My 5 years experience running an e-commerce store will help you start yours
Here are 7 tips that can help you start your own e-commerce store. If you already have one, applying these tips can help you scale your webshop. Happy reading!
- Logistics is your business.
I started a company thinking that I would only be thinking about the products we are selling. Well shock on me.
4 years in, the pandemic struck, and we started seeing more conversions on-site than we had seen in months. Not only were orders coming from Nairobi, they were coming from across the entire country. So we now had to start scouting for shipping partners that could move our products from Nairobi to Mombasa, Kisumu, Bomet, Malindi, Nakuru.
As our order basket size got bigger, packaging too became a huge headache. So we asked our selves, ‘How do we securely move fragile plants?’
‘What partners were bold enough to carry our open packages to various parts of the country?’
Every e-commerce store that’s looking to scaling needs to think about logistics.
In this part of the world, shipping fees tends to be the single most expensive item on your expense sheet. I haven’t even mentioned the fact that managing inventory also becomes a tizzy.
Thankfully we now have an Operations Lead who ensures that the items go to the right customers in a timely manner. We haven’t figured it as efficiently as we’d like but we are getting there.
2. Content Is Indeed King.
So thanks to ITC ecomConnect and Charicomm our first quarter in 2021 we managed to ramp up our digital marketing efforts. We went from boosting posts to posting ads!
Before, boosting Facebook posts was all we knew. But after mini intense training sessions with Charicomm on the various digital promotion strategies, we now know better. February 2021 we went live with our first ever Facebook adverts. We did AB testing on social media. We also opened our Google Ads account and did some search ads and display ads. Analytics became our friend. Something we didn’t know about previously.
At first, we didn’t see much traction, and just when we were about to give up on creating ads, Boom! Our website started getting conversions in early March. We went from weekly sales to daily sales.
My advice is to urge anyone who is interesting in growing their e-commerce store to start adding Pixels and Google tags so you are able to track conversions on your site. And then double down marketing for those products that seem to do well. On the Google Ads dashboard, you can also be able to get finer details about your customers buying habits and what they are interested in. For example, we noticed that in March our customers loved the 25% off sale! Coupled with that they got free shipping if they purchased goods worth Kes. 5000 and above. A double wammy for them. We got some loyal customers buying up to 3 times in the same week! We got lots of offline sales and calls from far and wide making enquiries for even items we didn’t retail on our store.
Google Ads I think is one of the best methods to digitally promote your business. For example, with $200 a month marketing budget split between Google Ads and Facebook (and Instagram) your earning could double or triple in that very month. Today I religiously watch the Google Ads tutorial to learn new features, best practice and inspiring content that can enable us to continuously growing organically.
3. Have a digital marketing calendar of activities and religiously follow it.
Before we did lazy posting, but early this year we started posting daily, 4 stories a day and interesting genuine content where we shared our experiences as we prepared orders for our customers. We also realized that it’s a smart idea to hire a graphics intern to help with the creation of graphics such as website banners and social media post ads.
Having a calendar of activities is crucial. The calendar ensures that you are consistently posting and therefore you won’t lack content and fall back to the ‘free online quotes’ that we normally see on some pages.
4. Data is Lord.
So if you are not tracking, then you don’t know a thing about your business. It’s like shooting in the dark. We’ve gone to great lengths as a team to understand our customer by gleaning data. We did a survey and we now know exactly who our Shop Nanjala customer is. We now know a thing or two about Data Analytics and regularly meet to understand what is going on in terms of performance against set KPIs, what needs improvement, what are our revenue numbers and so on.
Currently, we are logging our offline orders on Woo commerce just to get a better perspective of the total sales in a month.
Understanding data can be really complex and overwhelming but we are determined to learn and know more about how to improve our SEO and how to interpret the data from our CMS. Analyzing data is really what sets you apart and harnessed well, can really scale your business.
5. Obsess about your Customer.
Indulge them. Help them make decisions. Chat them if they want to know more. Call them if the need clarity or have a shopping issue. We’ve noticed that when you speak to them you give your brand a human face. Nothing beats this interaction. No machine or bot can either. We have a fantastic Customer service lead who ensures that all customers are notified when we receive their order via SMS, an estimated time they shall get their order delivered, and even what to buy if they are considering a gift and they are stuck or undecided (read abandoned cart).
Many a times we have noticed that we get many orders and large basket sizes, not because we have many unique shopper but because of our repeat customers. They are loyal and have come back to buy again and again. Guess what, they also make the best referees as they genuinely have had good experiences and will definitely recommend you to their friends and family. Great things come from just listening to your customers. Yes, they are always right!
6. Embrace Innovation.
We didn’t know how SEO worked, we learnt, and are still learning. We wanted to know exactly when an order came through, we all installed the Woo app on our phones. Nowadays we are addicted to the ‘Kaching’ that pings on our phone every single time a shopper transacts on shopnanjala.com We have also partnered with axis.africa an intergrated communications app that allows you to broadcast messages via email, SMS and WhatsApp. We now communicate with our customers fortnightly or monthly on what is on sale or general announcement from us. Besides using Mpesa, Visa or MasterCard, we have now integrated PayPal to our website adding choice to the payment solutions. There is also a great partnership between M-Pesa and PayPal where one can move money between the two platforms.
We are also eyeing Flutterwave’s api that would allow payments from across Africa. I dream of the day when we can also accept Bitcoin on our store.
7. Hire the best talent and nurture them.
These are your brand custodians, if they believe in your dream they could take your business to unimaginable heights!
Written for Facebook Live event: ITC #EcommerceTipsforPeers 13th April. 2021, 6:00PM EAT. See link to the video here https://fb.me/e/W0lUYnQA