You’ll see that e-commerce store owners will be interested in emerging trends when you look at the sales statistics for e-commerce enterprises. Selling an e-commerce business isn’t quite the same as selling a traditional brick-and-mortar company. In some ways, it’s much easier to sell an online store. But there are also unique challenges. People decide to sell their e-commerce shops for various reasons.

Maybe you’ve reached a pivotal moment of growth where you’d need to invest and expand to continue running the shop on your own. Or perhaps you’ve wanted to sell from day one, and plan to start (or flip) more e-commerce websites with the profits from this sale.

A business broker is necessary if you wish to sell an online store. Here are your top choices.

• Business Exits — Best for maximizing business value and sale price
• Woodbridge International — Best for creating high demand and multiple bids
• Peterson Acquisitions — Best for fast business valuations
• Synergy Business Brokers — Best for buying companies in specific industries
• Transworld Business Advisors — Best for buying a franchise
• Sunbelt Business Brokers — Best for selling a company with low annual revenue
• Calhoun Companies — Best for commercial real estate

Long-term time savings come from getting your company ready for a sale. In the event that you already have all the processes outlined below in place, we’ll try to provide you some insight into the questions that purchasers are likely to ask.

Accurate Data with Analytics

Buyers will want to see how your e-commerce store is driving traffic and they won’t just take your word for it. If you built your store with an e-commerce platform like Shopify, then your sales data will be viewable in Shopify’s built-in analytics platform. It’s also a good idea to install Google Analytics or Clicky, the two widely accepted analytics platforms.

The kind of data that these platforms provide is important to potential buyers. It’s standard procedure to provide read-only access to these platforms for qualified buyers to analyze the stats.

They’ll be looking at where traffic is coming from to better understand your customer base and how your business drives sales, ensuring it’s from a legitimate source. This will allow them to see the conversion rate and help them assess the history of your business.

If you have a blog this will allow Buyers to take a look at your organic search data. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a good marketing asset for your business to have. Thanks to being inexpensive to run it’s a good way to lower the customer acquisition cost for your store. They’ll use all of this data to see opportunities for acquiring new customers, should they decide to take over the business.

Organizing Your Finances

Getting your finances right is imperative to securing a deal. If a buyer spots that your calculations are off, it might spook them out of committing to a deal. Buyers will want to be able to easily view the finances of your e-commerce store. Creating a P&L is the best way to do this. A P&L will cover all the incomings and outgoings of the business, including monthly gross sales, monthly net profit, and cost of goods sold.

If you’re not adept at creating a spreadsheet or calculating these figures, it’s advisable to hire an accountant. At Empire Flippers, our vetting advisors will work with you to create the P&L.

Establishing SOPs

Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are basically instruction manuals detailing how you perform certain tasks for your e-commerce business. An SOP is an incredibly useful resource for any task that requires some kind of methodology. It might be simple for you because you do it every day, but what about for someone outside of your business?

Read Also: How do You Analyze E-commerce Data?

Finding new products, writing product descriptions, and restocking inventory are tasks that would need an SOP. Even if you have employees doing this for you, writing out a template for the process will help the buyer hire new people, should the current employees decide not to continue.

Having SOPs in place makes your business a more attractive prospect. Buyers don’t want to spend too much time working out how to run your business; they’re much more interested in dedicating their time to growing it or having people run it for them.

Employee and Supplier Contracts

The supply chain is paramount to the success of an online store, both in functionality and cost. If you’ve got a good relationship with your supplier, then this is a major asset to your business. Inform your supplier that you’re working toward a sale and get it in writing that your current arrangement will remain in place.

Buyers don’t want to be caught short and find that the supplier ups the rates and affects the profit margin once they’ve taken over. A similar process needs to be done for any employees your business might have. Speak with your employees and find out if they’ll be willing to continue on with a new buyer. If they’re not, then the SOPs you created should make training new staff easy enough.

If your business has used freelancers, then including their contact details will be appealing to buyers.

Inventory and Business Management

With all the procedures and contracts in place, your business is now in a prime position to be listed for sale. While it’s in this state, you’ll want to avoid making any wholesale changes. Continue to run things as if you were going to hold on to it. Updating products is fine, but you don’t want to play with anything that is already working.

Inventory management is also something that you will need to keep on top of. Just because your business is being listed doesn’t mean it will sell straight away. It might take a few months for a buyer to come in for it, so don’t let the stock dip any lower than you normally would.

Due Diligence

A 14-day period of due diligence is pretty standard across the industry and gives buyers time to verify that everything was as sold. During this time, buyers can’t make any major changes to the business. To get started on making changes to their new business, some buyers will end this early after determining that everything is running smoothly.

Any kind of deal is going to include some sort of post-sale support. This is something that you can negotiate with the buyer, but it’s common for this to be at least 30 days of email support and potentially a few Skype calls, should the buyer need them.

Being available for a buyer is going to go a long way to help the deal go through. Once it does, you’ll have your money sent through and you’ll be able to celebrate the sale of your e-commerce store!