There are two ways of being successful in ecommerce: maximising your own capabilities, and beating your competition. We’ve talked plenty about the former, so now RepricerExpress is going to take a look at the latter. As a juicy little intro, we’re going to hint that using RepricerExpress is one of the top ways of doing so.
1. Understand Your Opponent’s Strengths and Weaknesses
We love Sun-Tzu because even though it’s been thousands of years since he wrote The Art of War, his writings make a ton of sense. One bon mot that really makes sense when it comes to ecommerce is this:
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
What we mean by all this is you have to know both your own and your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses to pounce on the latter. No seller is without weaknesses, so find out what your competitors’ are and exploit them to your benefit.
2. Go Several Steps Higher and Beyond
Whatever your competition is doing, up the ante. If they’re selling cotton t-shirts, offer up 100% cotton t-shirts made from local manufacturers that don’t rely on sweatshops. If they’re selling black t-shirts, add red and green and blue t-shirts to your inventory. The basic message is this: increase the superiority and quality of your market so shoppers have no reason to look elsewhere.
3. Secure a Foothold in the Mobile Marketplace
Mobile shopping is growing in huge leaps every year. And in some places in the world (i.e. Asia), smartphones are used far more often than computers. So when you factor in huge companies like Google, Amazon, Apple and PayPal already making their apps mobile-friendly, the only question that remains is why haven’t you? Preparation for this ranges from making your site responsive to a variety of differently-sized devices to integrating APIs for the aforementioned companies.
4. Make Your Delivery Package More Attractive
We’re going to skip over the boring and oft-repeated maxim of offering free shipping, which is something you should be considering/doing anyway. But one way you can beat your ecommerce competition is to make the whole thing more attractive and here are our two favourite ways:
- Figure out how long it takes each type of product to ship from your location/warehouse to the destination, then list that timeframe plus a few more days (but not so many more it seems like it’ll take aeons to get there). Then, when a consumer buys the product, surprise them by having it arrive a day or two early.
- Occasionally add in a small little trinket or tchotchke to say ‘thank you’ to your buyers. It doesn’t have to be anything big or extravagant, but just a something little extra to convey your appreciation. If they buy an iPad or laptop or something, toss in a pair of earbuds. Or if they buy a pair of shoes, package in a pair of laces for them.
5. Tap into the Global Marketplace
If you’ve been sticking with selling close to home, consider branching out into other parts of the world. Sure, it’ll mean extra education in how customs, taxes and shipping procedures work, but you’ll be offering a service not many of your competitors provide.
Too many (or perhaps the right amount?) merchants narrow their scope of delivery, so this is a super easy way you can distinguish yourself from the crowd. Plus, there are so many third-party services to smooth the way for you that you don’t have to spend hours with your nose in virtual textbooks, learning the intricacies of cross-continental trade.
6. Make Your Prices the Best in the Business
By far, the easiest tip to implement when it comes to beating your ecommerce competition is intelligent repricing. Why? Let us count the ways:
- You can use it on every product.
- Software, like RepricerExpress, is ridiculously easy to use and set up and comes with a free trial so you can take it for a test drive before committing.
- RepricerExpress has built-in min and max value entries so you never lose too much revenue or risk alienating your buyers.
- These apps let you take your years of knowledge and training, and allow you to use this subjective info to override objective options.
- It does the dirty work for you of watching your competitors’ price so you can focus your efforts elsewhere.
