did your marketing campaigns go?
The beginning of the year is a great opportunity to shake things up. Don't let it pass without some serious reflection and refinement.
3. Streamline
Whatever stage of your eCommerce journey you're at, you're likely to come out of the Christmas period feeling a little bit stretched. Hopefully, your yawn is one of satisfaction as well as exhaustion – but however the sales period went, you're probably asking yourself if there are any ways you can streamline operations.
If you haven't considered it already, outsourcing fulfilment can be a great help. Essentially, it hands over the practicalities of deliveries and returns to a third party – but not just any third party. This is a third-party company with its own infrastructure – an infrastructure that, it's fair to say, is probably beyond your current means.
That means you can hand the reins over to an experienced, resourced company. No more will you sellotape parcels in an over-caffeinated haze as your long-term business goals turn to vapour. You can rest assured that all your orders will be fulfilled, your customers satisfied and your own workload reduced.
It's not a solution that's right for anyone – but if you're starting to find it hard to balance fulfilment with your other duties, it could be just what you need as you set off on another year.
4. Add another sales channel
If you don't have a brick-and-mortar shop, you need to multiply your sales outlets. If you rely exclusively on one platform, you're massively restricting your potential reach.
Shopify users will find this especially easy. One of the platform's many advantages is its multi-channel approach. It makes it so easy to integrate sales channels and keep track of your inventory, orders and customers all from one dashboard.
It allows you to sell through your online store, through its own "Shop" channel, through Facebook and Instagram and via a "buy" button on your own website or blog.
Are any of those platforms missing from your arsenal? Then maybe 2024 is the year you open up some new selling opportunities.
5. Finesse your marketing
Speaking directly to customers has always been essential for new and expanding businesses. It's been that way since the days when print advertisements and billboards were the only ways to do it.
Now, we have direct access to customers in the form of marketing emails and social media. Are you making it count?
If this sounds too vague for you, your resolution could be to carve some time out of every week to sit down and look at your analytics. How many emails are getting opened? How many links are getting clicked? What could you do to hook people in more successfully?
Or you could set yourself a new target: a weekly newsletter rather than fortnightly, say, or designing – and sticking to – a content calendar. It's worth experimenting with different ideas and seeing what works. Are people most responsive to storytelling or to bonus-related content? Is it sales and offers that get the most traffic to your store or new products?
Pinning this down isn't easy, but if you schedule an afternoon a week to think about it, you'll soon notice the difference.
Final thoughts
The beginning of the year can be a time when sales – and spirits – droop. This year, why not turn this downtime into thinking time?
By setting your company manageable, measurable goals, you increase your chances of increasing your chances. So don't delay. Think about the resolutions you can make to maximise your sales in 2024.
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