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Scale your online store in 2025 and beyond! LYN NGUYEN shares her strategies to optimise your online store and maximise your revenue streams.
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aving an online presence has never been more important for both product and service-based businesses. While an online store presents opportunities to engage new and existing audiences at every hour of the day, it can also bring its challenges if not set up correctly from the beginning. E-commerce success comes down to establishing strong foundations that make it easy to scale and grow over the long-term.
Stay on top of your inventory Successfully scaling begins with sophisticated inventory planning. That means ensuring your consumer demand patterns and marketing initiatives are aligned. Aesthetics and wellness brands need a deep understanding of seasonal purchasing patterns. Plan for surges in demand during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and New Year’s resolution season. Don’t overlook notable spikes around Valentine’s Day, Easter, and endof-financial-year sales in June and July. Along with staying on top of these key dates, it’s crucial to align your marketing campaigns with inventory levels. Striking the right balance between meeting demand and avoiding overstocking. Savvy brands use historical data and predictive analytics to forecast accurately, preventing stockouts and excess inventory—both of which can strain working capital.
Optimise your margins Scaling your e-commerce store requires a clear understanding of your margins and a focus on improving them. Leverage peak trade periods like Black Friday and Cyber Monday to negotiate better supplier pricing. This approach allows brands to drive higher-volume purchases at lower costs, boosting profits during these high-demand sales events. It’s also worth looking at your packaging. A simple packaging change allowed us to fit 50% more units into a shipping container. This change significantly boosted profit margins, saving us $100,000 in freight costs in just one year!
Be strategic with your marketing budget and approach After consulting with numerous health and wellness e-commerce brands, it’s clear that scaling requires a significant marketing budget. There are a couple of things to keep in mind when establishing a digital marketing strategy: • Margin analysis – meticulously calculate 42 | SPA+CLINIC
your product margins to determine a sustainable marketing spend (think bigger picture, not just for the short-term) • Budget allocation – allocate marketing budget to channels based on performance metrics and to the platforms where your customers can be found • Channel activity – For aesthetics and wellness brands, platforms such as Meta, Google, email marketing, Pinterest, and partnerships with influencers and creators provide valuable opportunities. While increased marketing spend may have an impact on your short-term profitability, it is an essential exercise for building brand awareness and market share. Successful brands see this as an investment in long-term growth, rather than an expense.
Omnichannel excellence More consumers are opting for an omnichannel shopping experience. Consider how you can create a seamless experience for your customers at all levels through: • Click and collect • Virtual consultations • Same-day delivery • Synchronised inventory across your brick-and-mortar and online stores • Unified messaging across all platforms
Make the end-to-end customer journey as easy as it can be So many online stores overcomplicate what should be a seamless and enjoyable experience. To increase revenue, you’ll want to look at overcoming purchasing friction at every touchpoint by meticulously designing an intuitive and user-friendly site. In the long run, this will dramatically reduce abandonment rates and convert more browsers into buyers. Payment solutions are often overlooked but are an opportunity to generate more revenue. Be sure to offer diverse payment methods like traditional credit and debit cards, digital wallets and buy now, pay later options. A successful online store consists of many moving parts. Sustainable growth in e-commerce relies on operational excellence, strategic customer engagement at every touchpoint, and the ability to adapt as the market evolves. Lyn Nguyen is the Founder and Operations Specialist at Auvie Consultants.
Infraredi’s million-dollar month (2023 Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) period).
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