6 ways to make your e-commerce more profitable

2020 was a year of revolution for the world of e-commerce. On the one hand, the sector was up by 8.5% over the year… and on the other, there were 17,400 more online shops than in 2019 (source: Fevad).

So, while consumers are increasingly keen to shop online, competition is becoming increasingly fierce, regardless of the activity of the sites in question.

From digital marketing and website tips to logistics advice, find out how to make your online businessmore profitable.

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Better targeted communication for a profitable e-commerce

As an e-tailer, your first objective is probably to increase traffic to your online shop. However, to make your e-trade profitable, you know that your website must first and foremost attract qualified traffic, i.e. visitors likely to buy your products.

The key to this is to target your communication and webmarketing actions very precisely

Only choose the digital marketing and communication channels that work for your target audience. There is no point in spending time and money on too much communication if it only brings you unqualified visitors! For example, there is no point in investing your time in advertising on Twitter or Instagram if your target audience is not there. So take the time to find out which channels your potential customers use to find out about and purchase products like yours. Why not interview some of your existing customers to find out more about them?
Test-and-learn: start with limited investments in different marketing tools to test which communication channels and formats might work for your e-commerce shop, and then monitor the results to make sure they are really interesting customer acquisition levers.
Don’t hesitate to surround yourself with specialists in the field. It’s better to invest a little budget in an online advertising specialist if you have no knowledge of programmatic, or an SEO expert if you want to get your shop to rank higher on Google. You’ll get better results, and you’ll be able to invest the time you free up on actions where you have a real added value

Create a solid e-commerce order path

Just like a physical shop, an e-commerce site should offer a real sales path to visitors, which is part of what will make your e-commerce profitable and better convert your visitors into buyers.

On this journey, your visitors must find all the information that reassures them to order your products, but also elements that could push them to increase the amount of their cart.

Here are some tips for creating a shop with a flawless order path:

Design product sheets that are well optimised, both for search engines and for users. In particular, take care to include realistic visuals, detailed characteristics of your products, and testimonials and reviews from satisfied customers. The aim: to give visitors as much key information as possible.
Clearly display your sales, delivery and return conditions on your ecommerce site. It’s a fact: many Internet users abandon their shopping carts because they can’t find information on delivery costs or return conditions. Avoid this pitfall by informing your visitors of your delivery times and methods. Don’t hesitate, if possible, to give them the choice of several delivery methods (home delivery, click&collect in your warehouse or physical shop, or a relay point)
Offer similar or complementary products before the purchase, to increase the average basket of your buyers. These products, well contextualised in relation to the basket of your Internet user, can quickly allow you to generate more additional turnover.
Set upan abandoned cart follow-upprocess . Internet users who abandon their shopping carts on your site represent a strong potential for profitability! What if you encouraged them to come back and take a look at your products? Whatever CMS you used to create your site (WordPress, Prestashop…), there are inevitably plugins to help you follow-up on abandoned carts by email!

Work on the customer experience to build customer loyalty

At a time when competition is fierce in many sectors, what differentiates a profitable e-commerce site from one that does not work very well is the notion of customer experience.

By working on the customer experience, you are banking on repeat business, i.e. the fact that your loyal customers will come back regularly to order your products. And, as you may already know, retaining your existing customers costs much less than acquiring new ones.

So how do you create a customer experience that is different from your competitors’? Consider..

Work on the user experience (UX) of your site. Creating an e-commerce site with a neat design is not enough: you must also take care of the loading speed of your pages, the fact that they are responsive (i.e. adapted to all media: mobile, tablet and desktop), or that personalised elements appear according to the profile of your visitor. Don’t hesitate to carry out a thorough UX audit, by putting yourself in the shoes of your typical customer: what do they want their experience to be like when they arrive on your home page, and until the end of their order?
Set upa special communication system with your existing customers. Customer loyalty is all about creating a special experience for anyone who has already bought from you. Why not, for example, launch regular newsletters specifically for these target segments, offering discounts or extra benefits?
Customise packaging to support your brand image. We often forget how important packaging is to the e-commerce customer’s experience. After all, it is the first point of physical contact between you and your customer! So why not customise your packaging to match your brand colours? Or unbox your products to encourage word-of-mouth on social networks?

Optimising the volume weight of your parcels

From a logistical point of view, there are several ways to make an e-commerce business more profitable. Among these profitability levers, the simplest and most effective is probablyoptimising the volumetric weight of your parcels.

You probably know this if you offer express or international deliveries: some e-commerce carriers (such as Colissimo, FedEx or Chronopost) take the weight-volume of your shipments into account when invoicing you. And if you don’t keep an eye on the weight-volume of your parcels, the bill can quickly become expensive!

It is quite simple to rationalise your transport costs by optimising the weight-volume of your packages. Take the time to..

Rethink your delivery times if necessary. Do your customers really need to receive their parcels by express delivery? If the answer is “no”, you will already be able to reduce your transport bill significantly.
Analyse your shipments by weight range. By observing the different sizes and capacities of your shipments, then classifying them by weight range charged by your current carriers, you can analyse the impact of the vacuum in your parcels.
Review your range of packaging. The previous analysis having helped you to discover the packaging that increases your transport bill, it will then be a question of finding new packaging, less greedy in terms of weight-volume (pockets rather than boxes, crates or extra-flat boxes, etc.), to rationalise your costs.
Reorganise the processes in your warehouse: when you change packaging, you must change the processes in the warehouse. Don’t forget to train your operators to make these changes and to reoptimise their packaging stations.

To find out more about this profitability lever for your e-commerce activity, and to discover how to concretely optimise your weight-volume, download the ColisConsult x RAJA method on the subject now.

Dare to put your products on marketplaces

According to an Xerfi study, by 2021, 33% of online sales will be made on marketplaces. This is therefore a strong lever for diversifying your points of contact with potential customers on the Internet and making your online business more profitable.

Be careful, however, to respect a few good practices for e-commerce via marketplaces:

Choose only the marketplaces that are interesting for you, and of course look at whether your products can be differentiated, but also find out about the charges, commissions and sales support tools that are offered to you
Organise your stock according to the different distribution channels: the objective is to separate the products dedicated to your website and those dedicated to the marketplaces, to avoid stock shortages and to monitor your performance on both channels.
Encourage customer reviews: these reviews are part of the major criteria of the marketplaces’ algorithms, give visibility to your products and reassure your potential buyers. Use all the tools at your disposal to boost them and create the famous “social proof” that many e-tailers are trying to develop.

If you want to know more about this topic, check out our article “Launching your e-commerce on a marketplace: our key tips”.

Negotiate your transport contracts properly

One of the elements that can make an e-commerce site more profitable, and which is often forgotten to be optimised, is the transport phase of your products. It is however one of the phases of your order preparation and dispatch process that weighs the most on your budgets!

By regularly tendering your transport contracts and negotiating them more effectively, you can make significant savings on your transport bill.
To do this, consult the method that ColisConsult has shared with RAJA: it guides you, step by step, in 10 steps, to obtain better transport contracts without cutting back on the quality of your deliveries
.