E-commerce Tips - How to Increase Profit Margins by Understanding Your Costs

It’s one thing to understand your costs, but monitoring and managing these costs against the bottom line is what intelligent retailers excel at.

They constantly review business functions, resources and products, ensuring they deliver real value to the business. Some functions are better managed externally and others are automated for maximum efficiency.

Tip - BE VIGILANT

The need for every online retailer to fully understand their competitive landscape cannot be overstated. The competitive nature of online commerce dictates that retailers make timely decisions based on accurate and timely intelligence about their competitors from pricing, products and promotions to stock availability, brands and reviews to aid smarter decision making.

The ability for a fully managed automated intelligence system to monitor your online competitors around the clock, providing daily updates on any changes is a function that is less accurate, less efficient and more complex to manage when done manually.

ASK YOURSELF

What costs could be better managed within your business?

What business functions could be internally automated?

What business functions could be managed by specialists/experts?

TAKE ACTION

Embrace more technology – Use technology to automate key business functions. There are many solutions that provide cheaper, faster and better alternatives.

Question all costs – Understand why these costs are incurred. What is the ROI on these costs to the bottom line?

Audit stock assortment – Monitor your products and qualify their contribution to your bottom line. Are they proﬁtable? Do they need to be replaced? Are they competitively priced?