10 skills you must know for e-commerce operations

It can be said that operation is the soul of a store. In today's era of booming e-commerce, as long as you dare to say that you are an operator, you will definitely be in great demand. Whether you open your own store or work for others, improving your operational capabilities is a hurdle you must go through. Today I will introduce to you what abilities a qualified operator should have.

1. Ability to position the market

Market positioning is from the product perspective. An operator must have his own opinions on product selection. He should not just follow the crowd or blindly believe in data. If we do business on Taobao and don’t look at data, then what should we look at? This is not to deny the importance of data, but to say that sometimes we should not be too superstitious about data, because data is not necessarily true. For example, according to market data, the market for mobile phone cases is definitely larger than that for keyboard films, but if you dive into the mobile phone case industry, you will find that the facts are not as simple as you think. The biggest difference between Taobao and offline businesses is that Taobao’s customers are spread all over China, so even the smallest industry will have a huge market demand on Taobao. The key lies in how we position and package our products.

2. Ability to view data

The data viewed covers a wide range, including main picture data, detail data, product data, customer data, market data, promotion data, SEO data, etc. As an operator, we must not only clarify the exact meaning of these data, but also the application significance of these data. Because the store is a whole, any problem with the data in any part will reflect some problems. What operations need to do is to summarize the observation data, draw conclusions based on the data, and provide support for the next step of optimization solutions. For example, if we don’t analyze the reasons why store traffic goes up and down, we will not be able to avoid making similar mistakes in the future, let alone improve our operational capabilities.

3. Ability to diagnose stores

The scope of store diagnosis is also relatively broad, including visitor trends, product sales, marketing strategies, promotion effects, event performance, etc. Not only do we need to have data analysis capabilities, but more importantly, we need to have clear ideas. We must learn to gain insight into store problems from some clues. For example, if you find that a certain dynamic rating of your store has dropped for no reason, would you simply think that there is a problem with this item alone? You have to know that buyer ratings are very blind. If he is in a bad mood, he will often not just give a low score to one of your ratings. Therefore, what we need to do is to make buyers feel happy whenever they buy our products. As for how to feel happy, this is something you should think about seriously.

4. Product layout capability

Should products be updated regularly or arranged all at once? Should products be promoted throughout the store or should they be focused on building? Should products be sold independently or in partnership? Should product pricing be as low as possible or should it go the high-end route? These are all issues that operations need to consider seriously. Regularly launching new products requires a good supply chain. Small sellers usually plan to launch new products all at once. Of course, the subsequent selection and focused development is the real test. Once a product has the potential to become a hit, all store resources should be concentrated on promoting it (of course, not every product is suitable for the hit route, and hits are risky). Once a product becomes a hit, consider whether it can be associated with other products to drive growth. Only in this way can the store continue to grow. As for pricing, we must first start with target audience. Always remember, no matter how expensive something is, there are people who think it is cheap, and no matter how cheap something is, there are people who think it is expensive, and they will be very picky.

5. Ability to control the overall situation

Operations is not only an executor, but also a coordinator in many cases, which requires more multi-faceted capabilities. For example, the artist has no operational ideas, and what the operations need to do is to accurately express the ideas or plans to the artist, rather than directly asking the artist to draw pictures or make details, and then in turn accuse the artist with all kinds of nitpicking or dissatisfaction; for another example, due to changes in marketing strategies, the artist changed the main picture, but the customer service did not modify the response strategy in time, which can easily cause team conflicts. At this time, operations is the helmsman who controls the overall situation and needs to coordinate the functions of various departments to achieve zero errors as much as possible.

6. Marketing and promotion capabilities

Marketing promotion is not just the ability to promote. Although a qualified operator does not have to be proficient in specific operating methods, he or she must understand the ideas and principles, and must focus on the overall operation direction of the store. For example, an operator may not know how to run a through train, but must understand the basic principles and promotion model of the through train. Only in this way can we guide the art design and promotion departments to collaborate more efficiently.

7. Crowd-location capabilities

Customer group positioning is very important in today's e-commerce industry. If you don't position your target audience well before making a product or don't have this concept at all, and just blindly launch products, promote, and look for traffic, the consequence will inevitably be that the more you do, the faster you will die. Just imagine, they are both dresses, but why can some be sold for dozens of yuan while others can be sold for thousands of yuan. In fact, it’s still the same topic. You must always understand that you are now facing sellers from all over China. As the population size increases, there are more corresponding population classifications. Moreover, in today's era of personalization, if the store or product's target audience is not accurately positioned, it means that the traffic provided by Taobao in the future will not be accurate, and the conversion rate will inevitably be very poor, and it will be too late to cry by then.

8. Ability to explore selling points

The exploration of selling points is actually based on the positioning of the crowd. Only by positioning the crowd well can we accurately explore the selling points and reasonably express them to the precise consumer groups. For example, let’s say I want to make women’s shower gel, and I find a high-quality keyword that is very relevant to my product, called “shower gel with long-lasting fragrance and whitening”. Then how do you think I should design my main image and details next? I will definitely use the two core selling points of fragrance and whitening in my main image and details, and I can express them very intuitively in the form of before and after comparison. Of course, it is not necessary for operations to know how to design, but the work of discovering selling points and guiding artists must be done.

9. Marketing strategy skills

Marketing strategy is the driving force for store growth. For example, new product discounts, holiday discounts, clearance sales, event promotions, free shipping for purchases over a certain amount, package marketing, etc. are all skills that operators are proficient in. The makers and controllers of all these strategies are definitely operations, and they need to make a real-time evaluation and summary of the marketing plans in preparation for the planning and implementation of subsequent marketing strategies.

10. Data aggregation capabilities

The initial stage of operation must be data. Data is a direct indicator of the store. If you want to find problems and clues from it, you must learn the ability to summarize and analyze data. In addition to directly looking at the reports of Business Advisor and other tools to summarize the data, it is also very necessary to make your own tables and summarize them regularly.

For example: Taobao resources summary table, store operation data summary table, store activity sales results report table, etc. These require you to accumulate step by step in the process of opening a store and form your own style and skills.

Author: Haitian E-commerce

Source: Haitian E-commerce