5 Secrets of Building an Online Retail Empire With James Webber, CEO, Bookworld

James Webber is the CEO at Bookworld, Australia’s largest bookstore with more than half a million customers which is huge in the context of Australia’s market of 22 million.

1. Find your point of differenceWhat itch are you scratching for the customer? What makes you different from your competitors?

To succeed in retail, you need to stand out from the crowd by being one or two of the following: the biggest, the cheapest, the quickest, the easiest or the hottest. Otherwise, you’ll drown in mediocrity.

Take Action: What do you stand for? Choose one of the five above and be it. You need to be good at them all but great at one.

2. It's okay to be naive. But don't be stupidThere’s nothing wrong with not knowing everything. In fact, being naïve can give you the courage to do the things others don’t do because of what you don’t know.

However, don’t be stupid.

Don’t get stuck in paralysis by analysis either, trust your gut.

Take Action: Set yourself a great challenge, something you'd be uncomfortable sharing with small minded people. Have a vision, think big – not just how big you think you can be but actually how big you really want to be.

3. Nurture and pamper your customersIt costs way less to retain customers than to get new ones and even a little engagement goes a long way in getting customers to return so try to get people to invest just a bit of their time in engaging with you.

Time is so valuable to us that if someone invests some of theirs with you, it sure means a lot.

Take Action: How can you find a fun and interesting a way to get a customer to invest a little bit of time engaging with you?

4. Automate, automate, automateKeep a diary of how you spend your time to identify the silly tasks that can be automated.

Automating is also really necessary if you want to scale successfully. You can’t scale with the same processes you started out with, you will have to upgrade with some automation.

Take Action: Keep a diary of how you are spending your time and allocate an hour every week to learn something new. Remember: automation equals scale.

5. Benchmark yourself against the bestA great way to measure yourself up to the big boys in your niche is to enter industry awards. They normally require detailed submissions, which force you to look critically at certain parts of the business.

If you win, great! Now you know your area of excellence. If not, now you know who you need to beat.

Take Action: Enter competitions and industry awards whenever you can.

A few more wise words…One major issue in ecommerce is that it’s quite impersonal. Due to the physical distance between you and your customer, the transactions lack that good old human touch we all love.

You can help your consumers put a face to your business with outdoor campaigns and pop-ups.

And the great part is that with the popularity of social media today, such events can be documented and shared with your online audience, this too can help make your online brand more personal.

Lastly, be passionate about what you do! Passion is the fuel that successful entrepreneurs burn.

THANKS