4 skills you need to bolster your e-commerce business this 2020

Succeeding as an entrepreneur doesn’t just take grit, persistence, embrace risk-taking, and hard work. You’ll also need to arm yourself with an arsenal of skills to improve your chances of success. To stand out from the sea of noise, it becomes essential to equip yourself with some skills to thrive in the competitive landscape of e-commerce business.

Not all the skills needed are highly technical – with some practice and persistence, you can easily pick up new skills within a few weeks or months, with minimum investment, both financially and time-wise.

Here are some important skills to pick up for those with an e-commerce business:

With so much noise on the web, the ability to write copy that engages readers is an essential skill to develop. Writers who can create copy that is easily understood, to the point and actionable are an asset for any business owner, so if you’re going to be in charge of creating content, it becomes important to learn to write for different platforms.

Just about everything we see and consume requires content writing skills, be it creating social media captions, writing product descriptions, content for email marketing to blog posts. Good writing can help propel your e-commerce marketing, so learn to do it well.  

SEO

The importance of search engine optimisation (SEO) cannot be understated for entrepreneurs.

As businesses go online and consumers spend an increasing amount of time on the web, SEO becomes essential in driving traffic to your website. Knowing what people are looking for and ranking higher on organic search results can be essential to your success.

Realistically, not everyone will click on paid advertisements, so being able to tap into good SEO practices can help you cut costs and stand out. 

If you’re operating a small business, you may have to wear many hats – from marketer to HR and finance. 

As such, project management skills are essential to help you stay on top of things. As an e-commerce business owner, you’ll need to be able to communicate with different people, have excellent organisational skills to things running like a well-oiled machine, be able to adapt when things don’t go to plan in addition to keeping a cool head under pressure. 

As such, entrepreneurs need to be project managers to ensure their business succeeds. 

Business analytics 

Every online business generates data, making it useful for business owners to understand business analytics to help them succeed in their entrepreneurial ventures.

An understanding of business analytics allows you to make connections in multiple data sources and understand the reasons behind certain trends, notes Entrepreneur. This allows you to gain insights and make better decisions that will bring positive results to your business. 

Upskilling opportunities 

You don’t necessarily need to be an expert in all of the above areas, but just know that they each play an essential role in ensuring your e-commerce business success. 

As such, you may want to develop a basic understanding of the above skills before choosing to hone your expertise in one area. There are many ways to get started, be it via microcredentials, online courses, or executive education, depending on how much time you have to spare as well as your budget. 

Without a doubt, as an entrepreneur, upskilling should be a long-term initiative to ensure you stay ahead of the digital transformation.