Setting up an online store is one of the easiest ways to become a modern business owner. Hardly any resources are required to do this, all you need are the following:
- A website/platform to sell your goods
- Something to sell
- A way of shipping products
- A decent marketing strategy
You can obtain all of these things while working out of your home. Even if you sell physical goods, you can package them up and ship them from your garage or spare room. But, what happens if you want to grow your online store and expand? There are right and wrong ways of doing this! With that in mind, this post will walk you through the logical steps to expand your online store.
Increase your stock numbers
Here, we’re talking about the number of items you sell in your store. Imagine you have multiple products, but only keep 100 stock units of each one. Your store is successful to the point that you fly through your stock every month. Within a few days, everything is sold out, meaning your business can’t make any more money until the stock is replenished.
Increasing stock numbers can prevent periods of downtime from happening. You have more items to sell, allowing more people to make purchases. This also has the benefit of creating a better customer experience as people are unlikely to visit your site and be irritated by everything being out of stock for weeks.
Invest in a larger stockroom
You can increase your stock numbers by still working from home – but only to a point. Eventually, you have no space to store everything. In this case, investing in an industrial real estate developer will help you out. Here, you can work with someone to build a small warehouse or area to keep all of your stock. As a result, you’re able to accommodate everything without any issues.
Moreover, you can decide where to put your new stockroom/warehouse. Perhaps you build it near an industrial estate, or closer to a shipping company. Thus, you can get your orders packed and shipped a lot faster.
Diversify your products
Logically, it makes sense to increase your stock numbers before diversifying your product range. When you continue to sell out of your current products, you should introduce new ones to keep people happy. Look at what you sell and figure out ways to diversify this.
As a very basic example, imagine you sell hoodies. They’re really fashionable and stylish, and people seem to love them. Take this concept and change it slightly. Start selling t-shirts or sweaters as well. They’re new products, but with a similar style, giving people other things to purchase.
Just like that, your online store will grow and expand, making more sales than ever before. It’s all about understanding the logical way to scale a business like this. Start by upping your product numbers to generate more sales and interest. Put the systems in place to allow you to deal with the additional stock numbers, and then work on diversifying. It’s a simple path, yet highly successful.