In theory, it’s possible to start a one-man e-commerce team with as little as $5,000 of investment money, this doesn’t mean that this is a smart thing to do. Sure, you may not have any other option available but starting a tad more ambitious will let you create a much steeper growth curve, which will bring you to both break-even point and profitability a lot sooner.
For this, you need an efficient e-commerce team. Both assembling such a team and making it work can be quite hard, which is why you need to build a winning e-commerce team. With that in mind, here are several tips you might want to adhere to in order to make this idea come to life.
Productivity analysis
The first thing you need to do in order to make your team more efficient is to see just how efficient it is at the moment. The simplest way for you to achieve this is to start analyzing its productivity the right way around. First of all, you get to analyze the productivity of your team by finding an employee monitoring tool and measuring their productivity in time spent working.
Sure, just because someone spent six hours in a work-related app and someone else spends two (while idling on Facebook the rest of the time) doesn’t mean that the first person did more in these six hours. However, it’s a strong indicator that you have someone on your team who isn’t fully dedicated to the cause.
Don’t rush it
Building trust takes time and e-commerce has somewhat lower conversion rates, to begin with. This is due to the fact that people tend to check out other offers every time they’re about to make a purchase. This will keep happening even after they’ve made several successful purchases beforehand. This is why the aforementioned method is so useful and reliable. Sure, you can see that your business isn’t going right but why would you be too hasty to accuse your team of being responsible for this.
Maybe it’s your pricing strategy, your design or your outreach that is problematic. All of these can be fixed but if you start pressing your team harder and accusing them when they’re not at fault, you might create an even bigger problem.
Expand your talent pool
The next thing you need to do is find a way to expand your talent pool in order to get a higher chance of getting productive, creative and talented employees. In the digital era and especially in the field of e-commerce, there’s an option of expanding your talent pool without actually having to bring people to the office.
This means that you can hire people from all over the globe and even consult disability employment services in your quest for efficient labor. The latter demographic may contain a ton of hidden talents and checking this out might be the right thing for you to do.
Collaboration and communication
The thing about e-commerce is the fact that while your team members should be allowed to act autonomously, they shouldn’t do so independently. Each of them is doing a part of work that’s supposed to contribute to a much bigger picture. This is why you need to pick individuals who know how to communicate their thoughts and ideas to others and those who know how to actively listen.
Other than this, you need to provide them with a platform (or platforms) through which they can communicate with others. Emails, IM services (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber) and similar options apply.
Efficient leadership
Due to the fact that part of your staff (or even your entire staff) might be working from home, it’s much harder to establish a corporate hierarchy, at least in a traditional sense. Still, just because it’s hard it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible or that it’s not necessary. What you need to do is impose yourself as an authority through efficiency and knowledge of the market.
For this to work, you need to constantly self-improve, be passionate about what you do (and let others see it) and know how to set an example. Other than this, you need to be able to admit when you’re wrong, however, grieving or taking too much responsibility can make you appear weak and undermine your authority.
Conclusion
The best thing about making a team lies in the fact that, once things get going, it’ll be able to work on its own, allowing you to assume a more passive (supervisory) role. The above-listed five tips might just be a way for you to get there.
