In this digital age, the importance of ecommerce cannot be neglected; more people are buying online than ever before, which is only increasing as time passes. In such changing dynamics, having an online store besides a physical store should not be an option but a necessity if you’re to remain in competition and grow your business. However, one must realize like any new endeavor entering into the ecommerce domain requires its own skill set and expertise that must come to realization before starting an ecommerce store. Without adequate expertise, you risk wasting your resources, time & all the investment that put into starting your webstore. This article will discuss some of the main areas that demand attention before entering into the online world.
Ecommerce platform
An important aspect of starting and maintaining an ecommerce store is the basic infrastructure on which your webstore is developed and maintained. The basic framework that provides the tools to build and manage your web store is provided by various ecommerce platforms. In the earlier days of ecommerce when ecommerce platforms didn’t exist people would have to rely on high-level development expertise and web stores had to be developed from scratch making penetrating into the online world hard. Now, thanks to the realization of e-commerce potential, many ecommerce platforms have emerged simplifying the development & management of webstore. Some of the features offered by these platforms include:
Product Management.
Content management
Order fulfillment
Inventory management
Customer management
Payment processing.
Connections to other sales channels & API management
How one chooses such a platform, however, depends on various factors that must be carefully analyzed based on your specific requirements & resources available. Since there are many platforms available if any platform selected doesn’t properly coincide with your requirements you can end up wasting your precious time & resources. Some of the important factors that must be taken into consideration when choosing an ecommerce platform are:
Level of customization needed.
Budget.
Expertise available.
Scalability
Support network
Features
Online Marketing
If you’re in business then you must be aware of the significance of what right marketing can do for your business. While online marketing is not just exclusive to ecommerce stores, when you establish a webstore it becomes even more crucial for your business, given the fact that the transaction platform being the same as marketing presents few barriers to conversions. However, online marketing is not as easy as it seems – it’s a great way to improve your sales & revenue, but is complicated by many variables involved. This is even more collaborated by the fact that huge investments are involved in marketing and the stakes are high; if the how, when, and what of marketing aren’t managed properly then you risk wasting your precious money. Therefore, marketing is something that demands great attention and analysis; the marketing team must continuously keep themself updated about the new trends and marketing techniques, the preferences of people, and what kind of audience their products will likely attract most and at from which platforms. Some of the areas the marketing team focuses on include:
Search engine marketing: Many people discover your webstore through search engines. With search engine marketing you pay search engines to display your webstore to appear at the top of search results against specific keywords. Researching keywords relevant to your webstore or products and good discoverability can increase traffic to your webstore and hence the sales.
SEO: Search engines use different algorithms to search websites and display them in order as per the search query. Like search engine marketing, search engine optimization or SEO is used to rank your ecommerce store higher on search engines by organizing and including the content on your webstore that makes it more search engine friendly and helps your site appear in the top results. Therefore, it’s essential that your ecommerce store fulfills good SEO standards in order to rank at the top of search queries. SEO is a field in itself that requires skills and expertise. Having a good SEO team can help increase the SEO ranking of your webstore and rank it higher on search engines.
Social media marketing: Much of the digital time spent online is on social media sites by all demographics of people which makes these platforms attractive to gain customers. Ads on these platforms are very fruitful and have high conversion rates since people can directly visit your webstore with a click or even purchase products by interacting with the ad without needing to leave the platform. A good digital marketing team should know when, how, and where to market their products on such platforms.
Integration solutions
If you already own a physical retail store and are entering into the online domain then the complexities presented by the need to have a unified business management system to run a hybrid retail business must be met: integrating inventory, customers, orders, product data, and other information between the ecommerce store management solution and your physical store management solutions. The x2xecommerce has many years of experience in providing integration solutions in the domains of ERPs, POS systems, and ecommerce platforms covering a wide range of solutions. With the x2x solution, you can implement a unified business system to manage your hybrid retail operations and achieve greater efficiency by eliminating a lot of manual & mundane operations. The x2x solutions are flexible & fully customizable presenting an easy learning curve and therefore can be implemented into your existing business system seamlessly. An example of the solution by x2xecommerce includes the x2xecommerce RMH-Shopify integration solution.
Conclusion
Running an ecommerce store comes with its own requirements and need for expertise that must be realized to leverage its true potential. While there are many areas and factors that must be taken care of with respect to running an ecommerce store, the above-mentioned domains present significant importance when it comes to ecommerce management. If you need help establishing an ecommerce store and incorporating it into your existing business management system then the x2xecommerce team can help you. Reach out to the x2xecommerce team for any query or a free demo.