How to effectively manage your business online

by Itoris Inc Itoris.com- Best Magento Marketplace

Many customers who regularly purchase their favorite items online have at least once experienced a bad customer service. There could be a variety of reasons why this might happen. Sometimes, much to our surprise, we may buy a product which actually non-existent. It could also be the case that there is a need to wait 3 weeks for a product delivery, which should normally only take a couple of days. Such inconveniences may frustrate both customers and business owners. The former may be willing to look for alternatives offered by other companies.

In order to help companies avoid, such as unpleasant situation, we’ve come up with a few simple guidelines for effectively managing your business online.

1. Prioritize customers who ordered your goods first

When new orders come into the company’s CRM, many businesses often struggle to choose which ones to prioritize. Moreover, some of them may actually proceed with the newest requests forgetting about the ones which came in first.

This should not be the case. In the today’s competitive environment, companies must act quickly so as to avoid burning down the orders they’ve initially had. When it comes to prioritizing, always make sure to serve those customers who’ve come to you first. Act as fast as fast as possible to combat any unnecessary competition and make sure your early customers get their products in a timely manner.

2. Use the filtering options in your CRM

Take advantage of the filtering options to serve your customers in accordance with the principle highlighted above. This option will be especially useful for processing a large number of orders some multinational businesses have. The need to study every single order would, therefore, be largely eliminated.

3. Monitor how much inventory your store has on hand

Another simple and yet very important requirement of avoiding a problem we’ve described at the beginning is to simply monitor how much inventory your business has at a specific period of time. On the one hand, this is the simplest tip a business owner might ever receive. But as often shown in practice, the failure to regularly monitor your stock inventory is a serious reason why an order may be delayed forcing customers to abandon their initial orders.For a large company, it might make sense to look at some of the inventory Management Tools which are currently available on the Internet. Popular ones include Device 42, Zoho Inventory, Swift Count and so on. These instruments will help you to track the precise amount of products without ever visiting your physical warehouse.

4. Send all your orders as soon as you can

Customers are very much impatient. They prefer their purchasers to be delivered in a timely manner. Even some minor delays may force your clients to buy an alternative product elsewhere. Therefore, to satisfy their demanding needs, you might want to introduce some additional delivery methods. This may be an express or a smart delivery. In the latter case, customers are typically provided an opportunity to track their shipments in real time.

Smart shipping can also benefit you as a business owner. Firstly, by using this method, you will have more control over your products, even after leaving them at your post office. Secondly, you will no longer be required to answer customer requests about where their shipment currently is.

With regards to the shipping times, try to implement a same day delivery method which is successfully used by Amazon.

5. Reserve some extra time for product deliveries

This is a must-have option for almost any online business. Using this strategy you will be able to meet your customers' expectations, even during busy times of Christmas or in case of an unforeseen event. Another advantage of reserving a couple of days for your product delivery is a possibility of bringing an additional delight to your customer when it comes to delivering orders earlier than initially planned.

6. Outsource order processing activities

Another method of controlling your orders is to outsource the whole order fulfillment process to an external company. By doing so you may forget about the need for buying and storing inventory, packaging custom orders to get them delivered to your local post office. And don’t worry about branding. Outsourcing partners will be happy to use your company’s packaging materials so that the end customer would have every reason to believe that an order has actually come from you. So next time a new order comes to your store, just forward all the necessary details to your drop shipping partner and feel free to focus on other important activities.

7. Find tools for performing mass product modifications on the fly

Feeling bored when you need to update information about some products? This routine task is very much time-consuming and can often lead to errors, frustrating both business owners and their customers.

In order to combat a problem of applying the same product options for multiple items in your Magento store, take a look at some of the Magento 2 Product Mass Actions extensions currently available on the market. By using those instruments, you will be able to keep information about your products up to date without spending an excessive amount of time.

8. Sharing is caring. Work with Social Media and let the customers share their opinions online

If you have successfully taken care of all the factors mentioned above, it's time to think about other ways of managing your online store. How can you help clients spread their feedback across the Internet? One option is to introduce customer reviews on your site. This will give visitors a chance to express their feedback. And in case they are satisfied, you will win a prize in the form of new customers coming to your site.

When it comes to promoting your products, up to date information about the latest product arrivals and how-to guides is another feature you need to consider. Your end goal should be to build an interactive community around your site where people will be able to read about the products, share their opinions and receive timely customer support. Use like and share buttons so that the customers will be able to suggest your products to their friends on Facebook, Twitter, Google+. Introduce comments sections and forums directly on your site as to give your visitors a chance to interact with the whole community. Also, work on your own social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter and Google to attract new customers, retain existing ones and take a full advantage of social media signals for your site’s SEO.