The topic of the article you are about to read concerns in particular the case of an e-commerce specialized in the sale of fitness equipment for gyms and private individuals. The factors listed below are valid for any type of investment in the e-commerce sector. It is important to know them because they allow you to limit some errors that can slow down the growth and positioning of your digital project:
the basic principle of entrepreneurship is risk. This means that nothing is certain when you launch a product on the market. Taking risks is not equivalent to failure, but rather to being aware that jumping into the void can reserve surprises, but the way in which we channel our energies and resources can make the difference; in other words, if we have a clear vision of the strengths and weaknesses of our entrepreneurial project from the very beginning, we also realize the results that we can obtain in the short and long term;
this point is connected to the previous one and focuses on results. Time is the factor that determines them. You need a period of twelve to twenty-four months before you can collect numbers regarding earnings and audience loyalty. In particular in the first year, you must be ready to invest money before you get revenue; therefore, if the earnings do not arrive immediately, it does not mean that you should give up, but only that you must persist, periodically analyzing what works and what needs to be improved or changed;
When you launch into the market, you have to start from the bottom, starting with the promotion of a few products, thanks to which you can conquer your target audience.
Case Study: Online Gym Equipment Sales
Now that you know these factors, let's move on to the case study of this article. As anticipated, it is an e-commerce project for the sale of equipment for gyms and individuals.
The brand was created in 2018 and entered the market as a single-brand seller of its products.
The client who founded the brand approached us two months after the birth of the brand, exactly at the end of February 2018. This allowed us to immediately follow the evolution of the project starting from the strengths and weaknesses, and to collect data almost in real time.
Strengths of the project
Analyzing the first weeks of e-commerce launch, we found some significant strengths. In fact:
the internal production of single-brand products has generated reasonable margins;
the communication strategies on the site proved to be effective thanks to the design, product packaging and graphic materials in line with the tastes of the target audience. The result of the combination of these elements was an excellent user experience .
Weaknesses of the project
Despite the strengths highlighted, the client was making a series of mistakes that were weakening the potential of e-commerce:
despite having launched the e-commerce site for the sale of gym products, the client was limited to waiting for the results obtained through visits to the website, which came from an offline promotion aimed at retailers;
While, on the one hand, the internal production of the products generated good results, on the other hand, it was slow and, as a result, the site remained empty for a few days because the products were not available. In addition, there was inactivity in terms of campaigns. There was a lack of communication aimed at keeping consumers' attention high and encouraging them to wait for the arrival of the products, for example by proposing special offers, discounts and so on. The result? A drop in sales was recorded even when the products became available again. In fact, looking at the following graph, we can see that in April 2020 there was a sharp drop in traffic due to the stop of the campaigns due to the lack of products on the site:
Initial phase: what changed when the customer approached us
As mentioned in the previous lines, the client contacted us a few months after the launch of the e-commerce and this allowed us to improve the promotion and sales logic right from the start.
In managing this project, the greatest difficulty arose from the fact that the data available was limited because the project had only taken off a few months earlier and, therefore, we could not work starting from some statistical forecast. The only thing we had available to implement the sales strategy was the budget set by the client.
We have overcome this difficulty by starting from a strategic analysis of the products that could have more potential both in terms of margins and demand on the market in relation to the products offered and in terms of margins deriving from the products sold.
The sales strategy that we studied together with the client was developed through the
