Transform Your eCommerce Website with the Right Digital Commerce Strategy

Since its conception, the eCommerce industry has seen nothing but growth, and with the post-pandemic world into play, it will continue to rise for the next couple of years or even more. The eCommerce industry grew a whopping 76.2% YoY in June 2020. The numbers speak for themselves. The overall enhanced digital experience has transformed how eCommerce companies now operate, touching across multiple touchpoints within the online ecosystem. With this picture, the power and potential of the eCommerce industry are evident. But with power comes great responsibility and significant challenges too. And so have challenges risen…

A unique business model is eCommerce and brings some unique challenges with it too. Competition, timely order fulfillment, and delivering an omnichannel experience become the top three challenges today’s industry faces. 

Challenges of the modern-day eCommerce industry 

The eCommerce industry has become saturated with time, and now standing out from the crowd has become extremely difficult but not impossible. Competition being the topmost challenge for small and medium eCommerce businesses, it can be competitive pricing, products, or even services.

Companies need to distinguish themselves in terms of attracting new customers and retaining the current ones. To stand out in the competitive environment, companies need to have a professional eCommerce website (online store) with an optimized web presence to suit today’s internet algorithm. 

Another problem that eCommerce companies face is handling large volumes of online traffic, orders, and transactions. Usually, small and medium-sized businesses are not ready for such a hectic environment and fail. Your eCommerce website must be scalable and on an up-to-date eCommerce platform to handle such spikes. Also, make sure that your eCommerce website loads in less than three seconds. If not, you will probably lose many potential customers. If not handled properly, this spike can quickly sink your business. 

Last but not least, another common problem that businesses face in the modern-day eCommerce industry is the promise to deliver an omnichannel experience. The consumers can reach out to your brand through several touchpoints, including your eCommerce website, social media pages, or even contact your support agents. When we talk about what a digital customer expects, an omnichannel experience sits right there at the top. The bottom line is to deliver an unmatched customer experience throughout their journey across multiple touchpoints. 

Make sure about equipping your eCommerce website with the right eCommerce solution, and you will be at par with your tech-savvy competitors. The eCommerce website upgrade is the big thing now. You need to grow and adapt to survive in this digitally evolving world and overcome the aforementioned challenges. Hence, ask yourself the following questions before you plan your next big eCommerce upgrade. 

Does your site sometimes crash or slow down?

Did you know that every time your eCommerce website is down or slows down, it equates to losing money the same way as if a customer walked out of your storefront? And the first example that comes to mind when considering a downed server, Amazon, is right there at the front. Amazon loses $220k per minute of downtime. Other than downtime, a slow website can too cost you, customers. Every time a page load time increases from 1 to 5 seconds, there is a massive increase of 90% in the bounce rate on the eCommerce website, which certainly impacts the revenue at the end of the day. 

In a practical world, downtimes are inevitable. No server can promise 100 percent uptime. But can mitigate the causes of downtime to some extent to curb the revenue losses. One of the main reasons websites crash or have slow-downs is the lack of ability to scale effectively. If you have an on-premises web infrastructure, it is almost certain that you will have downtimes more often. On-premises web infrastructure is not only expensive but also offers less flexibility and is mainly challenging to scale. Scaling with on-premises infrastructure comes with a cost of buying new servers and other auxiliaries like hardware, HVAC systems, internet pipeline, cabling, and more. 

Whereas scaling on cloud services is relatively easy. The merchants require no hardware and no scaling auxiliaries, just adjustment of the subscription services. Hence, new-age businesses now prefer eCommerce systems with managed cloud services that offer scalability as an option with “surge protection” SLAs.       

Do you spend too much time on-site management?

Have you, as a consumer, ever purchased from a foreign website? Statistics suggest that more than half of global online shoppers have purchased from a foreign eCommerce site. So, if we look at the flip side of the coin, many businesses in the market are shipping their products abroad and serving foreign customers. That means not only dealing with maybe a different language, different checkout pages, and even entirely different websites for other regions. 

So, for eCommerce businesses, adding new eCommerce websites for different countries or brands is a way of growing and catering to a much broader market. This happens more often than we think. But is it that easy to run and maintain separate standalone websites and systems for each of your eCommerce sites? Is it feasible in the long run? 

The new age eCommerce business models want a more straightforward solution that takes fewer resources and offers affordable site management. Hence, merchants are now looking for an eCommerce system that lets them manage multiple eCommerce websites via a single administrative framework and move towards global expansion. 

Do you sell to businesses and consumers?

B2B has been one of the fastest-growing establishments for quite a few decades now. Services between businesses are ever-growing, and the main reason is numerous opportunities. It gives the business access to a more extensive consumer base and handing in bulk which accounts for a more significant margin. But with B2B already in the market and successful, the D2C eCommerce industry is the new recipe for disruption.  Almost 81% of the consumers say they will buy once from a D2C brand within the next five years. Also, D2C companies are stepping into the wholesale domain, looking at the benefits of the industry. 

That said, did you know that B2B, B2C, and D2C eCommerce each require specialized features integrated with their eCommerce platform? The difference in business requirements, strategy, business model, and the target market affects the features both the industries need to be integrated with their eCommerce platforms. For instance, the personalization of content would be very different in both cases as both the eCommerce websites cater to a very different consumer pool. Also, the checkout process, the modes of payment, the overall user interface are all to be kept in mind. 

There is a modern-day solution if you are a business that deals with more than one business model or multiple types of commerce. Hybrid commerce is the new thing. Or a hybrid eCommerce platform. 

Businesses need hybrid commerce that includes functionality for both kinds of commerce. It can meet essential features for both types of commerce on the same platform while reusing the content, data, and insights across touchpoints and analyzing and operating all from a single dashboard.  

Do you need omnichannel capabilities like BOPIS or BORIS?

With the era of super digitization, there has been a considerable change in consumer behavior. The retail industry is of those majorly impacted by this, putting omnichannel strategies to meet its customers’ needs. For the same reason, many retailers prefer to have both a traditional brick-and-mortar store and an optimized eCommerce website to cater to both online and offline customers. 

But the big question is, there can be several permutations and combinations of logistic flows in an omnichannel setup. This makes the operations complicated and challenging to plan. Omnichannel order fulfillment needs a specialized eCommerce platform with relevant features. BOPIS and BORIS are both types of omnichannel logistic flows. BOPIS means buying online and store pickup, whereas BORIS purchases online and returns to the store, needing reverse logistics. 

Retailers and businesses are moving towards eCommerce platforms to cater to omnichannel requirements and support omnichannel capabilities. The eCommerce platforms must integrate the ERP, POS, and other systems seamlessly to be up-to-date with the omnichannel eCommerce industry. 

Do you also sell on Amazon and other marketplaces?

Amazon is the world’s most famous and well-known marketplace with impressive stats to support the statement. Last year, Amazon witnessed a global increase in sales by a crazy 33.5% in just the second quarter.  It is an excellent opportunity for small and medium businesses to sell on Amazon with unique products and adequate profit margins. Amazon is known to have an unmatched potential for sales if appropriately managed. 

But is it easy to manually manage an Amazon product listing? Managing a product listing at Amazon has many aspects, including tracking the pricing changes and even managing revenue trends. It can be a very tedious and time-consuming affair. 

So, merchants are now looking for an eCommerce platform that allows them to manage their Amazon product listings and sales from the same interface as their eCommerce websites. There are unique and flawless eCommerce platforms that facilitate the product listings and pricing strategies to be automatically updated. 

Next steps

So, what’s next? Have you asked yourselves the questions posed above? Have you defined your eCommerce requirements? Are you looking for targeted recommendations to build a profitable eCommerce business? Take this self assessment and get a competitive edge over your competitors. Make sure that your eCommerce platform is scalable and flexible to accomodate technological changes and rapid growth. 

This will help you strategize the next upgrade of your eCommerce platform. Ultimately, the solution lies in an eCommerce platform that enables you to leverage the digital technology and render unmatched customer experience throughout their shopping journey. 

If you are looking for a fully customizable Enterprise-grade E-commerce platform that scales with your business. Integrated with ERP, CRM, Logistics, and Payment Providers, Krish TechnoLabs, a Digital eCommerce Agency, is the    best choice.