Detailed explanation of 50 e-commerce operation skills

How to operate e-commerce is a problem. From the beginning, you need to do a good job in positioning, product selection, pricing, style testing, and old customers... and then promote it vigorously. Today I will share 50 practical tips for e-commerce operations .

1. Positioning

1. Before opening a store, you need to consider three issues:

What products do you have? Who are you going to sell to? What are your advantages?

2. Opening a store is ultimately about competition. You can succeed if you have the strength to compete with your peers.

For example, if you are a well-known brand owner, you have a low-cost high-quality source of goods, you have many loyal fans, you have exclusive resources that cannot be replicated by your peers, you have very strong strength to engage in price wars with your peers, etc., these may help you operate a store successfully more quickly. If not, please see the next item.

3. If you don’t have any of the above advantages, you can just open a mediocre store.

The most important things at this time are: choose relatively high-quality products, sell them at relatively low prices, provide relatively unique services, and interact with customers frequently.

4. What type of store do you want to open?

Flagship store? Specialty store? Or C store? It can be said that each type of store has its own advantages and can be successful. It mainly depends on which type your product is more suitable for. 1) Those with well-known brand resources are most suitable for opening Tmall flagship stores; 2) Non-well-known brands with unique advantages are suitable for opening Taobao corporate stores or Taobao C stores. After becoming a well-known brand, Tmall will invite you to open a flagship store; 3) Offline wholesale markets are suitable for opening specialty stores or franchise stores; 4) If you do not have any advantages, we advise you not to open a store.

5. You need to understand your category.

At the beginning, it is best to choose categories that you are familiar with, choose consumers that you are familiar with, and choose products that you are familiar with, so that you can sell the products more easily. If you don’t understand these, please learn more about them first.

6. You need to be the first consumer of your own store.

Imagine if the products sold in your store cannot attract you to buy them, how can you attract other customers to buy them? Therefore, before opening a store, find some reasons to attract yourself to buy. This way, you can attract other customers to buy your products.

7. Your store should have a story.

Nowadays, stores are highly homogenized. When a customer is faced with several stores offering the same products and prices, it is difficult to attract him to buy in your store. If you are a store with a story, you can immediately bring customers closer to you. When customers are having trouble making a decision, your story will help them decide where to buy. What is a store with a story?

2. Customers

8. When you first open a store, don’t treat all consumers as your customers. No store can sell products to everyone.

1) When opening a store, segment your customers as much as possible, study the biggest needs of the customer segments you know best, sell the products that best suit them, and serve them well. 2) Once you have a certain customer base, you will find that these customers will have more needs, and then find or develop new products based on their needs. In this way, step by step, your store will become bigger and bigger.

9. Frequent interaction with customers can help you a lot. The easiest way is to set up a QQ group for old customers.

1) When you launch a new product, you may want to survey old customers in the group to see which product they like best. This will help you quickly determine which product is likely to sell well. 2) When one of your best-selling products suddenly becomes unsaleable, you can investigate in the group why old customers have not purchased it recently, so that you can make the right adjustments. In fact, there are many more benefits to interacting with customers. I look forward to your discovery.

10. When doing anything, always consider yourself as the first customer.

1) If you think about how to operate a store from the perspective of a customer, you will avoid many low-level mistakes. 2) When you are making a page, you will think about what pictures and texts customers want to see most, and you will also think about what factors are most likely to attract customers to buy.

11. When doing anything, forget that you are a customer.

After you have done some of the things mentioned above, next stop thinking of yourself as a customer and see how the customer will react. For example, if you change a product display picture, you can observe whether the actual customer click rate is higher or lower; if you change the product introduction content, you can observe whether the actual customer conversion rate is higher or lower.

3. Products

12. The product should consider profit margin.

1) Don’t sell products with low profit margins easily, otherwise you will be crushed by other costs. Only with profits can you survive and develop. 2) Products with high profit margins are not necessarily unsellable. Almost any well-known high-end brand has a high profit margin and is also very popular.

13. The first factor that determines profit margin is value, not cost.

For example, the cost of an Apple phone is not much different from that of a Xiaomi phone, but the profit margin of an Apple phone is several times that of a Xiaomi phone. So where does the value of Apple phones lie? 1)Good quality. Whether it is hardware or workmanship, the quality is much better than most mobile phone brands. 2) Good user experience. Whether it is the operating interface, sensitivity, or photo-taking effect, they are all very good. 3) Have face. Using an Apple phone seems more prestigious than using other phones. Because for most people, face is also a kind of value.

14. The second factor that determines profit margin is attractiveness.

The more attractive a product is, the easier it is to sell it at a high price, and the less attractive a product is, the harder it is to sell it at a high price. How to increase attractiveness? 1) Improve quality; 2) Add functions; 3) Improve service; 4) Provide gifts; 5) Increase brand awareness.

15. The third factor that determines profit margin is cost.

The higher the cost, the lower the profit margin, and the lower the cost, the higher the profit margin. Ways to reduce costs include: 1) finding sources further upstream; 2) purchasing in large quantities; 3) using part-time employees for some work, such as design; 4) moving into an incubator park to save on rent.

16. The fourth factor that determines profit margin is competition.

Products with greater competition are more likely to have price wars resulting in low profit margins, while products with less competition are more likely to have high profit margins. It is difficult to avoid competition in the e-commerce industry. Please see the following section for how to deal with competition.

17. To operate a store, you must have multiple hot-selling products. Hot-selling products are a reflection of product competitiveness and the store's operating capabilities.

How to create a hit product: 1) Understand the needs of the customer base; 2) Increase the value of the product; 3) Increase the attractiveness of the page; 4) Optimize the product title; 5) Increase the amount of orders and optimize the reviews; 6) Notify old customers to purchase through the CRM system or Diamond Ads; 7) Bring in a certain amount of accurate traffic through through trains, Diamond Ads, etc.; 8) Give the hit product more sales through in-store recommendations; 9) Improve keyword rankings to increase more natural traffic; 10) Sign up for high-quality activities such as Juhuasuan to bring in more sales; 11) Analyze traffic sources and improve traffic sources with higher conversion rates; 12) Maintain slightly higher traffic and sales than peers for a long time in order to create a long-term hit product. 13) Use the same method to create more popular products and conduct related sales.

18. When the store grows in size, you should expand the product categories, which can quickly increase the average order value and repurchase rate.

For example, a store does not have much traffic at the beginning, but after a long period of hard work, a pair of pants becomes a hit. At this time, there may be thousands or even tens of thousands of people entering the store every day. With more people, the demand naturally increases. At this time, if some people need sweaters, you can add sweaters, and if some people need shoes, you can add shoes. With more and more products, a hit product drives the sales of many other products. The more sales, the more demand, and the more categories that can be expanded.

IV. Operation

19. The first core of operation is conversion rate.

Ways to increase conversion rate include: 1) Increase product attractiveness, which can be considered from aspects such as product pricing, page description, gifts, added value, etc.; 2) Improve the aesthetics of the page; 3) Increase product sales, and avoid products with zero sales; 4) Increase the number and quality of positive reviews, and reduce negative reviews; 5) Attract accurate traffic; 6) Interact more with customers; 7) Improve customer service chat skills.

20. Here is a little trick to help customers develop the habit of visiting your store:

One day a week is designated as Member Day, when you can buy X and get X for a certain item. The benefits of doing this are: 1) It allows loyal customers to develop the habit of visiting the store frequently; 2) It is relatively easy to create hot-selling products and drive traffic to the entire store; 3) It is useful for dealing with slow-moving products or clearing out inventory.

21. The more accurate the traffic your store attracts, the better.

Ways to make traffic more accurate include: 1) Determine store and product positioning, and focus on promoting to accurate potential customers. For example, if you sell high-end products, try to promote to people with high consumption levels when promoting. 2) Analyze the traffic map of Business Advisor to find out which traffic sources have high conversion rates, and increase the traffic with high conversion rates while reducing the traffic with low conversion rates.

22. The closer the connection between operational rhythm, store activities and promotions, the better.

For example: first test the products through old customers or Diamond Ads, and find a product with high click-through rate and conversion rate; then generate some basic sales and high-quality reviews through fake orders; then promote sales to old customers, and as sales increase, participate in Juhuasuan, Tiantian Specials, Taobao Flash Sales and other activities, and carry out paid promotion at the same time;

23. The second core of operation is traffic.

Ways to increase traffic include: 1) Paid promotion is the most direct source of traffic. Increase the intensity of paid promotion as much as possible within the controllable range of ROI. Under normal circumstances, as much traffic as paid promotion brings will be brought by natural search; 2) Participating in activities can bring more free traffic to the store, but you need to pay attention to participating in more high-quality activities and fewer low-quality activities to avoid bringing low-quality traffic to the store and causing bad reviews and low DSR scores. 3) The key to increasing natural search traffic is keyword competitiveness. The main factors affecting keyword competitiveness are product sales, DSR dynamic score, and praise rate. If these three points are done well, the natural traffic will not be bad.

24. The key to improving the store’s DSR dynamic score and positive review rate is to improve customer satisfaction.

Ways to improve include: 1) good product quality; 2) good delivery speed; 3) good shopping experience; 4) timely and friendly customer service response; 5) proper handling of after-sales issues; 6) more or better gifts to surprise customers;

25. Always pay attention to customer reviews

Because many problems can be seen from the average customer spending, such as product problems, logistics problems, customer service problems, etc. Making reasonable adjustments to these issues can improve customer satisfaction.

5. Promotion

26. The core of promotion is click-through rate.

Why should we increase the click-through rate of paid promotion? 1) People with higher click-through rates have higher demands and are more likely to make a purchase in the end; 2) The higher the click-through rate of the through train, the higher the quality score, thereby reducing the cost per click; 3) The higher the click-through rate of the diamond exhibition, the lower the cost per click.

27. How to increase the click-through rate?

1) Think of yourself as a real customer and imagine what elements are most attractive to customers? Is it quality, price, brand or something else? 2) Extract the elements that attract customers into pictures and texts, conduct horizontal testing, and finally select promotional materials with high click-through rates. 3) During the sales process, more elements that attract customers are extracted through customer service chats and customer comments after shopping. The same method is used for horizontal testing to select promotional materials with high click-through rates. 4) During the promotion process, observe the click-through rates of different plans, then increase the bids and budgets for plans with higher click-through rates, and reduce the bids and budgets for plans with lower click-through rates, thereby improving the overall click-through rate.

28. The higher the value of store visitors, the better.

How to increase visitor value? 1) Increase average order value; 2) Increase conversion rate; 3) Increase repurchase rate.

29. The lower the store visitor cost, the better.

How to reduce visitor costs? 1) Increase free traffic; 2) Improve the click-through rate of paid promotions; 3) Reduce the cost per click of paid promotions.

30. What should we do if traffic costs become increasingly expensive?

The answers are: 1) Expand product categories based on existing products to increase average order value; 2) Increase conversion rate by adding gift boxes, gifts or added value; 3) Increase repurchase rate by maintaining old customers.

31. Promotion strategy of Tmall flagship store.

6. Customer Service

32. Customer service’s response speed, typing speed, and familiarity with the product are the most basic skills that customer service must master. If these skills are not mastered, please spend some time doing your homework first, so as to avoid some basic problems.

33. The core responsibilities of customer service are to guide customers to place orders, follow up on after-sales issues, handle negative reviews, etc.

Stores with the conditions can arrange dedicated personnel to follow up on after-sales issues and handle negative reviews. Several points that after-sales customer service need to pay attention to: 1) Start working from the moment the customer takes the order, observe whether the customer has left any messages, and whether there are any special requirements for delivery, and try to meet reasonable requirements as much as possible. This is the first step to improve customer satisfaction. If you want to make amends after problems occur, it will be too late; 2) Remind the warehouse to ship as soon as possible, and follow up on abnormal logistics orders in a timely manner. Contact the logistics company to resolve any problems as soon as possible, and notify the customer in time to pay attention and apologize; 3) If the customer has any questions after receiving the goods and feedback to the customer service, be sure to follow up in time and help the customer resolve it as soon as possible. If the customer suffers losses due to product or logistics reasons, a satisfactory solution and compensation plan should be given to the customer as soon as possible. The only goal at this time is to satisfy the customer.

34. Even if you do the above, you may still get some negative reviews.

Because bad reviews are difficult to avoid, it is recommended to order a bad review reminder software so that you can be reminded at the first time, and the communication efficiency with customers is the highest at this time. When communicating with customers, you should understand clearly why they gave a bad review, and try to compensate them to satisfy them. Then it will be much easier to ask the customer to modify the bad review. According to my experience, direct cash refund is the most effective solution. You can start by giving customers a reasonable amount of compensation. If the customer is still not satisfied, you can increase the compensation amount. For most customers, they will help modify negative reviews after being given reasonable compensation.

35. However, there may still be some buyers who are unwilling to modify their reviews no matter how you explain and compensate them.

What should I do at this time? At this time, you can only reply to the customer's review, but you must pay attention to the skills of replying. There is no need to argue with the customer or explain too much in the reply. Instead, you should think about what other customers will think after reading this review?

7. Competition

36. How does a store deal with competition from peers?

The answer is: improve your store’s profit margin, click-through rate, and conversion rate. Here are the reasons: 1) Increasing your profit margins can help your store earn a little more than its competitors for every order it completes. 2) Increasing click-through rate can help your store attract more visitors at a lower cost. 3) Improving conversion rate can make more visitors to your store become customers.

37. Increasing the visitor value of your store can also improve your competitiveness.

Because the greater the competition, the higher the cost of acquiring visitors will be, and this is something you cannot change. However, for all stores, the cost of acquiring visitors will not differ too much. However, if a visitor to your store can generate more sales than other stores, then at the same traffic cost your store's sales will be higher and the profit will be higher. How to increase the visitor value of your store? 1) Improve product attractiveness, thereby increasing conversion rates and allowing more visitors to become your customers; 2) Expand product categories based on customer needs, and do a good job of related sales to increase average order value; 3) Understand the customer's shopping frequency and activity rhythm, and contact consumers through CRM systems, Diamond Ads, WeChat and other channels in a timely manner to increase repurchase rates.

38. In any industry, most of the profits belong to the industry leader, while the rest can only get a small share.

So how to become number one in the industry? The answer is: disrupt the existing industry or cultivate a niche industry. 1) It is difficult to disrupt an industry, but every industry is constantly being disrupted. 2) If it is not possible to directly disrupt an industry in the short term, then you can segment your customers and only provide better solutions for a certain group of people, thus becoming the number one in this segment. When the customers in this industry segment are very satisfied, you can expand to a wider range of people.

8. Data Analysis

39. All problems of the store can be analyzed from the data

Starting from the data can help you find the key to the problem and make timely adjustments.

40. "Payment conversion rate" is the most core data of a store. Without conversion rate, everything else is out of the question.

1) The "payment conversion rate" must be greater than the "average of peers at the same level". The "payment conversion rate" means that the more popular your product is, the higher the visitor value is; 2) The "payment conversion rate" of a store is determined by the "payment conversion rate" of specific products. If you want to increase the "payment conversion rate" of a store, you should first increase the "payment conversion rate" of specific products.

41. Improving the "payment conversion rate" first and then increasing the "number of visitors" will achieve twice the result with half the effort.

The most important thing in analyzing the "number of visitors" is to analyze the "source of traffic", analyze the "quantity" and "payment conversion rate" of different traffic sources, find out the traffic sources with higher "payment conversion rate" and find ways to improve it, which can not only increase the "number of visitors" but also improve the overall "payment conversion rate".

42. The increase in “average order value” mainly depends on the unit price of goods and related sales.

1) Under the same traffic volume, try to direct the traffic to products with "high unit price" and "high conversion rate", and reduce the traffic of products with "low unit price" and "low conversion rate". This can directly increase sales and average order value. 2) Optimize product introductions, marketing activities, gift rules, customer service scripts, etc., and try to attract customers to buy more products based on their needs. The more they buy, the higher the average order value.

43. "DSR Dynamic Rating" is an indicator that reflects product satisfaction, logistics satisfaction, and customer service satisfaction. It is data that reflects customer satisfaction.

1) Although there are three scoring indicators, they are not independent. Improving any one indicator can promote the improvement of the three scores, because when customers are dissatisfied with one aspect, the other scores will not be high. 2) Product quality, logistics speed and customer service are the most basic requirements. If you do well in these three aspects, the "DSR Dynamic Rating" will generally not be too bad. 3) Giving customers extra gifts and surprises can increase customer satisfaction, thereby improving the "DSR dynamic score".

44. There is a lot of data related to the store

When you encounter a piece of data, think about the essence of the data, and then think about how to optimize the data.

45. Finally, please note that sometimes the data is wrong.

For example, the "payment conversion rate" of a pre-sale product is 0. How do we determine the actual conversion rate of the product at this time? The answer is to refer to the "order conversion rate" or directly manually count the number of pre-sale orders and then divide it by the number of visitors.

46. ​​Don’t release new products randomly. Release new products regularly and stick to the schedule.

Launching new products is the best way to maintain old customers. Preheat the product before launching it, including on Weibo, Weitao, WeChat and text messages. The purpose of launching new products is to discover products with the potential to be hits, so a testing plan should be made after launching new products. Combined with a flexible supply chain, products that have not been recognized by the market should not be mass-produced to avoid excessive inventory pressure.

47. The five most important principles of investment:

1. Pick a team (team);

2. Discover two advantages (advantageous industries + advantageous enterprises);

3. Clarify three models (business model + profit model + marketing model);

4. Check four indicators (turnover + profit + net profit margin + growth rate);

5. Clarify the five structures (equity structure + executive structure + business structure + customer structure + supplier structure);

48. The ultimate breakthrough at a single point can often change the overall situation.

The result of not making choices will inevitably lead to overall mediocrity. There is no doubt that for small and medium-sized sellers, they have limited funds, limited resources, limited energy, and no brand. They must focus on breakthroughs from single products, and winning with single products is the core driving force; copy hot-selling products into a group of hot-selling products to drive sales throughout the store; maintain stable sales of the main products, and divert traffic through related drives.

49. A good operator

You must learn to see the essence through phenomena, do the right thing at the right time, feel the rationality of events based on experience, and use data to quickly verify them, so that the team can avoid many detours and reduce the company's trial and error costs! You can see that competitors have changed prices, titles, and details, but you can’t see the essence behind the changes! There must be such people behind any big store, otherwise no matter how big the brand is, it will not be able to take off!

50. There are more and more dimensions that affect weight, and traffic diversion and promotion are becoming more and more complicated.

Can all this be simplified? From the beginning, do a good job in positioning, product selection, pricing, style testing, and old customers... and then promote it vigorously. Change your perspective, and create products and services from the perspective of products and services, rather than simply following the changes in Taobao to play at the technical level. That cat-and-mouse game will only make you exhausted. Jump out of Taobao and do Taobao.

Author: Sohu

Source: Sohu