In this article I will tell you the best Best Ecommerce Advice That Changed Everything but first let me tell you the story.
I happened to meet this man, who was in his late 50s, while visiting San Francisco. It turned out that he is a very experienced e-commerce professional who now owns 19 online stores in the US and 6 stores in the UK.
We arranged to meet for pizza at his favorite restaurant on Stockton Street and chatted about e-commerce.
Unfortunately, his only request was that he remain nameless for all items. I accepted that condition. But what he taught me changed everything and it was worth it. Imagine everything below in quotes from my Evernote:
Listen to your customers
Young merchants like you often ask me about the key ingredients to building a successful e-commerce business. And while I can go deep into the details, my answer is simple but impactful:
You can always work on your conversion rate by improving your website’s funnel, investing in customer acquisition, expanding abroad, etc.
But the first important question you need to ask yourself is: from the customer’s perspective, what’s stopping me from doubling my business in the next 30 days? How could each customer spend more? How can I retain customers? What could get customers who are not buying to buy?
And the only way to answer these questions is to listen directly to the customer.
To better understand how to proceed, ask your customers for feedback, read their emails and complaints, and listen to their calls to support. I bet you’ll learn a lot by listening to why they are not buying and where your service or products can and should be improved. Spending a whole day looking into all of this will be one of the smartest moves you can make.
When I started my first two online stores, I spent an entire day every week listening to our customers. I could not even imagine that they would interact with our store so differently and have different needs than we could have imagined. That gave us the perspective to improve our business.
In the first 2 years, I developed two sustainable and predictable e-commerce stores with monthly traffic of about 320,000 and monthly revenue of about $520,000. In addition, customer retention was and is excellent.
Now that I own 25 e-commerce stores, each of them has a general manager who still spends a full day each week “customer listening” (yes, we call it that) and sending me short one-page reports with insights. This keeps me up to date on the latest customer trends, needs, and behaviors, which helps me make important strategic decisions for all my stores.
Do not be stupid. It takes time.
Do not think I have not made mistakes. Although I now own 25 e-commerce businesses, 4 have failed in the last 10 years, and I believe one of those 25 will go bankrupt in the next 6 months. And failure is a normal thing in business as long as you learn from it and do not repeat the same mistakes.
Do not be stupid and never expect to be a viral success. Out of thousands of attempts, only a few succeed, like Dollar Shave Club’s video, which usually inspires you all.
We tried many times with the help of super creative and experienced marketers and press; we even reached 1 million views on Youtube with one of our “viral” videos, but the ROI was negative. We spent a lot of time and money on it and it only gave a one-time effect. Sustainable and predictable channels for user acquisition are the key, not some silly growth hacks.
Create a story around your brand
You will never win against Amazon if you try to compete with it. Instead of competing with Amazon, I always develop a story around a product theme with no more than 5 product categories.
If you have a story and position all your stores this way with your target audience, you can increase your prices and retain customers much easier.
Customers are more likely to buy from a “small” store that offers advice, a personal touch, personalized offers and ensures that your product is carefully selected and shipped, even if it costs more than giants like Amazon.
Also, when you open new product categories and set up a new store, you get multiple revenue streams, which diversifies risk and makes you wealthier over time.
By the way, we party and have fun often. And there are 2 advantages of partying often:
- Employees are happier, more loyal and just have fun and enjoy life.
- We take a lot of pictures and work with social media and show our community that we care about our products, that we know our product category well and that we personally use our products.
I just did not mention that our parties are themed in each product category.
For example, one of my stores sells camping and travel gear, so every quarter we have an adventurous trip to the mountains, a picnic at the beach, or a camping trip somewhere in the woods. After the event, we publish a few blog posts each month and share the pictures. This gives us incredible storytelling and makes for warm relationships with our clients and followers on social media.
When we finished our delicious pizzas, ordered Italian cappuccinos to go, and said our goodbyes, he was happy to share his advice with me, but did not think it would make a difference with other e-commerce colleagues. I disagreed with him and said that this could help a lot of e-commerce people.
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