intelligent

Understand different customer behaviour and buying habits

Who is your ideal customer ? Are you selling to a specific generation i . e . Gen Z or Boomers or do your products appeal to a whole spectrum of shoppers ? Different generations tend to have very different online shopping behaviours , there is no one-size-fits-all approach . For example , our recent report found that digital natives ( people under 45 ) shop very differently from digital adopters ( over the age of 45 ). Digital natives tend to shop earlier for Christmas and shop more during promotional events , whereas digital adopters will shop around for value and budget through self-imposed spending limits .

Once you understand the buying behaviours of your customers , you begin to personalise your online store and marketing efforts to ensure you ’ re getting your products in front of the right people at the right time .

Understand the scalability of suppliers

The world of suppliers can often seem daunting to navigate but it ’ s more important that you do .

It ’ s a major hindrance that SMEs often don ’ t think about it until a potential bottleneck is already upon them . So , you ’ ve got a list of suppliers who deliver on time , who you align with ethically , who share data and who offer great rates for the supplies you need to build your business . Everything is going swimmingly as your business begins to boom , and everyone in the supply chain is excited for the growth . Until . . . one of those suppliers can no longer provide what you need at a fast enough rate at the volume your business requires .

Be aware of how much a supplier will be able to source – and their own plans and intentions for scalability of their operations – and have strategies in place to augment your access to needed components when the demand arises .

Have resilient fulfilment and shipping platform in place

So you ’ re getting orders through the door but how can you make sure you ’ re able to deliver to your customers in a way that meets their expectations ?

Picking , packing and shipping are no different than any other system . Having ways and platforms such as ShipStation in place to mitigate errors in the logistics process will go a long way to help instil continued customer trust . This may include things like negotiating discounts with carriers , automatically generating accurate shipping labels and implementing custom-branded tracking options . Even if everything goes right at every other step of the process – if your customer doesn ’ t receive the right product , receives a broken product , or receives no product at all ( or a very late product ) – then all the extra time spent on good products and services at prior stages is largely mitigated and customers still walk away with some degree of satisfaction . �

ONCE YOU UNDERSTAND THE BUYING BEHAVIOURS OF YOUR CUSTOMERS , YOU BEGIN TO PERSONALISE YOUR ONLINE STORE AND MARKETING EFFORTS