The Ecommerce Snowball

When we start an online store, everything is hard.

We know we want to make some sales and hopefully, when all is sent and paid for, make some profit.

But it’s easy to get stuck in the grind of the struggle and to lose sight of what we are trying to do.

“To Be Successful We Want To Create A Machine”

We start ecommerce stores for several reasons, but fundamentally to be successful we want to create a machine.

The machine we are trying to create is one that we put £10 into and get £100 out.

We want the machine to stay consistent enough, so we can keep scaling and putting in thousands of £10’s in order to get thousands out.

But it’s very unlikely that you get the ecommerce machine working straight out of the box. After all, you are up against a hundred other people trying to get the same machine to work.

“We Find That More Snow Doesn’t Stick, And We Must Work Out Why”

So, it starts like a snowball, small. We find a small machine that works, something that sells, and that we make money on. We try and add more snow and see if it sticks. Often, we find that more snow doesn’t stick, and we must work out why.

We must find where the friction is, the conversion rate exit points, the reasons more generic traffic isn’t convinced to buy. We need to uncover their objections and overcome them.

It’s hard to see progress, but then one day you put your head up and notice the snowball is more like a boulder. It has a bit of momentum, it got a good customer list and people like what you are doing.

Keep trying to get that snow to stick and find where your machine will output more than you put in.

“This Is Not A Closed Market, Everything Is Visible”

Don’t forget that you can look at other people’s snowballs and see why their snow is sticking. This is not a closed market, everything is visible.

If you want to see a good example of a snowball turning into a boulder have a look at our Google Shopping case study here https://go.markhammersley.co/get-started

Thanks

Mark (Snowman) Hammersley