If you’ve been following along in our e-commerce series (link to first post), you should now be ready to define clear objectives that support your business strategy and help you achieve the results you expect.
In today’s results-driven world, it’s easy to jump in with specific outcomes already in mind—like selling your products online or creating a site dedicated to your business. But without well-defined objectives, even the best intentions can lead to missed opportunities or even worse, wasted effort!
Let’s take a moment to consider your business strategy and your company’s current objectives.
At the base, your ecommerce strategy should support your business strategy. After all, ecommerce is a means to an end: a way to promote and sell products online. If your business strategy is not aligned with specific efficiency gains or market growth, ecommerce might not be the journey to take at this time. For example, if you are still working on your business model or still developing your product offer, it might be difficult to find, configure and deploy an ecommerce platform for those undefined needs. Also, it might be better to focus your efforts on finalizing product features or your business model first.
Let’s say you want to increase sales coming from online inquiries. Having a way for your customers to order and purchase your products online will certainly help you with sales. However, it’s not a case of “if you build it, they will come.” There are many, many, many online shops and each needs to attract its customers.
Here are a few ways to achieve this objective:
What you sell should meet a market need. That is what’s called product-market fit. If there is no need for what you sell, no ecommerce will be able to bridge that gap. Product market-fit can be assessed through existing natural demand, competition analysis, and traditional market research.
The world is big enough that there is likely demand for your product, but you’ll need to figure out who is your customer and how they express their need for your product.
What you sell must be findable, online, on social media, wherever your customers are. Marketing campaigns will help boost brand and product awareness, which will bring customers to your ecommerce platform.
Working with a talented marketer or marketing firm will be an excellent investment here. Keep in mind that brand and product awareness is a long-term project and must be kept up over time. One blog post is not enough to get everyone informed on what you have to offer!
If your website does not have the traffic you need to generate the sales you want, then you’ll need to stimulate interest. The easiest way to bring traffic to your site is advertising, through ad networks or social media. There are also listing sites that may bring good traffic to your site. All of these options cost money, so be sure to track where your visitors (and sales!) come from, so you can analyse the return on investment for your spending.
Your advertising campaign can also by air cover for your sales team, who will benefit from the extra exposure when prospecting clients.
For sure, having a strong promotion plan and no way to purchase the product easily will hurt your sales. But having an ecommerce site and no promotion is unlikely to increase your sales on its own.
Beyond having a form to order the product and pay for it, one should consider its conversion rate: that is the % of ecommerce platform visitors that turn into purchases. If the shopping cart is difficult to use or the order form too long, customers might give up on your product altogether.
This requires working with user interface and user experience specialists that will help you optimize the shopping and purchasing experience.
Another way to increase sales is to rely on your existing customers. It is much more expensive to acquire a new customer than increase sales with existing customers. A repeat sales strategy can be done in many ways, from email campaigns to product announcements and follow-up from and inside sales team.
Groupe Richer’s goal was to increase their online sales without hiring more staff to manage the seasonal fluctuations of their business. Hiring and training extra personnel for the summer, only to let them go in the winter, wasn’t an efficient or sustainable way to support their growth.
In the world of landscaping, there’s often a strong need for seasonal staff. From spring to autumn, it’s all hands on deck as business ramps up quickly. But once winter sets in, things slow down, and the demand for landscaping services drops significantly – especially here in Canada, the land of snow!
With Addio Commerce, Groupe Richer is able take online orders in a more efficient and streamlined way, without needing to increase their seasonal staff. in fact, Addio created enough efficiency to their order processes, that they were able to reassign your customer service personnel to tasks that are not only more engaging but also more stimulating for them. It’s a win-win for everyone!
You can read the full story here.
When choosing to go the ecommerce route to meet business objectives, you are choosing to invest time and money in building and maintaining your platform. your staff may not be able to take on several projects at once, and your budget may not allow for it either. Then comes the opportunity cost. Beyond the actual cost of implementing ecommerce in your business, there is also the cost of projects that will not get done.
Here are some important considerations:
Take the time to truly understand the impact of your choices to support your business strategy. What you choose or choose not to do will have both positive and negative consequences. It’s an important intellectual exercise, and it’s worth your time.
Go even further: get your team involved! Asking for feedback from everyone who will be affected, especially your seasonal staff, can help you identify champions within your team and reveal potential implications of your decisions. Your team can offer valuable insights into risks and opportunities you may not have seen, helping you make a more thoughtful and informed decision.
Choosing to implement an e-commerce system and fully understanding the impact of the choices you make will help you reach your objectives and achieve the results you're aiming for!
Ciao makes Addio commerce, a fully custom ecommerce platform for businesses who sell products that fit in neat categories.
Ready to share your ideas and get the ball rolling on your objectives? We would love to speak with you about your project!