Business Solutions

Introduction

e-commerce and e-business are catchphrases for the way technology is driving commerce on the Internet. This presents many new opportunities for businesses- by integrating e-commerce technology into your business process you could benefit from:

• Improved customer service.
• Reduced costs and increased efficiency.

This can mean, for instance, the ability to take orders 24 hours a day- allowing customers to order at their leisure. The ordering process is dramatically speeded up and costs reduced as your rely less on other channels such as agents or a paper based system.e-commerce can offer significant opportunities for you to:

• Improve relationships with customers and suppliers, through more frequent contact.
• Move quickly into other geographical or industry markets without large investment.
• Update prices and other product information easily and without the need for costly re-printing of materials.

Key success factors in e-commerce

Whilst it would be impossible to list all of the factors necessary for a successful e-commerce website below are list of areas that we would advise our clients about

1. Provide good value products and services just as in the non electronic world
2. Make sure the experience is rewarding and user friendly for the customer, in the same way you would in a bricks and mortar business
3. Make sure the website is attractive and appropriate for the product or service, employ a good web design or corporate ID team to help.
4. Provide a reason to buy with incentives or discounts or customer loyalty schemes, get the customers to return.
5. Personalise the experience as much as possible, make the site suitable for the audience and provide a a real face to the business,
6. Helping customers do their job of choosing the correct product for them, the use of choosers and calculators and comparators can help in this respect.
7. Make sure that the business model that you have chosen does actually work!
8. Understand the purpose of your store, are you focused and specialist or general?
9. Adopt new technology to help, but don't let it get in the way of a sound business model.
10. Make sure the bricks and mortar business is able to cope.
11. Providing a sense of belonging, request customer input, loyalty schemes and affinity programs can help in this respect.
12. Providing reliability and make the customer feel secure improve system uptime with reliable service provision and secure systems.
13. Make sure you are consistent in your approach and branding and the customer experience the same feel that they would in your bricks and mortar business if you have one.
14. Make sure you are achieving benefits of scale and streamlining by the use of e-commerce.
15. Letting customers help themselves. Provision of a self-serve site, easy to use without assistance, can help in this respect.

E-commerce problems

Sources of such problems include:

1. Failure to understand customers, why they buy and how they buy. The distance between you and your customers may cause you difficulty in understanding their habits.
2. Failure to consider the competition, trying to sell books on line as a "start up" business against Amazon may not be a wise move unless you have a niche.
3. Not responding to your environment your competitors and what they do, the price of goods and services or external factors such as law's and policy.
4. A disregard for your ability to deliver services and goods through staff and systems that you have.
5. Failure to obtain senior management buy in. Get some commitment for resources and funds from decision makers.
6. Failure to engage employees and get employee commitment, how does e-commerce change their lives?
7. Under-estimation of time requirements. Setting up an e-commerce venture can take considerable time and money, and failure to understand the timing and sequencing of tasks can lead to significant cost overruns. How long will it take for you to achieve market share and how profitable will you be at this time.
8. Setting up e-commerce for the wrong reasons, because you think you should.
9. Fail to plan and plan to fail. Even though a stringent plan may often be too prescriptive for an emergent market it is essential to know how the site will roll out and what key factors will affect delivery.
10. Security, credit card theft, phishing for peoples identity and denial of service attacks need to be considered in your build strategy

e-commerce will undoubtedly bring new opportunities to any business- doing nothing is no longer an option. The rate at which the market is developing could mean existing competitors move ahead, while new competitors enter the market.

Obviously security may be a concern and you'll want to be able to safeguard any financial transactions. We can help combat this risk with the provision of a secure transaction facility for your e-commerce.

To arrange a no-cost initial consultation to discuss an e-business strategy for your company, contact us today by calling Andy on 0800 096 0850 or via our contact page.

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