The Hidden Truths About Building & Growing a Successful eCommerce Business

Introduction

At a glance, starting and growing an eCommerce business seem simple enough.

But the gut-wrenching truth no one is telling you?

It’s not.

We bet the events below sound familiar to you.

Find blockbuster products to sell, validate said products through research and testing. Then decide whether you want to dropship or hold inventory. Next, establish your branding and roll out a website that’s optimized to the teeth to squeeze out sales.

Finally, sit back and bask in the sweet sound of your digital cash registers ringing with “explosive revenue”. Unfortunately - like most success stories - you only hear about the exciting events leading to the success.

Entertaining wins like cracking the code to paid traffic, viral ad campaigns, multiple “hit” products soaring in demand, thousands of new repeat customers, and of course, the eventual explosive revenue rise.

But the boring, “dark” technical details rooted beneath the surface of eCommerce success, the type to undermine your efforts and topple your eCommerce business when underestimated?

You don’t hear about them.

• Who’s going to handle support tickets and deal with grumpy customers?
• How do you strike a balance for popular orders on multiple channels?
• What’s your product returns policy?
• What logistical options satisfy customers without sacrificing profit?
• How is fulfillment/shipping being handled?
• How to manage sales tax?
• If you’re manufacturing from overseas, how do you execute quality control?
• When the business starts to blossom, how are you going to hire your first employees without shooting yourself in the foot?
• After your success, how will you handle shady imitators scrounging for a quick buck off your back?
• How has your online store impacted your brick-and-mortar store?

In today’s post, we’re leaving the shallow “3.5 steps to eCommerce success” behind. What follows is a (realistic) gritty guide on all the dynamic dirty details that culminate into a successful, profitable eCommerce business based on our experience working with hundreds of eCommerce businesses in the last 17 years of our existence.

Be prepared, this is a long read aimed at revealing the truth. We’re going to cover the good, bad, the ugly, and damn right uglier.

By the end, you’ll grasp not just the sensationalized eCommerce fruits, but understand the underlooked branches, trunk, and roots that collaborate to create an eCommerce tree ripe for profitable plucking.

Let’s go!

It takes a tribe to start & build a successful eCommerce business

Marshalling your efforts to strengthen one pillar exclusively leads to failure; pillars and sub-pillars are interconnected, sometimes, interdependent. Even neglecting an unimportant sub-pillar can result in a “leaking bucket” type situation.

Because weakness in one pillar destabilizes and stresses others. Which is why sustaining a balanced effort on all three eCommerce pillars, sows the seeds for rapid progression and growth

For example, neglecting everyone’s favorite Saturday morning activity - accounting and taxes - is a recipe for disaster. Yes, poor accounting and taxes invite the tax-man to frisk your pockets and eat your profits. But it also zaps strength from your marketing. How? Because your marketing decisions are now based on skewed sales data and risky revenue numbers that paint a cloudy, inaccurate picture of how your store is truly performing.

Managing your product inventory

 Ask most eCommerce entrepreneurs what their biggest headache is, and they’re most likely to answer: Inventory management.

And for good reason, mess it up, and you’ll burn through profits. Beefing up marketing while neglecting inventory management, is a common mistake. It triggers a negative sequence of events that can crumble your business:

Stronger marketing leads to an increase in sales and customers, that’s great. But what if you fail to adapt to the increase in demand and don’t have a grip on the number of stocked products?

Expect painfully long shipping times, a chaotic fulfillment process, dissatisfied customers, and - to kick you while you're down - negative reviews voiced from the sour taste left in customers’ mouths. Focusing disproportionately on marketing without keeping a keen eye on inventory, perpetuates a self-destructive cycle that damages your marketing/customer service.

The very thing you intended to improve.

So, whether you store inventory in a warehouse, your basement, or a physical store, there are essential variables you need to be aware of. You need to:

1. Maintain an optimal inventory quantity

You should have a minimum level of inventory on hand, at all times. When it dips below your predetermined inventory level, it’s time to order more.

Two crucial questions to consider for optimal quantity are:

1. What’s the current demand for a product/how fast it is selling?
2. How long will it take to refill stock?

This systematizes control over stock; ensuring against overstocking whilst preventing last second panic for more product.

2. Forecast your demand with data

Forecasting demand equips you with the knowledge to tackle seasonal spikes/drops by showing previous sales patterns.

Expecting sales to spike next month? Order extra in advance. Does a big drop in demand seem imminent? Start shifting existing stock while measuring demand. But what if you don’t have past sales data to go off?

You can still anticipate demand, albeit with the cost of accuracy. Without previous sales data, research and trend checking are your best bets. Some go-to’s for trend checking and research are:

• Simply typing in products on Google trends
• Keeping your pulse on trends with Trendwatching
• Social analytics tools to gauge volume of searches for your product

3. Determine your Minimum Stock Levels (MSLs)

You need enough inventory to satisfy demand, but not so much to the point you’re tying up and risking loss of all your capital. That’s why determining your MSL is crucial to proper inventory management and budgeting.

To determine your MSLs, simply revisit your forecasted demand and accommodate for at least 5 days worth of stock to be on standby at any given time.

4. Supplement with dropshipping

Just because you don’t have a dropshipping business, doesn’t mean you can’t use dropshippers to supplement your inventory.

However, don’t just assume your supplier will dropship. Make sure it’s something they offer before integrating in your inventory management. This way, you have a contingency plan if your stocks dwindle unexpectedly. Plus, drop shipping can be used to test new product ideas without causing an inventory nightmare.

5. Centralize your inventory management

Selling solely on a single eCommerce store?

Then centralizing inventory management might not be necessary. But if you sell on multiple marketplaces, multiple sites, or offline, centralizing your inventory to one dedicated system is a must (if you value your time and sanity, anyway).

With inventory management systems, when someone hits “confirm purchase” on their shopping cart, everyone is notified. Who’s that exactly? You, your warehouse, and of course, your supplier.

When the supply of an item drops too low, the supplier gets a heads up to start packing more units and ship them out. The updates to stock levels on all your channels happen in real-time; this process occurs within a matter of seconds.

Recommended inventory management tools or services:

• Sellbrite: Automate listing, syncing, and shipping across all your online sales channels
• ChannelApe: Connect your ERP to multiple sales channels, vendors, and partners quickly and easily
• Quickbooks: Manage your inventory in real time. Keep track of purchase orders, see what is in stock, and reorder from vendors
• Microsoft Dynamics: Enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management applications
• Netsuite: Manage and optimize your global supply chain
• Sage: Track service levels and stock holding, reduce excess inventory, minimize stock-outs and place orders quicker
• MYOB EXO : Fully integrated financial and businesses management system
• ChannelAdvisor: Integrate, manage and optimize product sales across online channels

Shipping: strategies and best practices

With big name brands like Amazon, Nordstrom, and JCPenney all offering free shipping, people now come to expect it.

In fact, a study by UPS revealed that 79% of consumers felt being charged for shipping was their biggest obstacle when purchasing online. People want free shipping, that’s obvious. But just how much of a difference does free shipping make when persuading people to make a purchase?

Research shows that:

• 93% of people feel free shipping on orders would encourage them to purchase more products online
• 67% of online shoppers stated they purchase items in a store instead of online to avoid shipping costs
• Orders that offer free shipping average 30% higher in value than those that charge

But can you afford to offer free shipping without cannibalizing your profit margins? Decide for yourself with these 4 steps:

1. Start by establishing a baseline

A/B test your conversion rates with and without free shipping. This will highlight your potential for boosting conversions and profit.

2. Then, raise the minimum order value for free shipping

The purpose here is to find the tipping point between bounce and conversion. You’re looking for that sweet spot that’s neither too high or low.

3. Next, test offering free shipping only on products that dominate your sales

Preferably, they’ll also have a low shipping cost. If you sell a wide variety of products, give this step a miss.

4. Finally, try combining higher prices with free shipping

Yes, an increase in price can reduce conversions, but the key here is the total combined net effect of the price increase with the conversion decrease. As your store/products grow and change, so will your shipping strategy. Your main shipping options are:

• Free shipping: Will have a positive impact on conversions. If you're just starting out, and want to offer free shipping, one way is to include the shipping fee in the product prices.
• Charge exact shipping costs
• Flat rate shipping: or flat rates for weight ranges, destinations, or cart totals. Balance your own shipping and handling costs with attractive pricing for your customers.

Editor’s note: Shipping can get really complicated.

There’s a plethora of factors that can tally up to extra costs - packaging, total weight, dimensions, the destination of the package - and even your courier. Accurately calculating these factors can spin you into what feels like a “number-crunching coma”.

Fortunately, in Core dna, this is handled automatically.

You can do simple a config such as “free shipping for order above X” to what we call Zone Based Shipping.



Basically, an automated calculation of shipping costs factoring the way products are packed, carriers, dimensions, locations, drop-off or in-store pickup, and many more.

Shipping calculators to the most popular couriers are listed below so you can begin comparing pricing and options.

• USPS - Shipping Calculator
• Canada Post - Shipping Calculator
• UK Royal Mail - Shipping Calculator
• Australia Post - Shipping Calculator
• UPS - Shipping Calculator
• FedEx - Shipping Calculator

UPS or FedEx tend to be the best option for shipping heavier packages and provide better tracking and delivery guarantees. This is accompanied by higher shipping costs, however.

Dimensional (DIM) weight explained

The rise of Amazon and other eCommerce services revolutionized the volume of business carriers like UPS and FedEx move every day. More boxes taking up more space, but not necessarily weighing more, forcing them to find a new way to generate revenue while keeping shipping costs affordable. 

The response was the implementation of Dimensional (DIM) Weight that calculates shipping costs based on the volume (dimensions) of each package. Carriers will determine a DIM weight for each package as well as its standard weight, then apply a formula to each to determine shipping prices. You’re charged the higher of the two prices.

The DIM weight for a specific-sized box is the same regardless of what’s inside, so you might think of it like a flat-rate box as long you’re not shipping something heavy. Here’s another way to think about this:

Let’s say that you sell exercise equipment and you’re shipping a 50 lb. kettlebell to one client and a titanium bike frame to another. Which do you think will cost more to ship?

The kettlebell fits into a 12”x”12”x14” box and applying a standard DIM weight pricing to it, you get a dimensional weight of 15 lbs. for that box. Because the actual weight is higher, you’ll pay a price based on 50 lbs.

But, that titanium bike frame is a different story. It only weighs about 5 pounds, but it requires a much bigger box: 44”x9”x35”. A box of that size has roughly a DIM weight of 100 lbs. You’ll be paying the DIM weight, and it’ll cost you more to ship the bike frame.

There’s a very important change that you need to know about. In 2018, UPS and FedEx started using slightly different calculations based on box size to determine your cost. Red Stag’s Dimensional Weight Calculator is a great tool to help you determine what you’ll pay. 

Order fulfilment 101

Congratulations, a customer has just ordered! Now for the fun part: getting that order into their hands.

Packaging goods and sending them on their way sounds like a simple logistical task. But for a growing eCommerce business, it becomes a burden that steals time and effort otherwise spent improving different pillars of your eCommerce store.

Common issues you need to address for seamless fulfillment are:

• Where will the magic happen? Your basement, garage, or warehouse?
• You’ll need boxes, envelopes, tape, fille, foam wrap etc. where will you source these? (Uline is a great option for all packaging necessities)
• How will you create and print shipping labels for orders?
• Will you cover fulfillment by yourself, or use a fulfillment service?
• Will you ship every day, or in batches?

You also need to decide whether you want to fulfill orders manually, automatically, or a hybrid of both.

1. Fulfill complete orders manually

This option is best if you:

• Make your products to order
• Have products available for pre-order
• Run out of stock sometimes
• Want the ability to offer customers partial fulfillment without needing to issue a refund.

2. Fulfill part of an order manually

If a customer places an order for multiple products, and some of the products are out of stock or a pre-order, you might want to fulfill only part of the order so its contents can be shipped separately.

3. Fulfill orders automatically

Automatic fulfillment is an effective way to ship your orders if you're:

• Using a fulfillment service or fulfillment app
• Selling digital downloads.
• Are experiencing enough growth to justify it

If you wanted to see the “behind-the-scenes” and the complexity of order fulfillment, we highly suggest reading the “How Order FulFillment Works” guide by Red Stag – it has some cool GIF images.

Recommended fulfillment vendors:

• Red Stag Fulfillment: eCommerce order fulfillment and 3PL services for stores with larger/heavier items
• Shipwire: Order fulfillment services, shipping software, and cloud-based logistics for businesses
• ShipBob: Amazon-level logistics to small to mid-sized businesses
• Fulfillrite: Full-service order fulfillment services. Integrated with the latest platforms, worldwide shipping, real-time order, and inventory data
• FedEx Fulfillment: Integrated supply chain product that utilizes an easy-to-use platform and FedEx’s renowned transportation networks

VIP customer service

Exceptional service across multiple channels is critical to success in eCommerce.

It allows you to nip misconceptions in the bud, address the needs of varying customers in a professional manner, and deliver something that’s amiss in a lot of businesses - a personal and interactive “human” touch.

The type of touch that catapults you above the competition, reinforces your brand image and inspires undying customer loyalty.

And while the tools used to deliver customer service matter, the philosophy behind that service - which transmits the attitude of your business to customers - is what keeps people coming back. So it’s best to carve a clear, refined customer support philosophy that successfully steers customer relations towards satisfaction and loyalty.

Customer service philosophy: Wowing customers isn’t the only key to loyalty

“Wowing the customer at every contact point!”

A typical response that springs to mind when talking about customer service, right?

According to HBR author Matthew Dixon, phrases like the above are unquestioned, flawed platitudes that might temporarily satisfy or “wow” a customer, but fail to ultimately inspire measurable loyalty. So if going “above and beyond” isn’t the only secret to fierce customer loyalty, what is?

Scrutinizing the links between customer service and loyalty, the Customer Contact Council conducted a study of more than 75,000 people who interacted over the phone through contact-center reps or self-service channels like the web, chat, and email.

Two surprisingly contrary findings came to light:

• Over the top service doesn’t inspire customer loyalty; “reducing their effort—the work they must do to get their problem solved—does.”
• Simplifying the problem-solving process can “improve customer service, reduce customer service costs, and decrease customer churn”.

Out of the 75,000 people studied, 50% complained about:

• Repeatedly having to contact a company
• Being forced to repeat information
• Switching from one service channel to another (switching from email to call)

Weave these insights into your customer service philosophy by prioritizing simplicity. Reduce the time and simplify the effort taken for your customer to reach a solution.

And when reviewing your customer service, don’t isolate satisfaction ratings alone - measure how much effort your customer exerts to resolve a problem. This means considering and making service reps aware of:

• What percentage of customers are switching from one service channel to another?
• How to prevent the team from forcing customers to repeat information they’ve provided?
• How can you keep customer service smooth and streamlined into one channel?
• How long does it take to a resolve a common issue?

Your tools for providing awesome customer service

There’s a plethora of tools and channels you can use to deliver great multi-channel customer service. And the size/type of store you run, often determines which channels and tools will yield better returns.

As a larger store, with a high volume of queries, tackling multiple channels and deploying multiple tools is important. Smaller stores however, might sail smoothly with fewer options. As an eCommerce store, these essential tools/channels will be your backbone:

Email

A public email address or contact form is the default method for letting customers contact you. It’s also the easiest/cheapest way to digitally interact with them.

Whether you publish a contact form on your storefront or use a public email address, the choice is yours. But remember - the less work a customer has to do, the happier they’ll be. Nobody wants to wade through a ton of form fields just to change their item color to “anything but pink”.

Email is also great for reducing customer support debt and gathering data on customers. Frequent questions and problems pouring in? Stick them on an FAQ page.

Customers describing certain items or issues in a specific manner? Their language reveals how they view your product and business and provides insight for product descriptions and copy.

It’s also wise to develop a tracking system for “close” and “open” emails that you’re actively dealing with. Otherwise, your team will spend days digging through an avalanche of emails (and days digging back out).

Social media

More than 50 million small businesses use Facebook to connect with their customers.

Social media's ability to openly address customer queries with a human touch, in a timely, succinct fashion has created a breeding ground for crafting a brand image that both - oozes personality and delivers superb customer service.

In fact, 54% of users surveyed by Twitter report taking action after seeing a brand mentioned in Tweets (actions like visiting their website, searching for the brand, or retweeting content).

Social interaction between consumers and businesses is rising. Customers are no longer shying away from tweeting, poking, and replying to brands - big or small.

But how do you win over customers on social media?

Twitter surveyed over 14,000 users in a six month period to see customer satisfaction levels with brand interactions. The survey garnered 4 key findings applicable to customer service on all social media platforms:

1. Use a friendly tone

Even over a few short sentences, something as simple as tone can go along way. Twitter found that “Consumers are 25% more likely to be satisfied with a brand after a friendly customer service interaction.”

2. Personalize when possible

When consumers have personalized customer service interactions — when a brand includes both the Twitter user’s name, as well as its brand rep’s name — they are 77% more likely to recommend said brand.

3. Respond rapidly

Timing plays a huge role in how customers gauge an interaction with your brand. On average, 60% of consumers expect brands to respond to their requests within an hour.

In reality, brand response times vary from 4 seconds to 221 hours.

Let’s face it, not all problems can be resolved within a couple of interactions, but you can still make customers feel heard. The minimum you can do is reply with a personalized response within 24 hours.

4. Follow up and solve problems

On average, there are five interactions per inquiry between brands and consumers on Twitter. Of those consumers who received a brand response to an inquiry, nearly 30% failed to reach a solution.

Drawing from your customer service philosophy, think about how - from your first point of contact- you’ll deliver a solution to your customer. Will you offer a refund? Next day delivery? Throw in some bonus items?

Endeavour to resolve your customers’ issues from the get-go and you’ll win them over.

Recommended social media monitoring tools:

• Mention: Social listening and media monitoring tool that lets you monitor your brand, protect your reputation, and find influencers on social media
• Brandwatch: Listen to customers and understand consumer trends
• Hootsuite: Manage all of your social media marketing efforts from a single dashboard
• Sendible: Social media management tool for agencies
• Sprout Social: Enterprise social customer support platform to resolve issues, connect with customers and brand advocates
• Reply by Buffer: Social customer service software for support

Live chat

The higher the price of a sale, the more resistance there is to buying. In retail stores, staff is at hand to help overcome objections and make the sale. But you don’t have that luxury with eCommerce.

Live chat is the closest thing to having staff members provide live customer support. Its sales boosting potential is irrefutable:

• 62% of customers were more inclined to purchase products online if live customer support is available.
• 38% of customers have said that they have made a purchase due to a good live chat session itself.
• The availability of live chat assistance has been found to decrease sales cart abandonment by up to 30%, which resulted in an increase in sales.

Follow these 3 steps to hit the ground running with live chat:

1. Carefully time your pop ups 

If your chat window pops up too late, you risk losing a customer; forever. If it’s too early, you risk looking “pushy” and repelling visitors.

When marketing company Logic fine-tuned their live chat popup timing, their sales soared by 30%.

Scheduling your message/pop up at the appropriate times maintains customer interest in your store. For your initial pop-up, this will require testing. But for future pop ups, you can use triggered messages that appear when customers are having specific problems on your storefront.

2. Integrate the chat window with your design

Making your chat window consistent with your website design makes it less alarming and intrusive; it also helps evoke trust in visitors. Resulting in less friction, and higher conversions.

3. Use fewer chats per agent

Live chat is a powerful customer service tool; if the agents behind the tool are tired or overworked, the quality of your customer service will plummet. This is what Zendesk discovered in their benchmark report:

(Customer satisfaction per chat agent | Image source)

As you can see, more chats per agent resulted in lower levels of customer satisfaction.

Zendesk worded this best:

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Recommended live chat tools:

• Drift: Conversation-driven marketing platform
• Live Chat by Sumo: Instantly communicate with customers, prospects & visitors
• Intercom: Manage conversations with leads and customers at scale
• Chaport: Simple live chat for websites
• Crisp: All-in-one solution to communicate with your customers
• HappyFox Chat: Live chat software for websites
• Messengerify: A chat widget powered by Facebook Messenger
• Olark: Live chat for sales, marketing and customer support

Help desk support process

You know what will kill your team’s productivity? Answering scores of quick-fix questions repeatedly. That’s why online helpdesks are pivotal for providing support.

They provide 3 huge benefits you can’t afford to be without:

1. Customers can self-serve by browsing through common questions

If they are experiencing a recurring issue, they don't have to be placed on hold - resenting the cheery waiting music on the other end. Instead, they’re given control to resolve issues quicker.

2. With common questions and issues addressed, customer support debt is mitigated

Which means your team can invest more time and energy towards bigger issues.

3. When implemented correctly, helpdesks can become your storefront go-to forum and contact area

Acting as buzzing self-serving hubs for questions and solutions where experienced customers can aid newer ones.

Recommended help desk tools:

• Groove: Simple help desk software
• Zendesk: Cloud-based help desk solution
• Freshdesk: Cloud-based customer service software with automation
• Desk by Salesforce: Online customer service software and support ticket help desk application for small business and fast-growing companies
• Help Scout: Collaborative help desk where you can sync your CRM
• Helpy: Simple, open-source helpdesk

Phone support process

Have you ever left a voicemail for an eCommerce store?

If you answered “never” or “rarely”, then you’re not alone. That being said, this might be changing. Customer service solutions now offer voice products that will take voicemails when you’re offline.

Alternately, you can use a 24-hour live answering service so that customers are always talking to a live human, leaving you free to call back during office hours.

For the best phone service, set designated office hours that customers can call you. If you can, try finding a service provider that acts as a call forwarding and voicemail provider as well. It enables you to learn from your customers (especially early on in a new business), resolves issues faster, builds better rapport, and earn trust for high-priced items.

Recommended virtual phone system tools:

• Grasshopper: Virtual phone system to manage your calls
• Twilio: Programmatically make and receive phone calls and send and receive text messages using API
• Nexmo: APIs for SMS, voice and phone verifications

Accounting and taxes

You’ve got a bald patch from all the head scratching, your desk is a whirlwind of tax forms and accounting papers, and it looks like someone tried to headbutt your wall. This usually means:

It’s that time of year again - accounting and tax time - yay!

Probably the least glamorous eCommerce topic, but undeniably one of the most important. Especially for small businesses who keep their own books; because good luck trying to grow your store with one hand while fighting off the taxman’s dogged pursuit with the other.

As a merchant, you might need to charge taxes on your sales, and then report and remit those taxes to your government. Always check with a local tax authority or a tax accountant to make sure that you’re charging your customers the correct sales tax rates, and to make sure you file and remit taxes correctly.

Pro tip: Each country (and even state) has its own set of laws regarding taxes and accounting, but here are some general tips to nudge you in the right direction:

• Integrate your accounting software with your online store (this feature is integrated in Core dna)
• Record expense and revenue as well as tax-deductible business revenue
• Review your accounts regularly to ensure everything is accurate

Spying on the competition

Recommended accounting and tax tools:

• Avalara (integrated in Core dna): Automated sales tax software
• TaxJar (integrated in Core dna): Automated sales tax filing for online sellers and merchants
• Quaderno: Calculate taxes, send automatic tax receipts, and create sales tax return-ready reports
• Quickbooks: Online accounting software for small business
• Xero: Manage invoicing, bank
   reconciliation, bookkeeping & more

In a healthy river, you’re likely to find fresh fish. But in an ebbing one, there’s guaranteed to be less game. The world of eCommerce is similar; highly profitable markets/niches result in robust competition, which is a good thing.

Competition indicates the profit-potential and stability of a market and can be used as a strop to sharpen and strengthen your eCommerce store. But simply reading your competitor’s blog, or scrolling down their social media page doesn’t count as competitive espionage that boosts the profitability of your eCommerce store.

Using information gleaned from your competitors to learn, adapt, and evolve is what gives the insight to mold your store for solid growth.

A great example of wielding a competitive advantage comes from Paperstone. In a business where people default to familiar brands, they’re a small stationery company competing with big names like Staples and Viking.

Despite their relatively small size, they had a distinct advantage over their competitors - lower price. Knowing competitor prices were higher, they placed a comparison table on their homepage contrasting their prices to their competitors’. The results?

( Paperstone compares their price with Viking and Staples)

Online sales increased by 10.67%. All by simply displaying a competitive advantage. No extravagant promotions, or elaborate ads. Just a table showing how they’re different/better than the competition.

But to show how your store trumps the competition, or learn secrets that give you an edge, you need to understand the competition first. To do that, you need to:

Determine their traffic sources

SEO, paid ads, sponsored content, social media are just a few of the traffic generation methods available for eCommerce. But the secret to finding proven paths to higher traffic, increased conversions, and more sales?

Study your competition. Then replicate and reverse engineer what’s working, adapting it to your store. Here’s how:

1. Find what your competitors are ranking for

You might have exhausted your list of keywords that attract customers, but it doesn’t mean you’ve discovered every single one.

Studying your competitor’s keyword activity inspires keywords to compete for and provides useful data on your customer’s pain/problem via search queries. Allowing you to pluck ripe keywords that are competitive enough to yield organic traffic, but not so much that ranking for them becomes an unattainable goal.

(We’re a big fan of Ahrefs)

By default, Ahrefs sorts the keywords by highest traffic. There will be some branded keywords, which you can exclude after exporting the data.

Ideally, you want to find topics that you can easily rank for without many (if any) backlinks. To do this, you need to look for keywords you’re ALREADY ranking for in the top 3 without any backlinks and find out the average Keyword Difficulty (KD) of those topics or keywords. Now, that you have a benchmark of your average KD, you can prioritize which topics to go after.

2. Monitor their backlinks

Keyword research is a powerful aid but isn’t enough to steal traffic.

Monitoring backlinks are also crucial to forming a strong grasp of your competitor’s traffic strategy. It shows who’s regularly linking to your competition, and reveals what other companies/websites they affiliate with.

You can do this by:

• Setting up alerts every time they get a new backlink
• Setting up alerts every time they get a brand mention
• Finding sites that are linking to a couple of your competitors
• Checking where their homepage is getting backlinks from

Keeping tabs on your competitors' backlinks allow you to look for new opportunities to reach out and promote your content.

If you discover that your competitors generate a high number of quality backlinks by creating infographics, and it’s something you don’t do - you’re now capable of carving a fresh source of untapped traffic previously unavailable to you.

Recommended tools to monitor competitors’ traffic sources:

• Ahrefs: Competitor research tools & SEO backlinks checker
• Moz: Leading SEO tool to track rankings, links & keywords
• Similar Web: Analyze any app or website‎
• SEMrush: Find your competitors' keywords, backlinks, and ad text

Gauging their customer satisfaction

If your customer has a nagging pain that neither you or your competitors are solving, how would that impact your ability to drum up more business?

By identifying gaps in customer satisfaction/pains in your market, you can enhance all aspects of your eCommerce store. Target ads better, develop magnetic keyword and SEO strategies, curate relevant sweet-spot content, and revamp your copy for maximum effect.

Fortunately, there are a few ways to gauge your competitors’ customers satisfaction levels (besides their possibly biased reviews of course).

1. Google Alerts

Backlinks, social mentions, or keywords, Google alert will track when your competitor is mentioned and deliver the report straight to your inbox.

2. Keyhole

Keyhole is a social media analytics tool that analyzes posts on both Twitter and Instagram. Not only does it give you metrics such as posts, impressions and reach, in-depth metrics like - demographics, share of posts, location - are also available.

3. Amazon reviews

If your competition is on Amazon, customer satisfaction will reflect itself in their reviews. Keep an eye out for the repeated language used by customers. Do people repeatedly complain about packaging? Delivery times? Product longevity? Look for cracks in satisfaction that you can fill.

Monitor pricing and provided value

With over 12 million stores online, everyone is vying for a competitive edge.

Because when you’ve got price-savvy customers that scout for the best value for their money, having the upper hand is necessary for survival.

And that last thing you want is customers leaving your store because you fail to adapt and update the value of your product. That’s why monitoring pricing is important for staying afloat. It helps parry competitors attempts to undercut you.

Tools like Prisync are extremely useful for automated, accurate price monitoring. But to monitor prices in a meaningful manner:

1. Don’t track everything

Choose products responsible for the bulk of your sales to benchmark against competitors.

2. Choose competitors you benchmark against carefully

Before you deem them worthy of comparison, have data and research that proves they’re actually fishing in the same pond as you

Magnifying profits with multi-channel marketing

Retailers that sell on two separate online marketplaces see a 190% jump in revenue over those who sell on one, shows research by Stitch Labs.

And in a multi-country survey on the pros of multi-channel marketplaces for a number of companies:

• Almost 75% said that using a multi-channel system increased sales
• 62% said it gave a competitive advantage
• 64% said it boosted customer loyalty

Even Homer Simpson would get it; selling products on multiple channels generates more sales. But how do you execute this while avoiding a logistical and technical nightmare that “burns your wings” and forces sales to crash?

1. Prioritize channels based on your customers

Amazon, Etsy, eBay, they’re the same in the sense that they’re all places to sell products. But as a seller, that’s where the similarities end.

Each channel has its own unique costs, requirements, logistics, and target market.

It’s important to consider these factors before investing in a channel that yields lackluster returns or fails to generate profit at all. Setting up shop on Amazon and being flooded with hundreds of orders for handcrafted items, all for next day prime delivery - doesn’t sound fun, does it?

Select the right channels by asking yourself:

• Does the channel align with your brand or message?
• Are you able to reach your target market there?
• Can you match the delivery times that the channel’s market expects?
• Are margins and payment terms profitable?
• Are you comfortable with the level of control the channel provides?

2. Optimize inventory management

$634 billion is lost by companies every year. The cause?

Out of stock items.

But stocking more product doesn’t seem to counter this either, businesses still lose $472 billion dollars due to overstocking. Working out to a collective $1.1 trillion in lost annual revenue due to poor inventory management.

Your margin for inventory related errors multiplies with each channel you sell on. But with the right planning and tools, you can overcome this without sacrificing profits. Multi-channel selling tools like:

• ChannelAdvisor
• Ecomdash
• Stitch Labs
• Sellbrite

Allow you to integrate inventory while also managing accounting, shipping, and fulfillment. For more on inventory management, check out our inventory management section in this post.

3. Optimize for each channel

Great! You’ve ventured into a fresh channel.

But sales will not shoot up automatically. Because chances are, new marketplace customers will respond differently. That’s why it’s important to test and optimize to wield the best appeal to a specific segment of customers.

Using tools like:

• Consumer surveys
• User testing
• A/B tests

You can gather insights on the type of copy, USP, and images that appeal to customers in each marketplace, and then adapt that to drive more sales.

This type of optimization and testing is what helped propel NastyGal from a basement eBay business, to an iconic multimillion dollar player in the vintage clothing industry. Previous owner Sophia Amoruso keenly A/B tested and constantly optimized thumbnails, copy, design based on feedback and data from her audience. 

In her own words:

 It’s easy to think you know what your customers want, forcing that on them, and actually hurting customer satisfaction. Whether it’s a product headline, new color, or fresh line of products, without data to reinforce your actions, you’re guaranteed to burn profits. So, ensure those important decisions - especially those involving customers - are backed by solid data.