All successful businesses get larger, and if yours is one of them, you need to look at how to manage that growth so you don’t become a victim of your own success and leave both your customers and your workforce disappointed.
It can be easy to get this wrong with so much going on, but by planning now for that extra trade, you’ll have an infrastructure in place that will make any growth as profitable as possible and, just as importantly, virtually seamless from the outside.
Finding and importing more stock
When you’re scaling your business, you’re likely to find that your current supply network isn’t up to the task, and you need to import products or materials directly from the manufacturer. This can work out much cheaper as long as you account for the longer timescales and the extra paperwork involved with importing stock yourself.
Even with a trustworthy freight forwarder on side, things can go wrong, like, couriers failing to pick up shipments on time or problems with customs incurring extra storage charges. This can be difficult if you don’t know what to expect, so finding a reliable demurrage calculator and instructions on how to use it will be vital.
Update your website
If you have any sort of online business, you’ll have a website, even if it isn’t visited very often due to the fact you predominately sell on a platform like Amazon. However, as your business gets bigger, that’s going to change. It’s not just about setting up a website and making it look good (although that is important). You need to make sure it has all of the elements that make up a good website. You might not know what these are, but any website designer worth their salt will know which boxes you need to tick.
Keeping your content up to date is important, too, to give the best impression to any new visitors who want to find out more about your business. This plays a vital part in building a long-term relationship with your customers, and letting them have valuable information about your niche can put you at the front of their minds when they’re deciding where to buy from.
Get more traffic to your listings
As your business grows, you’ll have people actively looking for you, so you need to do everything you can to help them find you. While formulating an SEO strategy is important, you might want faster results, so it could be combined with some PPC advertising. Again, finding a specialist company that has experience with a particular platform is a good place to start.
The more attention your listings get, the more sales you’re likely to make, which can also lead to further growth, especially if you turn one-off purchasers into long-term customers.
To wrap everything up
While there’s a lot happening in an expanding business, you need to look at the basics if you want your progress to be smooth. There are several areas that you need to invest time, effort, and money into, and they all work toward making your business more efficient, so they shouldn’t be overlooked.
You need to ensure that you have the products to meet the demand of your customers and provide them with the information they need via your website. You should also do what you can to attract even more customers so your expansion can continue.
