Amazon Sellers: 4 Ways to Grow Your Business
You've been selling on Amazon for a bit, and have a basic understanding of how things work. You've got grand ambitions, but you're stuck on how to take your business to the next level. Many Amazon Sellers find themselves here, you've tasted success and are ready to double down and take it to the next level without increasing your workload.
Growing your Amazon business can be straight-forward, but you need to understand your process and leverage your existing assets to increase your customer base and revenue.
Document the Process
Many eCommerce businesses start as a side gig, a fun pet project that you do nights and weekends while trying to save enough money to quit their day job. Or you maybe you're devoted to building your eCommerce business, and spending all our savings on inventory and have nothing left to hire help that you desperately need.
Either way, you can grow your Amazon business faster than you think with proper strategy and planning. Start by documenting all the tools you use and detailing out each process. Review and decide what can be improved for the future. As your online store grows, all this tracked information will be beneficial, as you can share it with your employees and pull yourself out of the process.
Find Tools that Help
One of the best ways you can grow your eCommerce business is by implementing tools that make your process automated. Using a cloud-based system for your inventory is one example. Once something is purchased from your online store, the item is automatically subtracted from your catalog. Making this process is far better than using Excel spreadsheets.
This type of system allows you to track trends and analyze what is selling and identify if certain items have slowed. These items can be pulled from the Amazon rotation and move to a different sales channel to avoid paying Amazon storage fees. You may also want to implement A2X, an Amazon reporting tool that records income and fees or TaxJar to assist with determining what sales tax needs to be collected. There are a plethora of tools available for Amazon sellers that can assist with every aspect of your eCommerce business. You will need to identify gaps in your business and then implement those platforms to help with your business growth.
Create Company Policies
If you're starting out, all your money is going towards inventory and advertisements. There may be none budgeted for tools, which is normal, but you need to begin the process anyway. Tools are not required, but they reduce steps and speed things up. However, process documentation is required before you can decide which tools can help.
One main issue Amazon sellers face returns; this is a perfect place to start documenting your processes. If an item is returned to Amazon by the customer, Amazon waits for you to determine what you want to do with it. You can deem it as unsellable, and Amazon will charge you a storage fee, or you can tell them to destroy it and have it shipped back to you. Here is why you need to document policies and operational processes. If you instruct Amazon to return the product, you'll need to understand the cost of shipping both to and from Amazon and the cost refurbishing the product. Understand the costs and work to develop your policies and build processes around them.
Research Your Options
Not all companies have the same challenges or workflows, but online sellers seem to find themselves with similar issues. Consider talking with other sellers and compare tips. Look for cloud-based tools that will help fix your pain points. It doesn't matter if you can't afford them, you'll still want to understand what they can do for you and then budget for those items. Sometimes an expensive software program is cheaper than hiring additional employees.
Starting out can be exciting and stressful all at the same time, and growth even doubles the stress. Determine what you need and look for the items to help you get there. Once the processes are in place you will be able to take a step back and watch your business grow.
