In comparison to brick-and-mortar retailers, ecommerce businesses have shown to be highly profitable. However, the success of your eCommerce business is contingent upon your ability to keep costs down. Costs can eat into revenues and eventually render a venture unprofitable. Reduced eCommerce costs benefit you since they enable you to maintain a healthy, self-regulating, and growing business without the worry of losing consumers to the competition or being forced to shut down.
The following is a list of steps you can take to cut your ecommerce costs and boost your revenue.
1. Minimal Returns
One of the most rudimentary rules of keeping ecommerce costs low is to keep products in customers’ hands with minimal returns. When a good is returned, it is not a simple case of voiding the sale. More likely, the business will absorb the expense of shipping, the effort associated with transporting the item back and the money related to the packaging. Then there is the cost of inspecting the product to determine if it’s damaged and the potential that you can’t resell it as new.
Ascertain that consumers understand what they are purchasing before making a purchase. Extend the descriptions on your product pages and include additional images from various perspectives to give shoppers a more accurate impression of what they’re buying. Extending the time frame for returns is another approach to use here. Although it may appear counterintuitive, extending the time window for returns can reduce return rates. More extended return policies help alleviate the temptation to return the product as quickly as possible, giving customers more time to change their minds and opt to retain it.
2. Minimize Product Packaging
Utilize the appropriate packaging boxes for ordered products to save the eCommerce operational costs. You should use lightweight and compact packaging that includes at least one layer of bubble wrap. The goal is to make the shipment as light as possible because the heavier the cargo, the more it costs to ship. Eco-friendly packaging will help save money on shipping, as these shipping boxes are composed of lightweight material. Paper and cardboard are environmentally friendly due to their ease of recycling and biodegradability. Bubble wrap is also cost-effective and environmentally beneficial. Moreover, eco-friendly packaging helps position your business as a green brand, drawing additional customers and increasing sales.
3. Reduce Inventory Holding Cost
As an online business, you’re probably aware that inventory accounts for a sizable amount of your assets. That is why it is critical to determine your exact inventory cost in order to lower your ecommerce expenses and increase your profitability. Many business owners are unaware of the cost of extra inventory – striking the right balance between stocking just enough things and overstocking may be difficult under the best of circumstances. Increased demand is a positive indication for any small business, but it comes at the cost of increased overhead.
Begin by removing obsolete inventory. In general, when you overestimate a product’s potential, you risk having many things that do not sell due to a lack of client demand. The next tip is to shorten supplier lead times. When supplier lead times are long, you need to maintain more safe stock to meet all orders, resulting in higher carrying costs. When a supplier offers shorter lead times, you have more options when placing orders. It will cut stock carrying expenses in the short term and lessen the risk of obsolete stock in the long term.
4. Optimize Marketing Funds
As an eCommerce business, one should emphasize one of its inherent strengths: the fact that it operates online. While funnelling marketing funds towards digital ways is the best course of action, it is still necessary to determine which channels would be most beneficial. Calculating the return on investment (ROI) for each of your campaigns enables the business to decide how to spend the money. Then, compare the ROI percentages and increase allocation for the top performers, boosting your ecommerce revenue with lower marketing costs.
5. Consider Dropshipping
When it comes to reducing ecommerce costs, dropshipping is one of the most effective methods. The drop shipper purchases goods directly from manufacturers or wholesalers and ships them directly to the end customer. Dropshippers save a lot of money because they don’t have to own, run, or maintain their inventory. In general, dropshipping is a popular e-commerce model because it has relatively minimal overhead expenses, allows selling an unlimited number of products, and provides management freedom.
6. Lower Shipping Expenses
Every ecommerce firm knows that one of the most significant income drainers is shipping costs. Customers appreciate seeing minimal or no shipping fees associated with their purchase. Apart from assessing your packing and determining ways to reduce costs associated with your shipping, a straightforward approach to saving money is to use multi-carrier shipping software. If you’ve been using the same shipping supplier for an extended period, it may be worthwhile to attempt to negotiate a better bargain. Shipping expenses can swiftly add up and keeping it on track can significantly reduce the costs of your ecommerce business.
7. Adopt Automation
Another excellent strategy to lower your eCommerce operating expenses is to automate your business activities. By automating your business processes, you can eliminate human error, manual work and reduce completion times while increasing productivity and efficiency. Numerous business automation systems include automated workflows that may be used to automate operations, such as uploading customers’ contacts to an email marketing tool, registering sales in accounting software, and responding to abandoned cart events. This approach assists in freeing up your calendar, allowing you and your time to focus on more critical business operations and tactics such as new customer onboarding.
