When all seems hopeless and numbers look bad, Curt Anderson tells us on the Business Infrastructure podcast how he grew his e-Commerce business by promoting it rather than growing in it. Curt’s first conversion to an e-commerce business made him realize he had outgrown the business and needed a third-party alliance from a business partner who eventually bought his e-commerce business.
For 31 years, Curt Anderson has been a proud #GirlDad and an entrepreneur. In 1995, he founded an eCommerce company ranked three times in Internet Retailer Magazine’s Top 1000 eCommerce Companies. Curt is the author of “Stop Being the Best Kept Secret” and founder of B2Btail.com, an eCommerce resource guide for manufacturers. In 2012, he began consulting with U.S. manufacturers on executing eCommerce strategies.
You can catch a snippet of his interview on the Business Infrastructure podcast in the video below:
Creating an E-commerce store
It takes a lot of work to run a business. There’s no denying it. From ideation to failures to scaling are all part of the intricacies of growing, running, and selling an eCommerce company.
As an entrepreneur or craftsperson, you’ve certainly dreamt of launching your eCommerce store and building a business that provides you with a sense of achievement and freedom.
Over the past ten years, e-commerce has skyrocketed. In 2020, the U.S department of commerce recorded that consumers spent over $861 billion online with U.S. retailers, a 44% increase from 2019. Globally, the e-commerce market will exceed $4.9 trillion this year. e-commerce generates 10% of all retail sales, with an anticipated 15% growth rate.
Estimates show that there are more than 24 million e-commerce websites. Yet, despite the fierce competition, you can succeed in e-commerce by attracting high-quality traffic to your online store, turning new visitors into loyal customers, and implementing the right tactics and growth strategies.
How to grow an e-commerce website
e-commerce is the only company model that organically adapts to global expansion. While breaking into new international markets isn’t easy, the digital aspect of selling has made it incredibly doable.
Here are a few tips for growing your e-commerce website
- Know what goods you want to sell to consumers.
- Figure out where and how you will get and sell your product.
- Choose a solid e-commerce system to create your store.
How to sell an e-commerce business
Perhaps you’ve reached a turning point in your development where you’d need to make an investment and grow if you wanted to keep running the business alone. Or maybe you’ve always wanted to sell, and with the money from this sale, you want to flip more e-commerce sites with the money from this sale.
Whatever your motivation, the procedure for selling an online store is the same.
Assess Potential Buyers
Once the website is formally listed for sale, you can’t just sit back and wait for an offer. You need to look for customers.
This makes it advantageous to have a broker who works hard to sell your e-commerce website. But if you list the website on a marketplace, you might consider working with a specialized sales representative to find potential clients.
Sales Transition
Don’t just figuratively “hand over the keys” after the sale is completed.
You may be required to assist the new owner during the transition, depending on the terms of your contract. This type of deal contingency is much more appealing to buyers.
Along with your legal obligations, making sure the process is straightforward for the new owner is critical.
In this circumstance, your reputation is still at risk. You may decide to launch and provide a variety of online stores in the future. However, people won’t want to buy from you if they discover that you’ll delete your websites after the transaction.
You don’t have to necessarily work there full-time, but you should continue providing a respectable amount of assistance.
Finish the Sale
The time to involve lawyers is when you’re ready to accept an offer. You won’t need to put in much effort during this step.
Make sure you’ve got a specialist in contract law on your side. Inform your attorney of your needs and wants, and they will handle the rest.
The legal paperwork required to sell a company is complicated. We’re talking about reading and interpreting legalese that can easily span more than 50 pages.
Your lawyer will also ensure you don’t have any obligations once the sale is concluded. It is therefore in your best interests to complete this task successfully. You can manage all of the signatures online the majority of the time using tools such as Xink, Zapier and PandaDoc, just to mention a few.
Final Thought
E-commerce is a viable, proven business model that can catapult your small business to the next level. Many entrepreneurs often find purchasing an existing e-commerce website more enticing than creating one from scratch. If you proceed correctly, selling your e-commerce business can be profitable – look no further than Curt Anderson’s success story as proof.
