Starting New Ecommerce? Here Are Some Tips

It is hard to believe that the growth of eCommerce is only about 30 years old. Amazon itself was started in July 1994 and eCommerce and Amazon have in a sense been connected at the hip. 

In the mid 2000’s the eCommerce concept was certainly not entrenched and when in 2005 I shopped around for a solution to set up an eStore for Office Stationery, there were few options. We ended up appointing a large software company based in Hyderabad to design and implement a system, but even after slogging for almost a year the solution left a lot to be desired. 

A few years later, the whole scenario had changed with practically out of the box solutions like Shopify, Magento and even some larger systems like SAP eCommerce and Salesforce becoming common. I take the names of these platforms, because they were the ones that we played with and implemented, but there are many more off the shelf eCommerce options to consider today.

There were many learnings as a user from the implementations and without becoming technical, here are some things that new entrants can keep in mind. 

• The solution that you implement must be flexible. Though setting up the store might seem to be the simplest parts of the process, the solution should allow easy changes as you go along. This includes not just the pages, which of course must be dynamic, but also in terms of the processes that you follow. It must allow you to have offers, discounts, band-ons, BOGOs, and more, which can be switched on and off on the fly. Find out which system it uses for management of your content, such as Wordpress, so that you can easily and efficiently maintain the dynamic look of your website.
• Once the store has been launched, one early stumbling block is stock management and fulfilment. Few retailers are ready at launch to take the step of separately reserving eCommerce stock. The most tempting option is to list the products that are in the warehouse on a given day and offering it to online customers. This can create big problems because stocks keep moving and one of the most damaging things for any eCommerce store, is ‘Stock not Available’. I have also seen situations where stocks in the physical retail chain are treated as available for eCommerce, which results in constant tension since brick-and-mortar stores are loath to give away their stocks, even to eCommerce. It also delays fulfilment as stocks are collected from different stores and brought to the eCommerce despatch centre. Sometimes a lag exists between the sale and update of stocks in the system, which means when you get an order for an item, it may not be available hence, poor fulfilment. 
• Where are you storing your eCommerce data? Is it done on the premises, or is it on the Cloud? In order to ensure that operational speeds are maintained, Cloud solutions such as AWS - Amazon Web Services or IBM Storage Services are usually highly reliable. Storage needs and transmission speeds can easily be increased or reduced, based on your volumes. Security of information in these solutions is often of a higher level than you can maintain with your inhouse data storage. 
• Order volumes take time to build up so use the early days to hone your delivery and fulfilment systems and processes. Nothing can spoil the customer experience more than botched, (wrong product, incorrect quantity) or delayed deliveries. This requires a lot of attention so that as the volumes grow, fulfilments also keep pace. Set high standards for your team (eg, goods despatch from store within 24 or 48 hours of receipt of order) and make sure that they are followed. Tie ups with fulfilment partners must be robust and adhered to so that they pick up packages in time and deliver according to your agreed SLAs (Service Level Agreements). If they keep slipping, change them without delay. 
• Of course, the eCommerce solution needs to be integrated with your ERP, so that stock management and accounts happen seamlessly. Do not make the mistake, as some people do, of keeping the two separate. Managing stocks becomes a nightmare. There are enough APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) available to safely connect your new system to your ERP, which also ensure that data integrity of the main system is maintained. 

• The main reason that you are embarking on eCommerce, is because you want to expand your customer network to many more people. Often webshops fail to make any impact due to poor Search Engine Optimisation, which means that the number of people who actually see or interact with the site, the pages or products are few. So, start optimising your store and website from day one. Pages need to load quickly, key words and urls should be used smartly. And if your site has been developed desktop first, it must be easily mobile compatible. Ensure that your store can be interfaced with a marketing platform such as Hubspot or SalesForce or any other, so that you can carry out digital campaigns, and also retarget people who have interacted with the site, eg. customers who have clicked but not bought.
• Having a trusted and reliable payment partner ensures that your payments are processed smoothly and without delay, so choose your payment partner carefully. Get a safe SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate ensuring the link between your web server and web browser is encrypted.  When customers feel their information is safe and secure, their confidence is much greater.   

Whether you are an existing retailer expanding into the world of eCommerce, or someone who is going eCommerce first. Check out all the options that are available before you take the plunge. As they say, planning is 80% of the work, the rest is just implementation. 

Good Luck

With over 30 years’ international experience in marketing, managing brands, retail and ecommerce businesses, the writer is a consultant and commentator.