Marcus RichardsYou started your online business with a great idea and a heart full of hope. And it took off! Sales have snowballed and people are beating a path to your door. Your little business isn’t so little anymore, and that might mean that it’s time to ring the changes. Are you limiting your growth with a micro-business mindset? Check out these areas that might be overdue for change.
1. Switch to Shopify Plus
If you’re still running on regular Shopify, it may be time you experienced Shopify Plus. Most marketers conclude that if you’re working on a turnover of $300,000 per month, you’re ready to take Shopify to the next level. There are alternatives if you’d like to explore them, but Shopify Plus is the market leader and its competitors are basically following its lead. Need a bit of temptation to consider the change? Shopify Plus might actually cost you less than regular Shopify – and that means more profits for you.
2. Stop Doing Everything Yourself
As a startup entrepreneur, you probably wore a whole bunch of different “hats.” You were in charge of strategy, product design, supplier relations, marketing, and any number of other extras.
While your business was still very small, you were able to do all these things easily enough, and well enough to pass muster. But as your business grows, it will become increasingly difficult to handle operational matters without outsourcing things like fulfilment and still keep a guiding hand on your overall business strategy.
To reduce pressure and ensure sufficient focus on all areas of your business, it’s time to start letting go of certain tasks. You have two choices: employ people or outsource. Depending on the task, the latter could even be cheaper. Explore your options.
As your business grows, you should be spending more and more of your time on strategically important matters, leaving routine ones to people or companies you can trust to represent your business’s interests.
3. Stop Thinking Small and Start Thinking Big
Whether you decide to take your business to the next level is up to you. Some people deliberately keep their businesses small. But if you have dreams of hitting the big time, that’s not the way to go.
Your early goals may have been pretty simple yet ambitious enough to suit a business taking its first steps in the world of e-commerce. But as your business grows, you can start upsizing your goals. Be realistic, but challenge yourself and your business with milestones and targets that are reachable but require hard work.
On a related topic, it might be time to review your product ranges. Where are you making a profit? Are there any products you’re keeping simply because you like them – even though the sales and profits don’t justify an investment of your resources? What works for a cottage industry won’t necessarily work for a bigger business, so stay on top of the curve and be ruthless about pruning out dead wood.
With the right strategies and your business savvy to keep the wheels of progress turning, you can keep the momentum of your business’s growth on your side, growing it from strength to strength.
