When running any type of business it’s important to keep track of all the moving pieces. You need to document sales, taxes, company expenses, and much more. It can be hard to stay on top of, so thank goodness we have programs like Excel to keep us organized. To the untrained eye, Excel can look very intimidating and confusing. As someone who has taken multiple classes online and in school about Excel, all I can say is that it’s worth all the frustration.

Keeping up with your ecommerce store is a challenge. There are countless tasks to be done, many hours of hard work to put in, and competition that you must always be aware of. Sure there are the massive giants like Amazon and Walmart, but to be honest those companies are too high on the food chain to consider your competition right now. I’m talking about the other guys just like you, staying up late and trying to manage a respectable store. These are the competitors you need to be on the lookout for.  

For most people it can be challenging to balance your work-life and your personal life. It can be stressful trying to find that divide between the two, and yet still find time in the day for yourself.

We all know the famous phrasing, “the customer is always right”. We’ve heard it time and time again, and it’s referenced quite a bit in our world today. However, ask anyone that has had to work retail, fast food, or any position dealing directly with customers and you will find that that statement is not always true. So why the popular quote? Why should we have a mentality built around the customers always being right? The easiest answer would be that the customer is the most critical part to any business, and they can be incredibly valuable sources of information. They will tell you what is bad about your store, and how you should go about fixing it. Now, if you make every change critics recommend, you could risk losing your business. However, it’s important that we make changes, and adapt when we see trending issues and have the opportunity to improve.

Everyone has a role model, a mortal Superman, if you will. These people are our personal heroes and beloved examples; we have been inspired by them, and they have always brought out the best in us. We hope that you enjoy these quotes from our entrepreneur heroes and other important role models.

Most of the inspiring quotes gathered for this post were compiled from BENTRAINED by Ben Johnson. You can follow him on Facebook for more inspiration.

Staying organized can be one of the more difficult things to do. Schedules are always changing, and the smallest hitch in plans can throw off your entire week. There are plenty of apps out there to help keep you on task and organized, Personally I’ve tried a lot of them while trying to stay organized in my own life. In this post we will go over some helpful apps and tools that you can use to try and stay organized.

One of the more important responsibilities of owning a store is ensuring that you’re constantly delivering the best shopping experience possible. You can do this through sales, great customer service, and an easy checkout process. Overtime your store will improve these processes and will become more popular as you test and implement additional features to your site. In order to get to that point you’ll need to develop and hone the skill of testing. Just as an engineer tests their work, you should be testing your site on a regular basis to make sure everything is functioning properly and to discover what works best for the customer. If you get lazy in testing, your site could fall behind competitors and you could lose out on potential sales and return customers.

When starting a business there is a common concern on every entrepreneur’s mind: how to make money. This thought is totally normal, and is critical to address to have a successful store. You just can’t run a store for free. Another common concern is attracting customers. For one thing, it can be hard to find customers in general, and then it can be hard to keep them in mind when you’re looking at maximizing your profits. However, treating your customers well and making a profit go hand in hand. You need to take your customer’s feelings and experiences seriously and provide a pleasant purchasing journey.

Written by Nicky Erlenbach, Relationship Manager at EVO Payments International

Whether you’re an ecommerce start-up or a new Main Street retailer, it’s a safe assumption you’ve thought about how you’ll accept payments and what the point-of-sale capabilities of your business will be. Critical financial decisions must be made before entering the world of commerce – decisions that ultimately affect sales and your bottom line.