Introduction
The sale of your eCommerce business is the culmination of a long process full of exhilarating ups and anxious lows. While never an easy decision, putting up Shopify stores for sale is part of the natural process of entrepreneurship, as many would agree. This may be done owing to a variety of reasons ranging from focusing on starting a family to moving on to other business ventures, the reasons can be uniquely your own. But the overall process is rather similar. With so many existing success stories of Shopify businesses sold for lavish profits, it is prudent to seek counsel from their stories, if not from the people themselves. Let us share some common aspects of these successful sales for you, to incorporate into your strategy.
- The Importance of Social Validation
Shopify stores for sale like several other eCommerce businesses rely heavily on word of mouth marketing. The generation of an online buzz is a very powerful tool that is very often overlooked. This is further evidenced by the following pertinent statistics as per industry reports:
- 95% of online shoppers read online reviews
- 97% agree that online reviews influence their buying decisions
If you notice the most successful Shopify stores for sale, they have invested in creating a brand name with a high recall value and significant presence on social media. Whether it be through influencers, user-generated content (UGC), Google ad words, Facebook and Instagram marketing campaigns; do not ignore this massive tool to keep repeat customers while attracting newer ones through your store’s online popularity.
- Focus On Customer Experience
Ask any entrepreneur who has successfully sold their Shopify business and they will tell you it is far more profitable to retain existing customers than get new ones. One of the key ways of achieving this is through consistently high customer experience. While running a Shopify store, you need to ensure a positive experience throughout the customer journey. Right from the look of your store, to the product images and description, convenient browsing, the ease of comparing between similar products, more and more options of in-app purchases, multichannel payment options are just some of the things that successful businesses have done well and are worth emulating.
- Pay Attention To Shopify Performance Indicators
There are several internal and external KPIs (key performance indicators) that act as a report card for Shopify stores for sale. Successfully sold businesses have paid extra attention to these metrics and constantly aimed to stay on the top bracket of KPIs. some examples of these metrics include Sales, Average Market Basket (or average order size), Conversion Rate, Cart Abandonment Rate, Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), Revenue Per Visitor (RPV), Site Traffic, Incoming Traffic, Social Followers, Number of Store Clicks, Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Service Request Resolution Rates, Refund Requests, among several others. When you put Shopify stores for sale, all these KPIs tally up to make your business more appealing to potential buyers.
- Good Housekeeping
People who have successfully managed to sell their eCommerce businesses give high importance to a well organized and meticulously managed enterprise. While this is also a valuable personal trait, it is especially more important before putting up Shopify stores for sale. Businesses that have up-to-date financial statements are inherently more attractive to buyers. Proper ledgers of payables and receivables, P&L statements, historical evidence of the performance of different KPIs across sales, marketing, operations and supply chain are equally important for you, as a business owner, to make swift decisions when the opportunity arises. It is equally important to maintain transparent accounts of your sourcing partners, infrastructure and logistics providers.
- Invest In Technology
Naturally. After all, eCommerce businesses are run on the internet. Studies show that browsing to sales conversion rates drops almost 5% each second in the first five seconds of the loading of your store’s webpage. What does it say? It emphasizes the need for building a technology infrastructure that is quick, responsive and intuitive. Fast loading pages, quick preview sections, scroll over image enlargements, seamless payment gateways are just some of the examples utilized by successfully sold businesses in the past which you can imbibe in your business model. Investment in technology does not need to be an expensive affair. With Software As A Service (SAAS), Pay As You Use (PAYU), Data lakes, Online Analytics and many more affordable options, you can unleash the power of fast computing and consumer trend analytics tools to increase sales, thereby increasing your overall valuation.
Learning from real-life examples is a great way for preparing Shopify stores for sale. Apart from the few tips mentioned above, there are several other noteworthy factors worth keeping in mind. You can check the detailed guide here to know more on how to successfully sell your Shopify store and get the best returns.
