Ten key components of a highly successful ecommerce project
Over recent years, the ecommerce industry has grown in leaps and bounds, probably beyond what most experts would have predicted. As a result, companies and entrepreneurs are more frequently looking for ways to develop an ecommerce website that will contribute to their overall success. Making that happen requires with a partner who is skilled in this area and can help you deliver a highly successful ecommerce project. If you’re interested in generating the best results possible from your venture and getting the highest return on your investment, the following guidelines will help start you in the right direction.
Design & usability
First impressions are crucial. The latest research study shows that the brain makes decisions in just a 20th of a second of viewing a webpage and if that initial impression was positive, those good feelings were transferred onto other parts of the site. That means your online store is likely to sell more products. Plus, people want to confirm their good judgment. Individuals who gave your site a positive mental review will be more loyal. As you can see, finding an ecommerce specialist who is passionate about design and user experience is vital to your success.
Store management
Store management is the crucial element of a comprehensive ecommerce solution. You want to keep the catalogue management as simple as possible. The more complicated the system is the more challenging it will be to maintain and to update. Part of that simplicity should be that changes are can be made quickly and with little difficultly. And with a user-friendly content management system in place, you’ll be able to make content and banner changes without having to pay any more money.
Marketing tools
Competition for your store is likely to be high and having the tools at your fingertips to actively promote your brand and products with little limitation will help you rise above the competition. When you’re selecting a ecommerce solution, you must find someone who understands and appreciates the importance of marketing for ecommerce success and who is able to incorporate some of these tools into your design. You should be able to adjust the pricing rules or create discount offers, manage vouchers or create and send emails including details about new products and special offers.
Only the best marketing tools could turn the ecommerce project into a success and deliver fast return on investment.
Analytics
An important factor in optimising your ecommerce website is knowing which areas to tweak to improve success. When you are selling online, you need to know who is visiting your site, where those visitors are coming from, and which pages are leading to conversions. Using your ecommerce platform you should be able to generate easy to understand reports about abandoned baskets, search terms, most purchased or frequently viewed products and other factors crucial for your ecommerce project.
Scalability
When you’re evaluating a potential partner, look for a company that treats your ecommerce project as a long-term investment. As your company grows, your online store should be able to support more products and traffic as needed. Look for an ecommerce solution that is able to adapt when changes to your project occur. If your order volume changes from hundred to ten thousand a day would this company be able to handle the increase effectively?
Project management
You want to work with someone who understands what challenges you are likely to face on the path to success. And a successful ecommerce project requires the timely coordination of a provider and a client side. Additionally, the team needs to have a clear strategy for how the project will be completed, including having a structured plan for each phase of the ecommerce project. Lost time is lost revenue for you. You should also have open and easy communication with the team. For example, ecommerce specialists often have online tools clients can use to track the progress of the project.
Integration
As you learn more about creating an ecommerce website, you will come to realise another key is effective integration. Your site, for example, needs to be well-integrated with third party applications that are keys to the process. These applications include payment tools, shipping services, and fulfillment tracking. Your ecommerce platform is often only one piece of the multi-channel jigsaw and in more cases than not it will need to talk with other systems.
Intuitive checkout
About half of your ecommerce site’s success can be attributed to the intuitiveness of your checkout process.
Visitors should be able to easily navigate your catalogue but if you bombard them with forms and buttons before they are allowed to make a purchase, you increase the likelihood they will abandon their basket and go elsewhere. Instead, consider keeping your checkout on a single page to make it easier for customers. Have you considered allowing shoppers to complete their purchase as a guest instead of being forced to register? Remember that once the checkout is complete you’re making the final impression on those site visitors so you want it to be a good one.
Security
Your online customers are going to be sensitive to security issues related to your ecommerce store. As risks of identity theft increase, you must take steps to protect your customers and their private information. Make sure your site is being hosted with a company you trust. If your security is breeched, regaining the trust of customers will be an uphill challenge. Choose an ecommerce partner who appreciates the importance of preventing these risks.
Technical support
The effective ongoing support of your ecommerce solution is vital to providing a consistent shopping process for your customers. A versioning system should be in place to manage updates and those updates need to be easy to reverse in case they create more problems than they solve. It’s important to have access to an online ticketing system to deal with technical problems with the site. Fast response times to these tickets could save you a lot of money and you want to work with an ecommerce partner who understands that.
Summary
In the end, you want to pick an ecommerce partner who demonstrates knowledge of the industry and of the technical aspects of building a retail website. The partner should have a clear plan for the development of your ecommerce project and should be there to assist you at every stage of your growing online success.
We hope you find the ten key components listed above useful. To discuss a specific project or for a more detailed explanation of any of the points above, please do not hesitate to contact us.
