Online retail has become all the range in recent years, and the prospective market is only set to grow bigger – in 2021, its value is set to reach $4.5 trillion! As an e-commerce business, you will probably be looking at strategies to maximize your growth and take advantage of the popularity of online stores. One way to do this is to invest in e-commerce business development and learn about project management. Project management may sound intimidating but it’s actually really simple – it’s the art of getting something done well, ahead of its deadline, to good standards and staying within budget. There are a myriad of ways you can get started with ways to implement successful project management – this article will outline a few of the best ways so that you can successfully plan and manage your e-commerce business and reap greater results.
1. Learn about Project Management
There are many ways to manage projects and businesses – you need just one!
Usually, when looking for project management methodologies, you need to just take a 30-60-day project and test a specific marketing technique with your business. One such methodology, ‘Lean Product Development’, involves getting rid of everything that isn’t necessary – this might be meetings, wasteful deliverables, and so on.
“Everything in this methodology is based on moving your e-commerce business forward, like a new product or an improved shopping cart experience. Lean Project Management focuses on avoiding rework by having clear goals and objectives, keeping an eye out for where to improve, and planning in greater detail the closer the work will be. This means having a detailed plan for the first 30-60 days, and less detail for the next 3 months, and the next 6-12 months planned in broad brushstrokes.” Says Martin Hope, a project manager at Studydemic.com and Ukwritings.com.
2. Plan your Project
Every great project begins with a solid plan. At the beginning of your e-commerce business, or as you start out with project management, you should be analyzing your competition through in-depth market research. You can then decide on the list of features you want on your website or online platform, decide on shipment and payment providers, and start thinking about your design and how it will stand out from your competitors. You’ll also need to plan the e-commerce platform itself, whether using an existing platform or making a custom one.
A good e-commerce project plan will include, at a bare minimum, a product vision statement, a product roadmap, a product backlog, and a release plan.
3. Release a Minimum Value Product (MVP)
One way to gather data from your customers is to release a product prototype and then see how it does on the market – you can then gather feedback and add features to the product as desired.
4. Use Agile Project Management
Agile project management involves creating a version of the final product in every cycle. This originated in software development, as each version of the software was akin to the final product – the final product being the best and improved version, owing to the feedback received on prototypes.
In e-commerce terms, you might experiment with using a Shopify button, a Twitter buy button, and a Facebook shop, seeing how sales go each time and what your customers' feedback is.
5. Communicate
It doesn’t matter what project management methodology you use or how good your plan is if you don’t communicate well with your team. A huge part of good communication is avoiding miscommunication or bad communication habits, which can throw your whole project off track. Feedback from your team is essential, but you don’t want to have too many opinions that prevent decisions being reached, too. Having a lot of feedback but only a few people who make decisions on the project is key.
“Another tip is to try to anticipate questions and answers ahead of time – when delegating tasks, have an FAQ on hand to help your team,” says Mohamed Raffat, a business writer at Topcanadianwriters.com and Studentwritingservices.com
6. Use Project Management Apps
There are some great applications out there for tracking projects – these all work in similar ways, accommodating large teams and allowing commenting, file attachments, recurring tasks and calendar schedules. One of the first of these apps was Basecamp, but you can shop around and search for the perfect project management app.
Molly Crockett is a tech security blogger for Revieweal.com and Essayroo.com. Molly’s writing focuses on how businesses can help protect themselves against the threats, and she is always seeking ways to help develop writing and research skills in young people. She teaches for Ukservicesreviews.com.