Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. Much of today’s business is done via e-commerce. There are numerous benefits to doing business using e-commerce. The following contributed post is entitled, How Can E-commerce Stores Reduce Their Costs.
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When you’re in the e-commerce business, it’s not just important to reduce your costs to ensure they’re not too high — it’s necessary. While these types of businesses are relatively easy to get off the ground without having much money in the bank, as soon as you’re looking at reaching a level where you’re professional/it’s a full-time job/it’s providing a full income, it’ll be a case of spending money to make money. Fortunately, there are a few tried and tested ways to reduce costs and boost profits, as we see below.
Source: Pexels.com
Reduce The Number of Returns
Making a sale is a cause for celebration, but only if it stays that way — if it gets returned to you, then that’s not a sale. That’s just one expensive journey for whatever it is that you’re selling. While you’ll be unlikely to reach a 0% return rate, there are things you can do to limit the number of returns coming your way. It all begins with your product pages. The more information there is on there, the less likely it will be that the customer will have an “oh, that’s it?” moment when it arrives. For clothes, don’t just put sizes — put the actual dimensions.
Get Finances In Order
There are many reasons why you should get your finances in order, one being that it can help save money in other ways. You’ll find it much easier to get better deals on just about everything if you have the paperwork that shows your finances are healthy, and that your business has staying power. There can be different costs for the same services, depending on the strength of the company — take a look at ‘what is high risk credit card processing?’ to get a better understanding of how. Once you’ve got your money in shape, you should see more favorable rates across the board, thus saving you money.
Repeat Customers
Many businesses are forever trying to bring new customers on board, but actually, it might be a better option to look at getting repeat custom from existing customers, rather than appealing to new people. It costs significantly less to market towards people who have used your website before, than it does to educate and entice new customers. These people have already used your service once — and they could be likely to use it again, too. In the process, you’ll have reduced your marketing budget, or at least used it more effectively.
Postage and Packaging
You’ve got to get your packages out there to your customers, but are you doing it in the most effective way possible? There are plenty of ways to package and ship your items, and if you’re offering this service for free, then it’s important that you find a system that doesn’t cost all that much. Take a look at using other companies from what you’re currently using. You can take this approach with all suppliers, actually — there might just be a cheaper way to get the same goods and services.
