Shop Stock Control
The lifeblood of practical eCommerce
Whatever the size of your shop, stock control is one of the most important factors affecting overall profit and success. To make effective purchasing decisions, you need information on the turnover of your existing products and on the profitability of each of these lines. When you're deciding how to expand your range, information on the performance of your suppliers can be invaluable in reducing the risk of over- or under-stocking new lines right from the start.
Customer data and feedback can also be a powerful tool when used to inform your purchasing decisions. Statistics such as the average customer spend can help you choose which price ranges to target when comparing quality and price, while your customers' purchase histories can reinforce the information given by your stock's turnover rate, particularly if these trends are affected by changes in your target market demographic.
Not every retailer operates with all of this information at their fingertips. Many small businesses start with paper and pen systems of stock control, which become increasingly time consuming as the business grows. Even online, where electronic systems are naturally more established, many stores have yet to take full advantage of the information available through practical eCommerce systems and tools such as Google Analytics.
In a recent study by eCommera, 6% of the online stores surveyed actually admitted that they never measure the profitability of their website. In a similar vein, only 16% of the respondents ever looked at profit per product; the rest analysed only gross margin. Multichannel retailers whose reports identify lines which make money, lines which lose money and lines which make nothing, as well as what's selling and what's not, are well placed to outperform competitors in the fast-growing online market.
With tough economic conditions predicted for 2011, the focus for many shop owners will be on cutting waste, making full use of available data to increase profitability, and establishing a presence in the growing eCommerce and mCommerce markets. Many of our customers have found that our Connect system has helped them to beat the downturn by providing them with intelligent reporting on the performance of their shop, stock control functions such as re-ordering suggestions based on sales patterns, and click-and-drag multichannel stock allocation, giving them a strong base for improvements in efficiency and expansions into new channels.
