Ecommerce Dilemma: To Outsource, or not to Outsource

Eventually every business hits that point in its growth cycle where dreams are taking shape and the future looks promising, but revenues have not yet reached an epic level. This is a time for reflection; to make an honest assessment of whether you’re investing everything you can in reaching established goals.

Ecommerce players are keenly aware of this. They are more likely to have a web-only presence and thus are lacking the tangible tools of a brick-and-mortar entity that can simply translate to a digital model.

​As an internet seller, your challenges are unique. The bonus of skipping actual infrastructure headaches that go along with setting up physical storefronts can’t be overstated. But everything has a price, and for the web vendor, that price is seemingly insurmountable competition from the millions of others who are dedicated to entering the new age of doing business.

There’s another price that is often overlooked: the challenge of maintaining the same level of customer satisfaction, flexibility, inventory readiness, and marketing plans that may be somewhat less burdensome to a storefront vendor.
 
Status Quo or SOS?

No matter which product sector you represent, you will reach that stage where it all seems overwhelming, and your delight in realizing you’ve built a potentially thriving business is dampened a bit by the dreadful fear that you just can’t keep up.

This is where you make the call—do you need to bring in outside help?

Without the benefit of robust investor capital, it’s essential to track every penny and be aware of the cost/benefit ratio of handing off some of your tasks to an outside vendor. Unfortunately, there are no concrete, one-size-fits-all solutions here. But there are three key markers to help make your decision:

• Your growth rate is meeting or exceeding your best estimations.
  
  This is a win-win, but if it signals the potential for underperforming, this could be a death knell for the business you’ve invested so much in nurturing.
  
  
• Feedback for your product offerings and fulfillment is fabulous, but customers are experiencing service delays in website navigation and pre- and post-sale inquiries.
  
  It’s never enough to attract customers with a great selection of what they want to buy. You must be ready to nudge them out of the shopping cart and into a sale, and to be responsive enough before and after the sale to earn their satisfaction and return business.
  
  
• Growing your business is now a desirable and even necessary step, but staffing it to meet your needs is not yet feasible.

 
Wouldn’t it be ideal to have a full staff of specialists to attract customers and move inventory? Sure. Until you get there, you should consider outsourcing to experts who are in the business of providing off-site management of your setup, interface, content-writing, tracking, and payment processing functions, among other tasks you’ll find yourself tackling as you grow.
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Sit down with some honest reflection of where your business is staged, and whether you’re at a critical point that could define your success as an ecommerce merchant. There is plenty of help available to you, and no shortage of advice on how to seek it. But the first step, as always, is admitting you may have a need.