6 Tips to Get a Better Price When Selling Your E‑commerce Business

The demand for profitable online businesses from investors is at an all-time high and that means opportunity for many successful online sellers. For individuals looking to sell their e-commerce business, regardless of size, they want to get the largest payout possible.

This doesn’t happen by accident. There are several factors that make an e-commerce business less or more attractive to investors.

With this in mind, there are multiple steps that an e-commerce business owner can take to position for the biggest possible payout.

1. Create SOPs For Day-to-Day Tasks

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are crucial for running an e-commerce business effectively, and having them clearly written and codified isn’t just good practice, it can help increase the final sale number.

Having detailed, sequential, step-by-step instructions for all the necessary daily tasks in an e-commerce business is very attractive to buyers.

These detailed SOPs work as a solid framework and blueprint for how to run the business. This helps ensure a much smoother transition and gives the buyer confidence that they can hit the ground running since they already have the instructions for how to take care of daily tasks.

2. Hire Freelancers to Handle Owner Tasks

An e-commerce business that requires the owner to be active for 50+ hours a week is much less attractive than one that requires 10 hours a week.

Creating a system that allows freelancers to handle the tasks that normally fall to the owner makes the business more hands-off. Having the option to have a more passive e-commerce business opens up the number of interested investors.

This can be a major step to strengthening your position before a sale. An e-commerce business that is partially or fully automated is going to be more attractive to most investors.

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3. Perform Easy Win CRO Techniques to Boost Sales

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Setting up an e-commerce business isn’t easy, which is why it’s easy to understand why CRO (conversion rate optimisation) falls through the cracks early on. However, once the business is in full swing, a good CRO to improve the gross sales (and net profits as a result) should be a high priority.

Look for the easy changes that take little time and effort but can yield measurable results. Improving optimisation not only improves the cash flow while you still own the business, but the increased revenue means a larger selling price when you are ready to sell your e-commerce business

Review the conversion rate and focus on the fast, easy wins that will continue to pay off.

Some CRO factors to look at:

Colors of buy buttons
Use of linked pictures
Funnels to sales pages
Website design (is it designed for conversions?)

4. Add Content Marketing and Target Low-Competition Keywords

Content marketing remains an incredibly powerful way to get attention, increase traffic to a website, and increase revenue.

Getting a larger footprint of your business online is always a good thing. When a brand is mentioned in multiple places, that builds EAT (expertise, authority, trustworthiness) in the eyes of Google for SEO purposes.

Having a name that comes up in multiple places during a Google search also looks more natural, authoritative, and simply better to investors going through a due diligence process.

Targeting low-competition keywords in the e-commerce business’s niche brings in more organic traffic via Google. Since the traffic entering your site has looked up topics related to the business, this should lead to more sales.

The increased traffic numbers, brand exposure, and resulting revenues will give a quality return to any serious content marketing efforts.

Content marketing actions:

Reach out to guest post on industry blogs with traffic
Publish content on low competition keywords to bring more direct traffic from Google (use a tool like AHREFs to determine what keywords are low competition)

5. Document Easy Wins for New Owner

If there are easy actions or “easy wins” that could be done by a new owner to improve profit, document them. Write them down and include a paragraph of details or a general plan on what to do to see that growth.

Showing that the e-commerce business hasn’t reached its ceiling and that there’s still room for further growth can be a major selling point.

If there are easy wins that were recently implemented, make sure to document those, too. This can indicate to interested buyers that there are already benefits just beginning to roll in that haven’t been fully measured yet.

That could tip the scales to convince interested parties to buy or even agree to a slightly higher price in negotiations to close the deal.

6. Negotiate On Operational Costs To Give New Owner Higher Margins

Many business owners would be surprised how many prices are actually up for negotiation, especially for people willing to persist after the first script-sanctioned “no” response. Look at your expenses and start making phone calls.

Point out your site's customer loyalty, the consistent business done with them, or revenue numbers. Look at the ways the e-commerce business has been a major benefit to those companies that are being paid to help with the operation.

Not every phone call will lead to lower prices, but even cutting down a few operational costs can lead to much better margins. Better margins mean a more attractive-looking investment for potential buyers.

Actionable Takeaways

There are several great takeaways from this article. Whether you’re ready to sell right now or just beginning to entertain the possibility, taking these steps can increase the chances of a higher sales price.

Apply these takeaways today:

Create standard operation procedures (SOPs) for all parts of the business, especially day-to-day operations
Automate with freelancers as much as reasonably possible
Audit your site to implement CRO
Add content targeting low-competition keywords
Document easy wins for potential investors
Negotiate better rates

Many of these tips aren’t just applicable for when an e-commerce business owner is ready to sell. Many of them are good practices while running the business to improve current results and open up options for the future.

Follow the advice in this article and your e-commerce business will be positioned for maximum sales price when you are ready to exit.