Before jumping into how to manage an eCommerce site, we have to understand the back-end elements of a large-scale eCommerce business, the importance of eCommerce management, and its costs.
Whether you are looking to expand your business or taking your first steps, implementing an effective ecommerce management strategy matters.
So, without any further delay, let’s get into it!
The Gravity of eCommerce Management
Whether you are planning to grow your business or planning to hire eCommerce outsourcing services, you need to understand the opportunity cost of investing in an online store to succeed.
Ecommerce experts emphasize on this saying, “It’s best to put the weight on time rather than the money invested which might go to loss if the deal fails.”
An effective eCommerce management approach ensures that each and every step in the ecommerce operation is aligned properly. This creates a seamless shopping experience for those visiting your online store, leading to a successful business.
Furthermore, a fruitful ecommerce management plan also contributes to customer satisfaction and retention. Moreover, fostering customer loyalty helps establish a good reputation and encourages repeat business.
Prioritizing eCommerce management helps build a strong foundation for your business’s sustainable growth and long-term success in the digital marketplace.
Backend Elements for Managing a Large-Scale eCommerce Business
Product Research
Product research is the primary and mandatory step that will help you determine if your product idea can succeed in the market.
During this step, you have to gather and analyze data on market trends, customer demand, and the competition. This will see to it that your product meets your target audience’s needs.
Product Sourcing
Product sourcing is the action of choosing the product you want to sell, buying it from reliable suppliers, and then reselling it.
Choosing trusted vendors ensures that clients can rest assured about the quality of the product. Moreover, shoppers know their products and suppliers, thus, a reliable supplier can catch a customer’s eye while scrolling down the product list. This process is meant to help attract customers, increase sales, maximize profit margins, and ensure a smooth supply chain for your ecommerce business.
Marketing
The sole purpose of Ecommerce marketing is to drive awareness and traffic to an online store and convert leads into lifetime clients. Once marketing is done the right way, it helps the business build a strong brand identity and increase awareness of their commodity.
For instance, you could ask a reliable media buying agency particularly for ecommerce to lend you a hand with your marketing. An impeccable marketing strategy will enable online retailers and service providers to realize considerable return on investment (ROI) and reach business goals.
Customer Support
Customer support is a by-default section in a business. It is their duty to solve any concerns a client might have. The promptness at showing support earns the client’s trust and increases loyalty.
The role of customer service is to boost the overall shopping experience which will ultimately encourage repeat purchases, driving sales. There are higher chances of increase in sales when positive word-of-mouth recommendations are being shared by clients.
Relieve yourself of this extra burden and instead, outsource ecommerce customer service for your business. Focus on more important matters at hand.
Inventory Management
It is vital that your eCommerce site is always on, accurately updating your available stocks. You need to keep in mind that the front-end and back-end will need to collaborate seamlessly.
Your clients need to know if the product is in stock or not. Effective teamwork between the eCommerce back-end and the front-end enables you to keep customers updated about your product’s availability.
It has been highly recommended that you outsource your backend, specifically the eCommerce product data entry services. Not only will it save you some of your expenses, but it will also give you quality output and save time.
Order Delivery
This requires your utmost attention! A strong eCommerce backend with a third-party system will enable you to easily take an order and route it through logistics. It will lay out and roughly calculate the time it will take the order to reach the customer at their provided location.
This creates a trust in client relationships and gives them peace of mind.
Shipping and Fulfillment
Moving further into the process, manually managing orders and delivering a product from warehouses is complex.
What you need is to automate this process. It will reduce the risk of human error and your customer’s order will be delivered quickly and efficiently. Just like Amazon.
Content Management System (CMS)
Next is the CMS which is used to manage all contents on your sites, used by content authors and managers. It plays a role in ranking on search engines as well as the presence of your eCommerce website on google.
Most popular CMS is WordPress. Its user-friendly interface and pre-built templates make web developing easier. It is without doubt that the eCommerce back end has an effect on the front end.
Accounting
When you own a business, be it eCommerce or something else, financial planning is inevitable. With eCommerce accounting, you can develop long-term financial strategies to tackle the unique challenges of the online market.
Accountants are just perfect for this job. Their expertise helps entrepreneurs make more planned decisions with investments and resource allocation.
Supply Chain Management
Supply chain management focuses on streamlining tasks such as making certain the availability of resources before the “out of stock” point or stock monitoring.
This last element helps minimize costs, wastes, and time in the production cycle. It gives businesses a winning chance in the global marketplace competition.
Popular Tools for Ecommerce Management
1. Ecommerce Platforms
- Shopify: A platform designed to create and manage online stores with a large number of plugins and integrations.
- Wix: A resourceful website builder that simplifies online selling.
- BigCommerce: A platform that supports large-scale retail. It offers web hosting and customization options for your eCommerce store.
2. Inventory and Order Management
- Zoho Inventory: This is a cloud-based system offering an abundance of features such as tracking inventory levels, etc.
- SkuVault: An advanced eCommerce software from Linnworks that offers inventory management with real-time updates and integration capabilities.
- Lightspeed: It is a cloud-based all-in-one POS (point of sale) and inventory management software that allows automated tracking for inventory.
3. Payment Gateways
- Paypal: A widely recognized gateway in the Ecommerce industry. Very easy to set up and user-friendly. This tool keeps client’s financial information safe and secure while streamlining the checkout process.
- Adyen: An ecommerce payment gateway designed for enterprise brands. This tool offers seamless payment experience for online and in-person sales, focusing on mobile payments.
- Stripe: It’s a gateway that integrates with various online shopping carts. It is equipped with an advanced machine-learning fraud system which adapts according to your business requirements. So, you not only get adaptability but security too.
4. Marketing and SEO
- SEMrush: A robust tool used to establish digital marketing strategies. It helps you run effective keyword research, SEO analysis, and competitive research.
- Google Analytics: The best tool for tracking website traffic and user behaviour.
- Ahrefs: This tool helps you keep track of your competitors’ search traffic, tracks yearly trends and more.
5. Customer Service
- Hiver: A cloud-based customer service platform that promotes team collaboration and offers customer support through Gmail.
- Zendesk: This tool offers support ticketing, chat, and knowledge base functionalities.
- Zoho Desk: This software was established to help customers with their queries. It offers automation, omnichannel communication, conversational AI, etc.
6. Shipping and Fulfillment
- ShipBob: It’s a fulfillment service established to handle inventory, packing, and shipping e-commerce businesses.
- ShipHero: It’s a cloud-based warehouse management system (WMS) designed to manage their inventory, shipping, and fulfillment.
- Returns Management: This tool focuses on handling customer returns efficiently and ensuring customer satisfaction.
7. Website Optimization
- Hotjar: A platform that gives behaviour analytics, session recordings, and feedback data in order to understand user behaviour.
- GTmetrix: This platform analyzes website speed and performance, offering insights for improvement.
- Google SEO Checker: This platform offers various tools that help track your website SEO performance and visibility in search engines.
- CRO Checker: Conversion Rate Optimization & Performance Checker is a tool that evaluates how advanced your current CRO strategy is. This tool helps identify areas of improvement and maximize your conversion rate.
8. Accounting and Finance
- Xero: A cloud-based accounting software that enables users to manage their finances.
- Sage: It’s an account system that helps manage accounting, invoicing, expenses, cash flow, bank reconciliation, inventory, etc.
- QuickBooks: It’s a comprehensive accounting software that integrates with many e-commerce platforms. Its main purpose is to help manage finances of small and medium-sized businesses.
Building Your Ecommerce Team
- Director of Ecommerce
This designation oversees each and every operation and handles core tasks that are crucial to the company’s development. They come up with strategic development plans, manage partnerships, and make pivotal decisions.
- Web Developer
You can build your eCommerce store using various tools. However, when you want to customize your layout or integrate advanced functionality, you need the help of a web developer.
Look for an expert with experience with Web design, knows code languages, and can maintain marketing automation and CRM softwares.
- IT Technician
A technician works behind the scenes but their involvement is no less important. From diagnosing computer problems to performing maintenance, IT Technicians do it all. They also train new hires on how to use the digital infrastructure properly.
- Inventory Manager
These individuals are given the responsibility of tracking stock levels and placing orders accordingly. From stocking products to making sure they get delivered on time, they are in charge of.
Moreover, when products require approvals, they work with the director of eCommerce and the IT Technician to keep the data synced with the inventory system.
- Digital Marketing Manager
This manager plays a vital role in boosting brand awareness and driving traffic to product pages. The Manager collaborates with the director of eCommerce to plan and develop marketing campaigns in line with current objectives.
- Customer Service Representatives
There is no business where, when items are purchased there hasn’t been a problem or query regarding at least one of them. Thus, eCommerce brands hire customer service representatives to be on standby to answer these queries, process orders and issue refunds.
- Accountants and Finance
It is crucial that you understand your own business’ financial health. Accountants help business owners stay updated with the money flow happening in and out of their business.
They collaborate with the director of eCommerce and Inventory manager to control costs and budget accordingly.
- Business Analyst
An eCommerce business collects data and collaborates with the director of ecommerce to make strategy decisions. They work together to pinpoint the issues that could be delaying growth.
Global Ecommerce Statistics
Shopping online has been taking over globally using the internet. Statista reports have stated that ecommerce sales brought in over $5.8 trillion USD globally in 2023. This figure is expected to cross $8 trillion USD in 2027.
Furthermore, in China, Alibaba is said to be the largest e-commerce retailer globally, accounting for a 23% market share. However, Amazon is said to surpass Alibaba by 2027, reaching an average of 1.2 trillion USD in online sales.
Total Cost To Manage A Growing eCommerce Store
According to Shopify, the average cost of starting an eCommerce store will be approximately $39 per month. Obviously, pricing differs depending on several factors such as design, customization, and of course the platform you choose matters.
Here is a quick estimation of costs you will have to bear when creating an ecommerce website.
| Domain Registration | $2-$30 per year |
| Web Hosting | $5 – $250 monthly (depends on the hosting plan and provider) |
| SSL Certificate | $0 (complimentary with some hosting providers) to $200 yearly |
| Hosted Platforms like Shopify | $20 to $300 monthly (based on the pan and features) |
| Open-source Platforms | No cost to download.Maybe have charges for extensions, plugins, and themes |
| Pre-built Theme (Design) | $0 – $200 |
| Custom Design & Development | $2,000 – $20000 + depending on the complexity, features, and functionality needed |
| CRO Optimization | Approximately $800 to $10,000 per Month |
| Chat Automation | Cost ranges from $0 to $500 per month |
| Product Sourcing Fees | Rate will be set by potential vendors |
| Product Fulfillment Fees | This fee is the price of the item or cost percentage of your product’s value.Ranges around $0.25 – $3 per item in fulfillment fees. |
| Inventory Fees | Total Costs of Good Purchased or Produced in a Time PeriodTotal Number of Items Purchased or Produced |
| Shipping | Depends on Shipping Service.A fact to note down is that shipping costs can be saved if the product is delivered within the country where the eCommerce store is located. |
| Media Buying | Ranges from $100-$149 per hour |
| Marketing Tools | Starts at $300 per month |
| Social Media Profile Management | Ranges from $500 to $5,000 per month |
| Operational Cost | Starts at $1,000 and can reach up to 10,000+ |
How To Reduce The Operational Cost & Keep Maximum Profit
- Outsource Tasks
Why carry all the burden alone?
Hiring a BPO company to take part of the burden off your plate. This will also reduce operating costs while increasing revenue. Outsourcing certain tasks off to experts will free up your time to dedicate it to more important matters.
- Normalize Remote Working
When the pandemic took over, many companies switched to remote work. Not only does working from home reduce tons of costs but also contributes to better productivity. For the future generation, work from home would be a good investment.
- Pay Smart
By setting up automatic payment options, you can avoid late payments. Afterall, payments within deadlines saves you time and money. Offering discounts can encourage shoppers to pay early on invoices.
- Consider A Four-day Week
A worker’s mental health does impact their productivity. It is evident that shifting to a four-day week automatically eliminates 20% of variable overhead expenses such as saving thousands annually on electricity, office supplies and even cleaning.
For instance, Microsoft recently announced that when they switched to a four-day workweek their productivity rose by 40%.
- Integrate Technology
Online systems and software improve work efficiency. Besides, it make some free time for employees to take a walk. With Artificial Intelligence (AI), businesses can minimize human error and streamline the workflow process.
Integrating technology into a business has overflowing benefits which in the long run save the business money and time.
- Negotiate Better Deals
When an initial offer is made, businesses should understand that this might not be the supplier’s lowest possible offer. Negotiate for a better deal and shop around because other suppliers might offer the same or some similar for a cheaper price.
This strategy enables businesses to enhance their procurement process, effectively reducing expenses and enhancing overall financial efficiency.
- Identify Inefficiencies
Perform thorough checkup of each process happening in your ecommerce business because some issues could go overlooked. Whether they are simple minor time wasters or serious fraud cases, every issue needs to be brought into the light.
Once the inefficiencies are brought to light, strategies need to be placed to eliminate them.
One Man Army Entreprenuer’s eCommerce Management
START
Pick a product with a high dropshipping product. Dropshipping means you are selling a product but your supplier is the one shipping it to the customer. You can get ideas of an in-demand dropshipping product from ChatGPT or Google.
Check the overall trend of the product you decide to settle with through Google Trends.
Phase 2
Next, Finding Suppliers! Search up your product on Google, then list down all the different brands on a spreadsheet.
Phase 3
With the product and brand list ready, now it’s building our website. You can use various tools to do this, such as Shopify has various pre-made templates to help you create your website as soon as possible.
Prioritize Speed over Perfection. Once you have visitors, you can make your changes to optimize your site.
Phase 4
Run ADs! Once we are all set, we need to understand the keyword that a shopper would search up when looking for your product.
Besides paid ADs, you can also resort to email marketing or social media marketing.
First, search up which business requires your product then make your initial offer and negotiate from there and offer discounts or refund options.
FINISH
Lastly, Scaling. It’s all about doing more with what is working.
- Vertical Scaling: Spend more money on the same products of what’s already working.
- Horizontal Scaling: Broadening your product selection such as introducing new products.
How ASL BPO Can Help With Ecommerce Website Management
ASL BPO, a Top Rated Outsourcing Firm, has been offering outsourcing solutions to businesses all over the world for over a decade now.
Working with ASL BPO, you will have access to highly skilled professionals dedicated to fulfill your demands and meet your expectations. They also provide you with quality standard and complaint output.
Not only will this simplify the work process, reduce costs but also increase the overall work efficiency.
Outsourcing with ASL BPO offers businesses of all-sizes a cost-efficient way to advance and succeed.