6 Hacks to Start eCommerce Business in this Pandemic

In response to the corona-virus outbreak around the world, across all the streams business continuity has been impacted a lot.

Strict measures are being taken to avoid this virus from transmitting to one person to the other in all the countries around the world.

On 22nd March 2020, India announced a nationwide lock-down that meant to close most businesses around the country aside from essential services.

The majority of these businesses had to work remotely. Some businesses even shut down tentatively.

E-commerce businesses are just the same. With just essential items being supplied and social distancing being strongly advised, the majority of the E-commerce development services have been suspended temporarily across the country.

Even though sales for e-commerce businesses have been minimized, they haven’t had a complete fallout like other industries such as hospitality or travel.

Hence, maintaining business continuity during such uncertain challenging times is important to manage a smooth workflow.

Below are some of the ways you can ensure the progress of your business:

1. Create a Powerful Online Presence

To sell products online, a powerful online presence is essential. How can your customers buy products if they cannot find you easily?

It is, however, not that simple. For many small businesses, the repercussion of COVID-19 is gut-wrenching, and to build a strong digital presence on the internet may be daunting.

Michele Peters, who is a senior UPS manager for global e-commerce marketing, states that before this pandemic, many smaller businesses were generating small sales from their e-store.

Using a UPS webinar, she also shared her thoughts to help small businesses evolve their strategy. 

Businesses have gone remote after the changing economic situations due to the coronavirus in the industry.

When non-essential stores shut down due to entire communities on lockdown, many small businesses developed their presence online gradually and in some cases, overnight. 

Peters states that a strong foundation for your online business is the first step to a successful e-commerce business.

However, there are several solutions and e-commerce techniques available out there to help small businesses.

Starting from e-commerce development and email marketing to the inventory system and loyalty programs, e-commerce is there to cater to all your online commerce needs. For this, you can hire an e-commerce developer.

However, what are the tools that need to start a successful e-commerce website? Peters states that we should get help to navigate our options.

UPS’s Customer Technology Program connects small businesses to a range of leaders of strong firms that offers the solutions you require.

UPS offers many small businesses financial encouragement to buy technological solutions at cheap rates with almost little to no upfront cost. 

2. Find the Right Online Marketplaces

When doing business online it is very simple to quickly broaden your vision and be visible. However, this cannot happen on its own. You constantly need to build your digital presence. 

There are many ways to achieve this. Marketing through your company website might take a considerable amount of time to grow traffic but it is an important element to the website.

To catalyze the process, you need to promote your brand and products across the other channels as well. 

Eran Pick who is the founder and CEO of an e-commerce platform Solid Commerce who is a UPS Customer Technology Program partner says that this is where online marketplaces come in.

Online marketplaces will provide you instant access to your targeted traffic. They also eliminate the chances of stoppage involved while selling online. 

This is of course not that simple. Due to online marketplaces, you cannot customize the user experience for your brand nor do you own any customer data.

Additionally, if your performance is visible on only one channel and if your account is closed or suspended, your source of income goes down the drain. 

How to find the right marketplace?

So, how to recognize what marketplaces are best for your business?  Not every channel is the same. Pick adds that many marketplaces offer more room for a margin if they are too competitive. 

Here, the marketplace dynamic wins the game. Merchants and international sales have more potential at more mature marketplaces that offer smoother selling processes.

The goal here is to get eyeballs on your listings and differentiate your products. 

There are still many marketplaces that are scaling up. This could mean that there might be a favorable buyer-to-seller ratio in the products. Other platforms are seller-specific.

If once you have been given the green light, these marketplaces will be the main source of quick revenue streams for your businesses. 

There are also other ways such as social media platforms that we use the daily posting and sharing with our followers and friends. So what about selling on these social websites?

Many of these social networking sites are quickly integrating into solid e-commerce platforms that you should consider on your list. 

3. Plan and Implement

In these uncertain times, it would be better if businesses adapted to the changing circumstances.

Although predicting the future might not be possible, considerable planning may help you weather out any storm you face with more relative ease as compared to not planning.

In the long run, insufficient planning might cost your business a lot. To continuously review and improvise your business should be the plane for every business leader to make the most out of a situation.

4. Support your Staff

These are the times when your employees look for higher management for assurance and support. Especially when layoffs are happening in many other organizations.

Educate your employees on the current predicament and clarify the situation to them. Employees need to know about all the changes happening in the company to perform efficiently.

5. Coordinate Well 

Even though you are working from home, communication with your employees is important.

Hence, organizations need to step up their communication game and make use of technology to coordinate and stay connected with their employees.

For effective and effortless communication apps like Skype, Zoom, and Slack can be used. To ensure that productivity is maintained, you can schedule regular conferences online. 

6. Execute the Recovery Plan

When the pandemic has passed, it is important to plan the time of recovery of your organization. The business needs to recover from all the materialistic damage it dealt from.

Starting from being shut down for so long and proper execution and planning will allow you to operate again as soon as possible and probably even be at an advantage more than others. 

Synopsis

Considering the ongoing pandemic, it is necessary to take the help of an established eCommerce Development Company for better functioning of your online business.

Leveraging their custom e-commerce development services, you can thrive in your e-commerce business in this tough time successfully.

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