4 Surefire E-Commerce Management Success Tips

E-commerce is continually gaining traction. As of Q2 in 2023, the U.S. Census Bureau reported a 2.1 percent quarterly uptick in e-commerce sales, accounting for over $277 billion. However, as e-commerce steadily rises in popularity, it becomes more complex for sellers like you.

This means you need to take e-commerce management seriously. It doesn’t matter if you operate a mom-and-pop-style Etsy store with limited inventory or if you’re selling thousands of items on Amazon.com. Either way, you must stay on top of your e-commerce operations or risk dealing with preventable challenges.

For instance, many e-commerce stores run into supply chain issues. They often have too many products in stock or insufficient items (or raw materials) to fulfill orders. This leaves consumers frustrated, disappointed and upset, hurting a company’s reputation and sales. Another common — and avoidable — e-commerce obstacle is siloed data. When data is hard for employees to find quickly, making smart, real-time decisions is impossible.

Of course, your online store can bypass those and other problems by creating and following a surefire e-commerce strategy. Once in place, the strategy can serve as a guide to ensure that you avoid stumbling blocks and can move ahead confidently.

How can you design an e-commerce strategy that meets your company’s unique needs and goals? Follow these tips:

1. Centralize your critical data for better decision making.

A study by Marketing Charts found that only 29 percent of marketers believe their available data adds valuable insights to their decision making. Put simply, this implies that most marketing professionals don’t have trust in their data. Ouch. One reason for this issue can be decentralized data pools.

The answer to this problem is to invest in software that centralizes all your e-commerce data. Plenty of e-commerce software systems are available, many of which use artificial intelligence and machine learning heavily. When all your information is accessible, you can more clearly control your inventory, fulfill orders, and satisfy shoppers.

2. Review and revise your product descriptions.

Nothing turns off consumers like a poorly written or incorrect product description. Ideally, your e-commerce product descriptions should aim to answer buyers’ top questions. If they don’t, you'll have a huge problem in the form of returned merchandise. A high level of returns can rapidly eat away at profit margins and cause your e-commerce business to falter.

Take the time to review the product descriptions for your top-selling items. As you do, ask yourself these questions:

• Is the information accurate and comprehensive?
• Does the listing provide sufficient details for buyers to make informed decisions?
• Are product images and videos relevant and showcase the product's features?
• Are prices displayed, ensuring transparency in transactions?

Spending time refreshing your best-sellers' product descriptions can improve your e-commerce management processes by reducing complaints, lowering your number of negative reviews, and cutting down on returns.

3. Build resilient supply chains.

During the pandemic, many e-commerce stores were halted because they couldn’t supply their customers. Though the global supply chain has improved quite a bit since 2020, it’s still not what it once was. Accenture recently called this phenomenon a “perpetual” supply disruption, meaning it won’t disappear.

To work around known and possible supply chain roadblocks, devise alternatives to diversify your supply chain. For instance, you may want to interview new vendors. Having more than one way to fuel your need for raw materials or shelf-ready inventory will make you more resilient from a supply chain perspective. It will also assist you in your efforts to more effectively manage your e-commerce business.

4. Optimize your marketing efforts.

As we're moving closer to a “cookieless” world, you should test different marketing efforts to see which approaches work best for your e-commerce business. Take search engine optimization practices, for one. Have you moved to a “set it and forget it” SEO mindset with your on-site content? You may be missing out on opportunities to improve the SEO impact of your blog posts and other content. Older content that’s revived and updated can give you a nice search engine page rank boost.

Remember to try emerging advertising strategies, too, to streamline your workflows. A generative AI product like ChatGPT could be a solid tool to try in this capacity. Generative AI solutions can develop various keyword-rich headlines and ad content suggestions. There’s no reason not to try the better ones to see if you get a bump in your e-commerce conversions. Even a 1 percent increase could pay for trying something new.

E-commerce has already changed how people find and buy what they need. To ensure your e-commerce company retains its competitive edge, you need an e-commerce strategy engineered to keep you moving forward. Why wait? The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll see substantial improvements across your operations.

Bjoern Sjut was co-founder and CEO at Finc3, an agency that has now become a part of Front Row. Finc3 specialized in B2B performance marketing, e-commerce marketplace optimization, high-end CRM and actionable analytics.