Spring Cleaning Tips for Your Ecommerce Store

Spring is in the air, the birds are singing, & people are thawing out from winter & looking ahead to warmer weather. While everyone is feeling invigorated, give your ecommerce store a refresh & prepare for eager shoppers ready to celebrate the season. Here are some tips to get started.

Re-Evaluate Your Inventory

Spring is the perfect time to re-evaluate your old inventory & see what you can clear out & what to keep. Studies show that nearly 8% of surplus stock ultimately ends up as waste, with about $163 billion of inventory tossed annually.

Launch a sale to get rid of winter items or segment your email list to areas of the country where it’s still blustery. Next, dig into your sales & reporting tools to figure out what sold best last year, what was sluggish, & what to remove from your product offerings altogether. 

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the amount of inventory to keep track of, consider adding more print-on-demand (POD) items to your online store. CustomCat fuels your ecommerce business with customizable products, from mugs to hoodies & hats. Upload your favorite designs, & when an item sells, we produce it, fulfill it, & ship it off on your behalf. With a customizable label that represents your business, we work as a behind-the-scenes arm of your store.

Get started with CustomCat here. 

Look at Your Financials

With tax season right around the corner, it’s time to take a deep dive into your finances. There’s always room to cut your overhead, whether or not you had a profitable year or felt the pinch from inflation. Slashing your inventory in favor of selling POD, relying on Virtual Assistants instead of staff, & getting rid of old software subscriptions you don’t really need are a few places to start. 

Make sure you do a round-up of all of your business expenses to reduce your tax burden. An accountant knowledgeable about ecommerce can make recommendations on what to expense to keep your business compliant while saving on taxes at the same time.

Focus on the Spring Holidays

Spring may not stir the same sales frenzy as Black Friday & Cyber Monday, but there are still eager shoppers out there ready to save. Easter, April Fool’s Day, & Spring Break are good places to start, whether you want to sell egg-shaped ornaments or flip-flops for beachgoers. 

If you don’t have anything spring-focused in your inventory, you can whip up a creation with the help of POD. Or try selling gift cards & take a cue from giants like Starbucks who give credits & discounts when you buy. Run a promotion, & for every $100 someone spends on a gift card, offer them a 15% off coupon to keep for themselves. 

Batch Your Social Media Content for the Season

If you can’t keep up with the demand of content creation & social media, try batching it out in bulk instead. Plan out your social media calendar with tools like Buffer or Planoly & schedule out your entire season of posts done in just a few days. Then put your social media on auto-pilot & continuously churn out content without needing to be hands-on with the process.

Tidy Up Your Email List

Do you have people on your email list that never open them, engage, or buy? Chances are you’re paying for everyone on your list & can trim your costs by removing people who aren’t engaged. Send out one more email & ask if they want to keep getting updates & specials from your online store. If they don’t open it or reply, you can delete them from your list & save.

Update Old Content 

More isn’t always better when it comes to content. Whether you have hundreds of blog posts, lengthy product descriptions, or unruly newsletters, spring is the time to clean it all up. 

Set aside a few hours a week to update old content with new products & check to make sure all of your links still work. Keep your copy easy to scan & read to keep your audience engaged. Beyond just making your site look better, Google tends to favor content refreshes that show value to the audience.

Refresh Your Images

While you’re refreshing your content, take a look at your old images. Update old product photos & pay attention to the quality of the lighting & color. You may need to touch them up in Photoshop or swap them out altogether. You can also use a program like Canva to add graphics to jazz them up & turn them into something more eye-catching.

Updating your images also saves you time in the long run. Now you have fresh content for your social media campaigns, online ads, & email newsletters. 

Look at Poor Performing Pages

You may use your analytics to see what’s selling, but it’s also best practice to see which pages & posts are performing. Poor performers may drag down your site’s rank & could also frustrate your customers. For example, if your pages aren’t converting very well because the images are poor or the product description isn’t clear, your customers are probably skipping them, too.

Take some time to analyze why a page may be down in the dumps & make some refreshes or get rid of it altogether. Your best-performing pages can also offer some clues. Study why they’re working & what’s unique about them to help shape the rest of your site.

Set a Stretch Goal

There’s something about spring that makes the world seem new & shiny again. Instead of the same goal to increase your revenue by X% this season, why not set a stretch goal, too? Set one goal that is the minimum threshold of success you expect to see, one that is doable but will take some ingenuity, & a stretch goal that could help you meet your wildest expectations.

Grab a journal & jot down ideas for making your stretch goal happen, no matter how crazy they sound. Revisit the practice once a week to refine your ideas & see what you can take action on. The more you open your mind up to new possibilities, the more likely you are to stretch your business to new heights.  

 

How do you clean up your ecommerce store for spring? Let us know by leaving a comment below!