In an article that appears in our latest e-Info magazine for online sellers, Carlo Silva explains the increasing popularity of outsourcing for online businesses, as well as looking ahead at some of the other issues to look out for in 2016.
For online sellers, outsourcing is starting to become an accepted practice in the Western world, compared to a few years ago. If you decide to outsource, make sure you look for a reliable partner that will grow with your business. The Philippines is a great country to outsource for things like listings, content, data entry, customer support, design, web development, marketing and SEO. India is known for IT and programming.
Some of the largest eCommerce businesses have been outsourcing for decades, which has enabled them to save up to 70% off labour costs and have thousands of employees in other countries. Perhaps if your online business is of a certain size, perhaps next year will be the year you choose to start outsourcing some parts of your business.
The main issues for etailers to look out for in 2016 concern logistics and global competition. Uber, Grab Taxi, Amazon and other “technology based logistic” companies are popping up all over the world to increase the speed of delivery for consumers worldwide. This means that if you’re not offering this service to your customers you might be left in the dust. Another issue sellers should watch out for is more competition from sellers outside out of their home country (ex. China and South East Asian countries). More and more sellers globally are beginning to sell into other markets to get a piece of the global eCommerce pie.
Online sellers can grow their business in 2016 by keeping up with the market trends and selling innovative products. Build your brand and get into cross-border sales. If you really want to grow your business, you need to get into cross-border trading into other markets. If you’re a US seller, sell into the UK or vice versa. If you find yourself having not enough time to focus on growing your business, since you’re “working too much in the business” instead of “on the business”, I highly suggest you start building a virtual team to help you with those tedious or repetitive tasks so you can grow your business to the next level. Building a virtual team will take a few months since you’ll still need to train your staff, so the sooner you start the sooner you can grow!
Carlo Silva is the founder of 2nd Office Inc, and runs the multichannelselling.com blog. Twitter: @mrcarlosilva
