Benefits of conducting an ecommerce audit
Online businesses face new challenges and opportunities in a rapidly changing digital landscape. How to make sure your marketplace strategy is optimized to reach its full potential?
An audit is critical to evaluate and optimize your online store’s operations. In this article, you’ll learn about the following:
- The importance of auditing your online business
- The key elements of a successful audit – broken down into actionable steps you can take to identify areas for improvement of your online business
- How an audit can help you expand to international marketplaces
The benefits of an audit
An ecommerce audit can be a powerful tool.
An audit is a comprehensive inspection of a company’s business operations. Its goal is to objectively assess performance, identify areas for improvement, and thus help your business reach its full potential.
Undergoing an audit is a commitment. It requires time and diligence to gather and analyze data. That’s just half of the job – the other part is to develop recommendations based on it. But the real work starts when it is time to implement it. However, the benefits of an audit far outweigh the effort involved.
What type of insight can you gain from an audit?
It can help identify:
#1: Priorities
Setting priorities is a crucial aspect of not only effective time management, but strategic planning as well. Determining the most critical goals allows you to allocate your time and resources where they will have the most significant impact.
#2: Opportunities for streamlining and automating processes
New technology or automation could improve some processes in your day-to-day operations. Streamlining these can save you time, increase efficiency, and reduce costs.
#3: Inefficiencies & blockers
Identify any operational inefficiencies, blockages to remove, and areas of your business that are holding you back from reaching your full potential.
#4: Excess costs
Excess costs can arise from a variety of sources, such as inefficient processes, overstocked inventory, or underutilized marketing campaigns. By analyzing your data and operations, you can identify these areas and take steps to reduce or eliminate the associated costs. This can lead to significant savings for your business – you can then decide whether to keep or re-allocate it so that it serves a better purpose.
#5: Opportunities for growth
Sometimes it can be hard to see new opportunities for growth and expansion, especially if you’re drowning in your daily tasks. An audit can help recognize which direction and strategy would be the most promising for your particular business.
#6: The “big picture” perspective
This in-depth analysis can help you gain perspective and see the bigger picture. It will give you a deeper understanding of your company and its operations.
The results can provide valuable insights that will enable refining your overall strategy and making it an investment that will repay in the long run. An audit needs to follow specific steps to be successful. Each stage must build upon the previous one, leading to a comprehensive and actionable plan for improvement.
Key elements of an effective audit
You already know that an audit is a valuable tool for online businesses to assess their performance, identify areas for improvement, and refine their strategy. However, there’s no such thing as a universal recipe for an audit. Each online business is different and requires an individual approach. While it is essential to tailor the audit to your specific needs to get the most out of it, we suggest three key steps you should include in the process.
Step 1: Data collection and analysis
A successful audit should start with collecting and analyzing data from various sources. This data might include, but is not limited to, the following:
- Sales data, average order value (AOV), repeat purchase rate
- Marketing campaign results, conversion rates, cost per acquisition (CPA), customer acquisition cost (CAC)
- Keyword analysis, search engine optimization (SEO) performance, website traffic, discovery metrics discovery metrics (reach, impressions, and engamement)
- Customer surveys, user feedback, reviews and ratings, Net promoter score (NPS)
You will need to implement tracking tools to collect certain information and gather it externally. This process can be time-consuming. However, you can comprehensively understand your business by collecting and analyzing data. It is a crucial step in empowering you to make informed decisions.
Step 2: Recognize patterns and trends
Once you have collected the necessary data, try identifying trends and patterns within your results. Then, juxtapose it with market research, industry trends, and competitor analysis. This information should help you understand the competitive landscape, anticipate upcoming challenges within your industry, and get ahead of them.
Step 3: Action plan
Creating a step-by-step plan is critical in turning your insights into tangible results and improved performance. Make your timeline ambitious but realistic. Don’t forget to set clear goals and milestones. Regularly assess your progress and monitor whether you should make any adjustments to your plan.
How an audit can help you expand to international marketplaces
Expanding your online business globally is a crucial step toward success. By selling your products in multiple countries, you can tap into new markets and reach a new customer base. However, navigating the complexities of cross-border trade can be challenging. One of the primary reasons for conducting an ecommerce audit is to implement or refine an international marketplace strategy.
If you wish to:
- accelerate your international growth,
- boost your sales internationally,
- conquer new markets
– an audit might help you with all of the above! How?
Here’s an example of 10 marketplace-specific insights an audit can provide for your marketplace strategy:
- Evaluating your listings’ overall performance
- Revising your product listing titles and description to make sure they are optimized in terms of SEO and target the right keywords
- Ensuring the quality of your translation and localization
- Recognizing areas where automation might be able to save you time and improve efficiency, such as data entry, order processing, inventory management
- Evaluating the effectiveness of your marketing and advertising campaigns
- Analyzing all shipping options, you provide to your customers
- Revising your return policies
- Identifying potential new markets to tap into
- Ensuring you are up to date with and compliant with all relevant local laws and regulations
- Exploring new marketplaces and platforms to sell on
Every online business is unique – with its challenges, strengths, and opportunities. Each marketplace is different too. Again, a one-size-fits-all approach to a marketplace strategy audit may not provide the insights your business needs to succeed. If you feel your company might benefit from a more detailed analysis, it is also worth looking into. Schedule a personalized audit from a professional ecommerce expert. Thanks to a 1:1 approach, you will be able to immediately take action, as well as identify and fix problems at the same time.
Conclusion: audit & benefit from it
Want to take your online business to the next level and achieve greater success? We encourage you to start by conducting an audit. While it is a significant engagement, it is well worth it and will pay off sooner than you think.
By tailoring the audit to your specific business and goals, you can focus on the most critical areas and prioritize the improvements that will have the most significant impact. This helps you to avoid wasting time and resources on initiatives that may not provide a substantial return on investment.
And if you have already audited your business, commit to doing it regularly. The world of ecommerce is constantly evolving. With new marketplaces, products, and technologies emerging every day, staying ahead of the curve and making your store stand out in the market is essential for success.
About Webinterpret
Webinterpret supports merchants selling on big, international ecommerce platforms, such as eBay and Amazon as well as local marketplaces like Allegro or Cdiscount. Our AI-based solution enables selling more effectively with automated listing localization, marketing, and logistics (shipping and returns).
By giving your international customers a full end-to-end local shopping experience, Webinterpret improves your conversion and helps establish your business on a global scale.
Our marketplace offer is constantly expanding – if you want to grow your online sales, feel free to contact our sales experts. They will help you analyze your international sales potential and choose markets that will offer you the best possible return on investment.
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