The eCommerce store owner's essential survival kit

Introduction

If you're an eCommerce store owner, the word "survival" is one that probably resonates with you. From day to day operations and customer service to marketing and sales, there's a lot you need to keep track of. The more successful your business becomes, the more important it is for you to stay on top of everything going on in your company—and not get overwhelmed by it all.

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Here are some tools that can help store owners streamline their processes and stay focused on what matters most:

Analytics

Analytics is a tool that helps you understand your customers. It can help you understand where your visitors are coming from, how much time they spend on your site and what they do while they're there.

Analytics tools include:

Google Analytics - free to use with limited features.

Google focuses on pre-sale analytics e.g. where did the customer come from, how much time they spent and whether they convert.

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Pre-sales data can help companies streamline their sales processes and improve relationships with prospective and existing customers

Wherehouse analytics is post-sale & offers you the full view across all sales channels. e.g. Top sellers, best times of day, trends and top products. The sales funnel is also tracked to see the distribution of order statuses.

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When you combine pre & post sale analytics you’ve got solid fact-based guidance to make the best decisions for your business

Sales and inventory management

Sales and inventory management are two of the most important aspects of running an eCommerce store. You need to know how much you are making, how much inventory you have, and where it's located.

You can use many different software solutions for this, including:

A POS (point of sale) system that allows you to track sales at the register and also provides a way for customers to pay with their credit cards or mobile devices;

An accounting package that tracks all financial transactions;

An order management system (OMS) which allows you to place orders with suppliers/manufacturers directly from within your web store; and

Inventory control software that helps organize your stock levels by location and date so that everything is easy when it comes time for restocking.

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Now, you’ve got solid stock & accounting systems but still need to manully re-enter everything on all platforms? Why not INTEGRATE with realtime sync ?

POS integration

POS integration

Integrate your eCommerce store with your POS system. This will allow you to process purchases and send them to the right place automatically, without having to manually enter them into both systems.

Inventory management integration

Integrate your inventory management system with your eCommerce platform so that when new products are added, they're automatically updated everywhere else too!

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DID YOU KNOW? Cloud based systems could sync multiple brick and mortar stores as well as all online sales channels.

Conclusion

There are many tools to help eCommerce store owners run their businesses, but these are some of the most important. If you don't have a good grasp on your analytics or sales and stock, it will be very difficult for you to make informed decisions about your business. If you don't know how much inventory you have on hand at any given time or where it is located in relation to sales trends, then how can anyone expect you to keep up with demand?

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If you are looking for a brick and mortar online bridge

We have found that Vend is a great solution for both inventory management & POS especially if you’re selling on Takealot too. If you pair that with an integration service that provides analytics across platforms (wonder who could do that..😉) you’ve got yourself the ultimate survival kit.

Feel free to swop out Vend for any of our other supported platforms.