Improve Your Shopify Business with a SWOT Analysis
Online business has been around for a while now, and garnering consistent sales requires work, strategy, and customer care, not to mention the timely delivery of goods and services. One of the most effective approaches to winning customers and rake in more money involves the use of SWOT analysis to evaluate your business.
SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) was developed in the ’60s as a strategy for improving successful outcomes in your business.
The best time to perform a Shopify SWOT analysis is the beginning of every year, followed up by quarterly reviews. Alternatively, you can conduct SWOT with a new project or if you’re a startup business looking to grow in the online trading space.
We shall expound in detail the four main areas of SWOT to help grow your business
Strengths –Include a strong online business presence, affordable goods, and services, great social networking and customer engagement, competitive edge, an attractive website with engaging content, excellent customer care, and service delivery, etc.
Weaknesses – include poor inventory practices, weak marketing strategy, poor customer service, poor management, lack of business commitment, etc.
Opportunities – include business growth and expansion, changing customer needs, use of advanced technology to boost sales and reach more clients, social media marketing, and emerging markets, etc. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
Threats – Government regulations such as tax increments, competition from existing market rivals, unforeseen events such as the Covid 19, increased cost of production, etc.
Once you perform a SWOT analysis against the mentioned factors, this enables you to find solutions or new strategies to grow your business as you leverage the necessary strengths and opportunities and rectify the weaknesses.
How to conduct a detailed SWOT Analysis
You can start by involving your business partners, including staff, for the best results. If you are a sole entrepreneur, you can introduce the SWOT analysis strategy to your associate partners and service providers for maximum effects on your business.
Determine your strengths
Define positive attributes in the areas of customer service, available resources, skills, product development, distribution channels, and an existing customer base.
Do you have sufficient cash flow? Evaluate your branding and marketing strategy and identify your unique selling proposition.
Acknowledge your weaknesses
What areas do you find difficult to manage? Identify the aspects that derail growth in your business. It could be slow delivery, poor time management, and multitasking or poor customer service.
Do you listen to your customer complains?
Do you take time to answer their questions, complaints and concerns?
Do you lack enough resources to run your business effectively?
Only when you identify the core weaknesses can you begin to make the necessary changes to improve the overall performance of your online business.
Identify Potential Opportunities
Once you have done a detailed review of the internal processes that require change, you will clearly see the opportunities for improvement and growth.
Look for emerging trends and social behavior to turn around your sales strategy.
Identify new markets and make some noise in all social platforms for mass awareness
Sit back and observe the response and subsequent expected sales. It may take a while, so practice patience and re-evaluate your strategies every few weeks.
Evaluate Threats
A thriving business will always have threats from time to time, so look out for competitors to minimize threat. Protect your products with necessary patent licenses to avoid duplication.
Provide honest feedback to your clients to preserve your customer base
Offer quality, reliable products to maintain your existing customers
Look out for negative external factors and stay prepared for change. Change is inevitable; it presents new opportunities and new clients. Learn to embrace change in times of adversity.
Success with SWOT Strategies
Take the time to evaluate your business performance by conducting a detailed SWOT analysis. The exercise brings out different outcomes, offers new ideas and fresh perspectives for possible growth in your online business.