Plan Your Work & Work Your Plan

If you were the owner of a traditional brick and mortar store, would you  open your doors at no particular time, whenever you got around to it? Or sell whatever you had on hand at a spur-of-the-moment, right off the top of your head price with no thought to profit? Would you pay no attention to how much inventory you had in stock and on the shelves and just sell it until you ran out? Would you fail to keep records of how much you sold of what? And when?

The answer to all of these questions is NO.  Of course not. You wouldn’t do any of those things if you were operating a regular retail store in a mall or shopping center or wherever. The whole idea is ridiculous, because how long could anyone hope to stay in business if they went about things in such a haphazard, willy-nilly way? Not long.

The same holds true for your ecommerce business or online store. You have to be every bit as organized in your internet business as any other store owner. Otherwise, your business will fail through sheer lack of management.

You will have to keep records, practice accurate accounting, take regular stock of inventory and reorder when necessary, track buying patterns and seasonal ebbs and flows of items most or least in demand at various times throughout the year. Your online store will need to be maintained and ready for business, web pages and photos updated, new items added, prices changed or lowered as needed, and more. Much more.

Managing an ecommerce business requires the same amount of meticulous maintenance and record-keeping as a brick and mortar store. To do this efficiently, you will need to sit down and make a plan of exactly how you intend to run your online store so that it is attractive, well laid out, user friendly, has all the pertinent information and interface required to function in a streamlined, effectual fashion, well stocked at all times, etc. etc. etc.

The first thing you should do is Plan Your Work.

Make a detailed list of any and everything you will have to do to keep your store up and running profitably. This is a case where input will directly effect output. It’s the equivalent of the familiar catch phrase used in computer lingo: Garbage In, Garbage Out. This term was coined to emphasize the fact that whatever you put into a computer is exactly what will come out. Your plan of how to conduct your online business will work the same way. If what you put into your store is sloppy and disorganized with inferior management, then you’ll get inferior results from your store. But, if you draw up a well thought out, comprehensive plan of operations for your internet store, taking the time to try and cover all the bases in order to make sure your business runs with the least amount of hassle and profitably…your business will respond to this input by running smoothly and with increased output of profit.

Once you have your plan all laid out and ready---put it into effect. A plan is no good to anybody, least of all you, if it isn’t followed. You’ll probably need to make changes along the way, adding things or taking them away as experience proves expedient. That’s fine. Your plan doesn’t need to be written in stone. It just needs to be written.

Refer to your plan at least once a day, checking to make sure you’re staying on track and keeping on top of things in your business. Take the time to attend to all of the things you incorporated into your business plan, large and small. It’s possible that you might think of everything you should do every day to keep your business running well without a written plan---lists and schedules of what to do and when to do it. Possible, but not likely. You might have the memory of an elephant, but life can and often does get hectic, and when stressed, even someone with a mind like a steel trap can easily forget things. So, don’t risk it. Write it down, then do it.

Plan your work! Work your plan!