When online shopping activity peaks, small businesses need to be ready. Whether it’s taking advantage of the Prime Day halo effect, prepping for back-to-school buying or laying the groundwork for strong sales over the holidays, when it comes to eCommerce, it pays to be prepared.

But for small business owners selling online, getting ready for a major influx of sales isn’t as easy as ordering a few extra boxes and stocking up on coffee (though both are advisable). It’s essential to look at your eCommerce presence holistically, to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement.

There’s a tendency towards stagnation sometimes when it comes to eCommerce. “If it’s not broke, why fix it?” is a common refrain. Setting up an online store can be time-consuming, and that means the prospect of updating your store isn’t always the most appealing.

It would be awfully easy to go with your current setup and accept a middle-of-the-road outcome. But standing pat with your online store doesn’t mean you stay even with the competition; it’s means you fall behind.

You know that your competitors are going to make moves to improve their eCommerce experience and take advantage of peak sales seasons. While change can be intimidating, you must beat them to the punch if you want those extra sales. Here are a few ways you can do just that.

Make Sure Your Store Is Up to Date

Improving your online store isn’t just about checking off items on a list and incorporating the latest popular features; it’s about identifying what your customers desire and expect and implementing smart, effective updates accordingly.

Start with the basic user experience. Is your store visually appealing? Is it easy to navigate? Ask a friend or family members whose opinion you trust to try out your site with a fresh set of eyes. Ask for honest feedback and look at your leading competitors to see where you might fall short.

Do you offer secure payment options? Is your ordering and shipping selection process simple and intuitive? From a store management perspective, are you getting the reporting you need to measure store performance? What about your editing tools? Are you able to easily bulk edit your product listings? If you’re going to update them for the holidays or another big sales season, you don’t want to have to do all of that manually or at the last minute, so you should get that nailed down now.

If you’re going to sell more than usual, robust inventory management is essential. You need to be able to track the sale of both digital and physical goods across all your locations, including different sales points online.

Your inventory needs to be synced up in real-time, 24/7, so you have an accurate picture of your sales and available product. Otherwise, you will not be able to adjust on the fly and you may find yourself overwhelmed by an influx of orders or overstocked when you over-order. The right reporting and inventory management tools will help you find the perfect balance.

Update Your Product Listings Everywhere You Sell

What if you have inventory listed on multiple platforms besides your website? You’ll need a way to easily update your product listings across all these marketplaces. The best tool is one that enables you to list new products or update product listings through pre-loaded global listing details, that can be altered on a channel-by-channel basis as appropriate. It’s much easier to pre-load all your listings and then adjust on individual platforms as needed than it is to input new listings across all your platforms manually.

Let’s think about the holidays as an example. If you’re looking to offer holiday-specific inventory or seasonal sales, you’re going to need to prep your listings ahead of time, deploy across all marketplaces at once, and update those same listings just as quickly after the holidays. You can’t afford to scramble to make manual updates across various marketplaces, and by leveraging the right eCommerce tools, you won’t have to.

As an extension of this, you should explore ready-made inventory templates. While having the flexibility to create your advanced inventory templates for import or export is helpful, it’s also nice to have some pre-made templates available to save valuable time during the busiest seasons.

Expand Your Presence

You need to sell wherever your customers buy. Look for an eCommerce solution that enables you to sell via major marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and Etsy. Think of your website as a hub, and all these other marketplaces as spokes that extend your reach and enable you to target customers you’d otherwise have missed.

In the case of Prime Day, leveraging multiple marketplaces allows you to make the most of the halo effect generated by Amazon’s promotions. 47% of consumers expect retailers other than Amazon to offer deals around Prime Day, and that means there are more sales to be had from a multi-marketplace approach than from selling through just your website, or through only one of the major marketplaces.

Go to where your customers are by adopting a truly omnichannel approach. Leverage a variety of social media platforms, marketplaces, and your website to garner the most sales and dial things up to 11 for Prime Day, the holiday season, and whenever your market is hot.
Stay Ahead of the Competition

Your competitors will be looking for their own optimizations. Get an early start and get out in front by making improvements to your eCommerce store, preparing your listings, and expanding your online presence well in advance of the next big sales season. Build on the drive and ambition that led you to establish your small business, find the right eCommerce solution and position yourself for optimal sales success, before your competitors even think about it.

Have questions? Need a little help? Web.com is here for you every step of the way. Good luck out there!