Scaling an eCommerce Business with Shopify

Introduction

Ecommerce is a booming industry, with over $4 trillion in annual sales. The amount of people spending money online continues to grow at an exponential rate, which means there’s no better time than now to start building an ecommerce business. Our Local Shopify ecommerce agency experts in Hampshire and Surrey will explain how best to scale an ecommerce company in this article. 

The annual sales of ecommerce globally surpassed $4 trillion for the first time in 2020.

The global ecommerce market is growing and it's projected to reach $6 trillion by 2022, according to eMarketer. This immense growth means that there are more ways than ever before for you to scale your eCommerce business.

According to Shopify, 2020 was a record year for them with merchants seeing an average of $12 million in sales from Black Friday through Cyber Monday.

According to Shopify, 2020 was a record year for them with merchants seeing an average of $12 million in sales from Black Friday through Cyber Monday. In 2017, the average sale was $5.5 million and in 2018 it was $6.2 million.

In addition to this data from their own research, Shopify also conducted an independent survey with more than 1,000 eCommerce businesses that showed that 57% had increased their revenue by at least 50% in one year after launching on Shopify’s platform while 49% were able to grow their overall margin by 20%.

With so many people around the world looking towards ecommerce for their retail needs, a major question that many entrepreneurs and emerging businesses have is how to scale their business so that they stay competitive in this rapidly growing market.

With so many people around the world looking towards ecommerce for their retail needs, a major question that many entrepreneurs and emerging businesses have is how to scale their business so that they stay competitive in this rapidly growing market.

As an entrepreneur with a new product or service on your hands, you may be wondering how to scale your business so that it can sustain itself and grow beyond its current capacity. There are many challenges associated with scaling up an e-commerce platform including:

  • Finding enough inventory (a big one)
  • Scaling up operations without losing sight of quality or customer service
  • Providing comprehensive support services

Enter Shopify, one of the most popular ecommerce platforms available today that provides entrepreneurs with the tools and resources to build, scale, and manage their online businesses.

Shopify is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms available today that provides entrepreneurs with the tools and resources to build, scale and manage their online businesses. It has built-in support for business owners, so you can focus on growing your business instead of worrying about how to sell products through an online storefront.

Shopify's main feature is its user interface (UI), which allows users to create beautiful stores in minutes—no coding required! With over a million active users worldwide, this platform has been used by some of the biggest names in fashion like Louis Vuitton and Gucci as well as smaller brands like J Crew or Nordstrom Rack.

With over a million users, Shopify offers a powerful suite of tools built to help business owners grow their online store while providing built-in support along the way.

Shopify is a popular ecommerce platform that's been around since 2004. The company has built-in support for multiple languages, payment gateways and shipping services, while also offering an array of tools to help you grow your online store.

Shopify has over a million users worldwide, making it one of the most popular platforms in the industry. It offers everything from affordable plans to advanced features like marketing automation and custom branding options that can help you build an effective digital marketing strategy for your business.

"One of the great things about Shopify is all of the resources that our company has made available to merchants," said Charity Huffman, an account optimization expert at Shopify Plus.

Shopify Plus is an enterprise-level service that offers a suite of tools built to help business owners grow their online store while providing built-in support along the way. Charity Huffman, an account optimization expert at Shopify Plus, said she has seen many small eCommerce businesses scale up successfully with this type of assistance.

"One of the great things about Shopify is all of the resources that our company has made available to merchants," said Huffman. "We have people on staff who are dedicated solely to helping our customers succeed in their businesses."

Huffman offers advice on how to avoid common mistakes when scaling an eCommerce business:

When thinking about scaling your online business it's important to identify what areas you need help with first and foremost.

When thinking about scaling your online business it's important to identify what areas you need help with first and foremost.

  • Identify your goals and needs: Before starting any project, it's important to know what you want the end result of it all to look like. To do this, ask yourself questions such as: "What are my top three goals? What would I like my business model/business strategy be?" The answers here will help guide how we move forward!
  • Understand your business: It's important that we understand our company before attempting anything new or different because we can't expect results if we don't know how everything works together! This means knowing where customers come from (Google Analytics), finding out which keywords drive them back (Google AdWords) and even knowing which products sell best together (Google Shopping).

To help navigate these first steps we’ve put together four strategies you can implement on your Shopify store to help build toward large-scale growth.

To help navigate these first steps we’ve put together four strategies you can implement on your Shopify store to help build toward large-scale growth.

  • Identify the areas that need the most help, and then identify how you can help. For example, if your product selection isn't as robust as it could be, or if there are gaps in your marketing strategy, then this is an area where you should focus on improving.
  • List all of the strategies that could be implemented to help scale up sales and revenue. You may not have time or resources at hand right now but with some planning and strategizing down the road when the time comes (or whenever), they could become effective tools in helping your business grow into something even bigger than what it currently is!

1) Make sure your website runs smoothly.

  • Make sure your website runs smoothly.

Website speed is a critical component to any eCommerce store and can have a major impact on conversion rates and customer satisfaction, so there are several things you should do to ensure that yours runs as quickly as possible. First, check out our article on the best tools for testing site speed: https://www.shopify.com/blog/the-best-tools-for-testing-site-speed/. If you don't have time for this step right now but would like some pointers on how to improve it later down the road (or if you just want something more general), read through our blog post about how we managed our own site's performance here: https://www.shopify.com/blog/improving-your-website

Conclusion

We hope these tips will help you get started on your journey to scaling an eCommerce business with Shopify. We know it’s a challenging task, but we also think it’s worth it when you consider the potential for growth and increased revenue that can come from building up your customer base this way. Good luck! You can also learn more about setting up a shopify store in the UK here.