There are significant benefits to running an online business. You don’t have to pay for or be confined to a physical location, and your potential customer opportunities are plentiful. However, there are some downsides, most notably your significant levels of competition and the challenges in running a store that never really closes.
So, how do you not only stay afloat but grow? One of the necessary elements to ensure this success is project management. Think of your e-commerce website as an overarching project with smaller sub-projects. From your marketing campaign to reporting on customer data, great project management can be one of the keys to your success.
4 Project Management Tips to Grow Your e-Commerce Store
Read on for our top four easy project management tips which will work for every digital business.
Trackable goals and effective metrics
Selling a high volume of products is your primary goal, but to achieve this goal, you’ll need to set smaller, specific goals. These goals need to be clear and easy for you to track.
For example, let’s say you will invest in an influencer marketing approach; you’ll want to decide how much ROI you want to see through sales and measure it with custom URLs. If your campaign has the goal of positive brand mentions on socials, use a dedicated hashtag to see if you achieve your ideal number of mentions.
Every logged metric should have a conversion goal with a value. This strategy will help you understand which marketing endeavors are worth the time and cost.
Track your time
Flexible hours are given in e-commerce, but monitoring your time is crucial to ensure you are not wasting it. In addition, managing your team and yourself effectively requires understanding where you are wasting time.
Plenty of software options handle time tracking to get your business operating on the same page. First, ensure your time tracking is consistent for every employee; look through time logs to determine exactly where time is lost due to inefficiency. From there, make the necessary changes to save wasted time!
Having the right tools for the job is essential for the success of your e-commerce business. For example, a Product Information Management system can help you manage, organize, and publish all product content in your catalog, even if it expands to over 1000 SKUs.
Continually iterate and test.
Your e-commerce “project” never ends; it’s iterated with website updates, A/B variants to see how certain pages perform, and continual improvement planning. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as the perfect store, and due to the changing nature of consumer behavior, there’s always something to improve. Knowing which elements of your site or products require this improvement means testing, surveying, and data dives to see where the issues may be.
How do you know that your D2C marketing strategy is effective? Setting up a regular testing task, especially when launching new products or pages on your site, helps you identify the areas that are not resonating with your audience. Think of your e-commerce site as constantly evolving, and plan for this development to ensure you aren’t left behind.
Account for change with a scaling budget
You likely already have a budget, but does this account for your growth? Are you investing and reinvesting in your business continually?
If you are still using the budget suitable when setting up your store, it may be too little or too much if your original methods are more or less effective. In addition, sales can fluctuate, and you must have a flexible budget to scale your revenue or profit. Plenty of online e-commerce resources can help you plan and understand the budget requirements of a growing store; don’t let your fund’s pool restrict your ability to make more and add to it.
Project manage your way to success.
From setting your metrics to monitoring time, testing, and ensuring the proper budget, your project management endeavors are in place to benefit your business. An e-commerce store that stays on schedule and improves productivity is well-positioned to have a competitive advantage in the market. When you consider how much you are up against in the digital sales world, this can be the difference between your store’s success and failure.
Understanding e-commerce is here to help by building online solutions that grow businesses that convert visitors into customers. Let us help you create and maintain an effective online presence for your e-commerce website today.
