In its July 2022 Financial Stability Report, the Bank of England warned that the economic forecast for the UK and global economy has worsened significantly. Soaring fuel and energy prices, combined with the after-effects of the Covid-19 lockdowns, have put the brakes on economic growth and caused a surge in the cost of living, with the BoE predicting an inflation rate of over 10% in the fourth quarter of 2022.
In such a climate, consumer spending will naturally decrease as households feel the pinch and begin to budget their finances. For companies that supply essentials such as food, water or energy, this might be less of a worry as consumers are likely to prioritise these necessities. However, if your business falls outside of these categories, you might well find yourself seriously impacted by the economic slowdown. This is especially true for small businesses, as they are less likely to have the financial reserves, wide reach or market leverage to reduce this impact.
This might seem like a tough time to be running an e-commerce business. That’s why it’s important to optimise your business practices so you can maximise revenue and keep costs to a minimum. To give you a head start, we’ve put together this list of tips to help you navigate your business through the economic downturn.
1. Keep Customers Interested
A great deal is something that will always grab a customer’s attention. It’s a good idea to offer a variety of discounts and offers to keep buyers interested, e.g. a sign-up bonus for first-time customers, a loyalty points programme, or free shipping for orders over a certain value. Another thing customers rate highly is a seamless shopping experience. If your website is difficult to navigate, this might put people off, so make sure it’s as streamlined as possible in order to avoid losing customers before they click the payment button.
2. Focus on High-Value Products
If some of your products consistently sell poorly, it doesn't make sense to keep wasting resources on providing them. That’s why you might want to consider cutting low-performing items out of your catalogue. Conversely, it’s a good idea to prominently feature your best-selling products on your website and other sales channels. Products with more positive customer reviews also inspire more confidence in consumers, so it’s good to have a reviews system prominently featured on your product pages. Don’t forget to target your advertising to special events like Halloween, Christmas or Valentine’s Day by featuring products that people are more likely to purchase on these occasions.
3. Don’t Neglect Marketing
It might be tempting to reduce your marketing costs as part of a general spending cutback. However, if you’re going to do this, it’s wise to target your operations and focus your marketing budget on the areas where it’s going to generate more results. Data analytics can help you determine which advertising channels have the highest return on investment and focus your spending on those, allowing you to use your resources efficiently and make your advertising budget go further.
4. Consider Switching to Third-Party Fulfilment
One great way to reduce your operational costs is by choosing third-party fulfilment. Storage, warehousing and delivery, collectively known as fulfilment, can be a major financial drain if you’re keeping some or all of these operations in-house. That’s where a fulfilment service like Curo can help you save money. More than just a logistics partner, we provide an integrated service that includes storage, picking, packing, labelling and delivery. Our two West Yorkshire warehouses total almost 100,000 square feet of storage space, enabling us to handle any order volume no matter how large or small. We also offer storage-only options, and unlike other fulfilment companies, we’re able to handle goods of any size. Our strategic location near major motorways lets us deliver swiftly to any part of the UK. Choosing a third-party fulfilment partner like Curo can help you achieve a far lower cost per order compared to doing it yourself, as our dedicated facilities and large size enable us to achieve better efficiency and economies of scale. You’ll no longer need to invest time or money into handling your own storage and logistics – instead, you can leave everything to us and focus on following all the other points on this list to get your business thriving.
5. Good Inventory Management
In order to avoid missing out on potential sales, it’s vital that you keep a good handle on your inventory. If a customer goes to order an item on your website and discovers that it’s out of stock, it’s more than likely that they’ll simply go to one of your competitors. That’s another area where Curo Fulfilment can help. Our state-of-the-art inventory management software will automatically notify you when your product drops to a certain stock level (you can choose the exact level). We also offer order reports for each product so you can track order patterns over time and gain a better understanding of your customers’ demand.
If you’re ready to sign up and let Curo start taking care of your goods, it’s easy – just click here to start the sign-up process. If you’ve got any questions or would like to know more about Curo, there’s plenty of information on our website. Alternatively, give us a call on 0845 009 1988 or email us at info@curofulfilment.com, and one of our people will be happy to help with all your queries.