Yesterday’s talk from Scot Wingo, the founder of ChannelAdvisor, was an interesting look at the state of ecommerce, the recession, and what merchants can expect over the next year or two. Despite economic doom and gloom, Scot’s message was positive: canny sellers can do more than survive, they can thrive in the current climate. Here are Scot’s top tips to beat the recession:
1. Are you spending time on growing or being efficient?
2. Smart sourcing is the single best way to optimize both.
Profit’s made when you buy, not when you sell.
3. Cash is king, accelerate your ‘turns’ strategy.
Stock that’s sitting on a shelf is money wasted.
4. You need to be in as many channels as possible.
25% of buyers use marketplace sites (like eBay). If you’re only on eBay, that’s an awful lot of customers to be ignoring.
5. Use this time to take your e-commerce site to the next level.
It’s easy to throw a quick site together, start trading and never get around to improving things. Now’s the time to consider upgrading.
6. Avoid leverage/debt like the plague.
7. Google Product Search.
It’s free. We like free.
8. Work on improving your e-commerce conversions.
9. Implement a survey as a way to improve conversions.
– 4q.iperceptions.com
What do your buyers want? Why not ask them?
10.Customer retention is the new acquisition.
This turned out to be a bit of a theme for Catalyst. It’s something that does tend to get missed in the great push to drag in traffic from Google, though more traditional business has long known that it’s easier to deal with an existing customer than to find a new one.
You can read more from Scot on his blog, eBay Strategies.
22 Responses
Useful points and great advice. Thanks Sue and Scot.
If you want to boil this down, the theme is conversion.
Convert customers. And convert them again.
Convert stock to revenue.
Convert traffic (wherever you find it) to custom.
I’m a conversion convert. ;o)
I had a great 60 mins with Scot Wingo – a very inspirational guy. He has a great book “Ebay Strategies” thats well worth reading.
My tip that I learnt from the conference was: consistent and professional branding across multi-channels which will lead to growing and they converting more traffic.
John Pemberton
Director & Founder
GMDC Global Ltd
Dear Sue,
I’d like to translate it into Chinese to share with more sellers in China. Am I permitted to do so?
Thanks.
its already in chinese as far as I am concerned
😆
“accelerate your ‘turns’ strategy.” eh?
“Avoid leverage/debt like the plague.” eh?
Sorry, I am just a poorly educated country bumpkin, what do those mean?
if your so daft at running your business that you need Scott wingos tips
your in deep trouble already
#6 That really hurt Norf.
I only want to understand what I am reading.
😆
“accelerate your ‘turns’ strategy.” eh? = dont keep stock lying around for ever and a day.
“Avoid leverage/debt like the plague.” eh? = Dont spend money you dont have.
That will be £149 please.
Interesting because that is exactly how my business started. I usually had a fast enough turn around I could avoid any finance charges.
So how does the “turns” strategy fit in with the “long tail” 🙂
I wonder if the leverage/debt point is based on experience?
#8
Thank you.
we spend shed loads of money we dont have, its an overdraft
our house was bought with money we dont have,
with a mortgage,
our motors are bought with money we dont have,
with finance,
if we did not use money we dont have,we would be sitting in a tent
eating grass
#12 There’s a big difference between a long term business loan and a short term credit line (e.g. purchase of stock on credit terms) which can be called in at any time. Plenty of sellers that bought stock at Christmas have already run into troubles this Spring once the payments became due. Even relying on credit cards or bank overdrafts to finance a business can be removed by the banks with little or no notice.
13~
these things are dead easy spoke about
though much harder to implement
there are not many out there who can survive without credit of some kind
#13 We do and always have.
#6 business is about listening to a variety of sources and gathering knowledge to come to business decisions
#8 i am not a big channel advisor advocate re their software, but putting on a quality event with quality speakers – they have to be commended. £150 is nothing to be able to speak & listen to eBay, Amazon, google, scot wingo, pixmania etc etc.
Confused…
“Avoid leverage/debt like the plague.”
Scott Wingo
… this is the debt laden, only-just-made-a-profit-for-the-first-time last quarter after trading since 2001 ChannelAdvisor right? 🙂
16
Business is about making a profit!
and believing nothing any bugger tells you
especially if they are asking a fee
Some may be interested in this, it is free!
https://www.internetworld.co.uk/
“stock that is sitting on a shelf is money wasted”…That depends a lot on what type of business you are in.
Most “sales of products” type businesses will have to hold a range of colours/sizes etc so as to have a large enough choice and fulfill enough orders.
If you only stocked your best selling items, your sales would fall through the floor.
20
exactly
it depends what your business is, and what stock you carry
plus who would go into a shop with empty shelves
well, I would if I wanted to buy shelves….but that’s not what you meant, is it… 😉