Budgeting for Your ecommerce Business Using your 2015 budget to help grow your ecommerce business The Growing Demand for ecommerce According to Bigcommerce, ecommerce is the fastest growing part of the retail industry. The demand to purchase goods and services online continues to grow quickly, and it doesn’t look like it will be stopping anytime soon. People expect to be able to buy anything online, anytime, anywhere. In order to profit from the ecommerce trend, you may need to invest to help improve your ecommerce site and promote your company and its products of services. ecommerce and Your Budget Budgeting for ecommerce additions and improvements that you want to make in 2015 now, at the beginning of the year, will help you plan and be prepared for the rest of the year. Planning ahead for the costs of the improvements that you want to make to help grow your ecommerce business will help you account for every expense so you don’t feel like there were certain costs involved that you hadn’t expected. Below are some areas to consider dedicating part of your 2015 budget to in order to help grow and improve your ecommerce business. Mobile ecommerce Technologies One of the fast growing areas of ecommerce is mobile ecommerce. According to Custora, more than a third of online store visits came from mobile devices. If you want your ecommerce store to be available to shoppers no matter what device they are on, consider investing part of your budget in technology to make your business and website more mobile friendly. If it isn’t already, your website needs to be changed to have a responsive web design to become easily viewable on any device. If it would benefit your business, you could even have a mobile application built to help make the shopping experience easier for your customers. No matter how much money you have to spend, you can make improvements to your ecommerce business to make it more mobile friendly. integrations Integrating business systems with ecommerce websites has been proven to help increase efficiency and improve customer experience. Investing part of your 2015 budget into tightly integrating your ecommerce platform with your business systems and software can help you save time and resources. Processes can be automated which will allow your staff to dedicated their time to more productive endeavors, like attracting new online buyers and growing the business. SEO Search engine optimization is an expense and investment that should be part of your budget every year. Google and other search engines continue to update their algorithms to try to provide the best results. In order to get to the top or stay at the top of the results page, your website needs to be optimized for search engines. Whether it is having an SEO expert provide a consultation or having your ecommerce site revamped to make it more search engine friendly, SEO needs to be part of your budget. Marketing Another yearly expense that always needs to be part of your budget is online marketing. Successful marketing campaigns help grow your customer base and increase sales. Consider email marketing, pay-per-click ads, and social media campaigns, just to name a few. It is important to create a marketing plan at the beginning of the year that can also be easily adjusted for changes in your business. Having a marketing budget established at first of the year will keep you from overspending and give you an honest look at how far your marketing dollars go. Clarity Can Help At Clarity, we know how important investing in ecommerce is for your business. As the ecommerce industry grows, you hope your business will too. However, growth usually requires an investment which is why we help our clients understand the expenses and costs associated with their projects so they can budget properly. To find out more about how Clarity can help you invest in your ecommerce business or to get a quote for one of the improvements or additions you plan on making this year, call or click to contact us today!