Entrepreneurs need the right mix of products for their eCommerce business to flourish. We will help you cut through the complexities of building out your product portfolio. Some of the considerations we will work through together include:

Cost

What is the right amount to pay for your products?

How much will inbound shipping cost?

What are the minimum quantities required from the source?

Are the minimum quantities tied to the specific product or the entire order? Or both?

How much should you commit to buy per order?

Price

How much should you charge for your products?

How much competition is there for the same or similar products?

How do you decide between standard and sale prices?

How do you build out a sale price strategy and testing methodology?

How do you determine the price elasticity of your products?

Sourcing

Where will you procure your products?

Will you buy from the manufacturer?

Will you buy from an importer?

Will you buy from a distributor?

What are their terms involved from the source of choice?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

Are there any regulations or limitations associated with the products?

Physical considerations

Weight - shipping in and outbound, storage fees, fulfillment costs (people, equipment)

Dimensions - shipping in and outbound, storage fees, fulfillment costs (space, people, equipment, supplies)

Perishable (not just food)

Inventory management

Forecasting

Warehousing

Receiving

Physical counts

Shelving

Pin bins

Turn rate

Obsolescence

Velocity and placement in the DC

Order processing

What system do you have in place for order processing and how scalable is it?

How do you know the scalability? When would it break?

How do you handle changes to orders?

How do you handle on hold orders due to inventory, ship to address or customer triggered issues?

How happy are you with your packing slips (that customers receive in the order)?

How well do your picking slips align to the physical layout of the inventory in your facility?

How well do your automated order and shipping confirmation emails work?

Order fulfillment

What is your SLA to fulfill an order?

Tracking your turnaround time on order fulfillment?

Tracking the time in transit to the customer?

Tracking the total time from order placement to receipt?

Fulfillment center operations

People

Scheduling

Facilities

Safety

Layout

Inventory placement

Shipping

Should you offer Free Shipping?

What shipping vendors should you use?

Technology for shipping labels

Rate shopping

Shipping profit/loss

Tracking and analysis

Chargebacks, reimbursements for service failures

Dimensional weight

Boxes, supplies (where to buy them)

Customer service

Channels - assessment and optimization of your customer communication channels

Scripts - how to build scripts for all of your customer communications

Policies - what policies to establish, both for customer and internal teams

Ratings/Reviews - establishing the value of offering product reviews and tracking analytics

Retention - customer retention rates, how to increase it, and how to track it

Life Time Value (LTV) calculation and utilization

Channels - assessment of all channels and ranking by highest ROI.

Tracking - systems and the teams responsible for tracking and what dashboards to establish.

ROI - definition of the ROI goals by product line, by channel and how to increase it.

Attribution - how to understand where your web traffic is coming from and what that means to your business.

Competition - assessing your competition, both direct and indirect and how to respond to them.

Team - defining the team’s skills and knowledge required to meet the business goal.

Building it all out - how to stack rank the enormous amount of data and decisions in digital marketing and continuously modify.

Skill sets - do you want to be a marketing first business? Or does your digital marketing just need to be good enough? We will help you size up the true skill sets required.

Outsourcing - analysis of what should be outsourced and how to properly select and manage vendors.

Google Ads - Search, Display, & Shopping

​Selecting the right eCommerce platform is a major business decision. We will guide you through the methodology behind selecting or changing your eCommerce platform. From gathering the business requirements to building a selection scorecard, we can help lower the risk of this important decision. We can help you assess the business needs, vendor offerings, out-of-box vs. custom vs. 3rd party features, cost analysis, contract negotiations, the development community, and much more.

Website

Site optimization - there is no right or wrong, just your ability to mold your website experience to what your target audience wants.

Testing - success results from your ability to know what to test and how nimble you are to implement the results. We will help you define what to test, how to test it (AB, Multivariate, etc.), who oversees it, the required analytics to gather and report and how to execute on changes without crashing your site.

Categorization - how you categorize your products is a massive decision with far reaching implications to the business.

Product page fundamentals - title, description, details, images, pricing, layout, and so much more. We will help you sort through all of the options and build optimal product pages.

Customization - should you continue to pay to customize your website or seek a new platform? This is a common issue and we will help you navigate through this complicated decision.

Work/life balance - first things first, you can’t burn out or the business will be in trouble. We’ll review your work/life balance and set up systems and infrastructure to allow you to play the long game.

Leadership - how to be the leader your business deserves.

Culture - how to approach shaping (and maybe reshaping) your company culture.

Strategy / Vision / Mission - development of your business strategy, vision. and mission. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re sure to get there (nowhere).

Learning - how to decide what key areas you’ll need to learn more about and how best to acquire the knowledge and skills.

Team building

When to hire - how to define when is the right time to bring on a new team member. This is such a critical part of your business’s success, you can’t get this wrong.

Who to hire - Perhaps the most critical decision of all is who you’ll bring into the business. There are so many factors to consider like culture fit, personality type, job fit, and so much more. We help you navigate this process and avoid bad hiring decisions.

How much to pay - we help you with the internal financial analysis (what is the role worth the business) and the external value of the role in the marketplace.

Fully loading compensation - beyond the compensation, what other factors need to be analyzed that contribute to the overall cost of bringing in a new or promoting an existing employee.

Terminations - how to identify and execute on getting the wrong employees out of the business.

A players - why you should always strive to hire and retain “A Players”.

Scoping roles - how do you decide what roles to have, what the responsibilities are, who they report to, what does a “great job” look like. and more.

Outsourcing - how to determine the risk vs reward of outsourcing certain parts of the business.

Finance

Accounting - how to establish proper accounting systems, technologies, processes, in house resources. and vendors.

Financial analysis - what to measure, how to measure it and who owns the ongoing process. From the fundamentals like monthly profit to ad hoc project related analysis, we will guide you through how to build your financial analysis capabilities.

Funding and investing - how to know when you need capital, how much, how to get it. and how to spend it.

Profit - based on your operations, how to maximize your margins through obsessive focus and Lean Six Sigma principles.