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2021: The Year for Creating Competitive Advantage Through Ecommerce

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If you’re a retailer today, the stark reality is that eCommerce is no longer just something to be considered in your business strategy. It’s a core requirement.

Ecommerce has revolutionised consumer behaviour and transformed the supply chain – and there’s no turning back. The move to online spending passed a tipping point during the lockdown and will not return to pre-pandemic levels. Customer experience expectations have changed and won’t reverse. Digital disruptors from Etsy and Depop to Deliveroo and UberEats have joined the likes of ecommerce giants Amazon and Ocado in setting the agenda – and this evolution will only continue. Retailers are focused on omnichannel and ‘always-on’ experiences, the B2B sector is increasingly selling products directly to customers via D2C (Direct to Consumer); and both are taking advantage of innovations such as augmented reality to (among other examples) grow humble chatbots into realistic online avatars.

“With D2C, AR and ‘Always On’, there’s no going back”

So the key question for 2021 is: ‘how do companies stabilise and embed the change made in 2020, and move forward from here?’ What do you need to do to prosper in this new era? Together with senior stakeholders from Klarna and Groupon, we’re discussing just this in the first of our Evolution Series of events on 26th January.  Here and now though, we’d like to share a few themes you need to consider to make the most of this new world.

Strong foundations.

Understanding the importance of a robust ecommerce platform is one thing, but delivering that is another. Choosing the right solution is crucial, as is ensuring you have the right business processes and backend infrastructure in place – particularly if you’re pivoting towards a new channel such as D2C.

Ensuring you display the right products to the right customers at the right time, providing clear and tested product classification and search functionality to support findability – and being able to scale at speed – are all important factors. You’ll also need to consider how your platform will integrate with your wider technology stack and ecommerce ecosystem, to provide access to the tax systems, payment providers and logistical and marketing capabilities that will enable you to support the end-to-end purchase lifecycle.

Testing, Learning & Integrating. 

Of course, any period of profound change means testing out new ideas, learning what’s right for you, and integrating that change to make sure it can play a critical role in sustaining your success.

Fully embracing this culture of experimentation sometimes requires support but, as we take clients along the change curve here, any hesitance drops away as the profound advantages – including increased speed of delivery and much-improved results in engagement, conversions and order value – become apparent.

Every client journey is unique of course, but you can see how we’ve helped two clients harness ecommerce to great effect at:   https://www.boxuk.com/our-work/rs-components-vietnam-and-indonesia/ and https://www.boxuk.com/our-work/okdo/

“The question is, how do you stabilise, embed and move forward?”

Embracing the Experience.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of seeing ecommerce purely as a process whereas for the customer, it’s always an experience. And that experience is more than transactional; it says everything about your product and service, your brand and brand promise – and how you understand and value the ‘me’, the customer. Consumers today have little patience for a mediocre experience, and expectations will continue to grow throughout this year.

In a world where that experience extends across multiple devices, there’s both an opportunity to engage more customers, and a challenge to align and optimise disparate channels. So you may need to be thinking in terms of your total user experience, taking into account how your customers browse across different platforms. That could mean more investment in continuity across channels. It will certainly involve re-evaluating your customer needs and mapping their journeys – to ensure these are intuitive, engaging and optimised for conversion.

“Our event on 25th January will shine a light on the total user experience”

The important point to remember, whatever changes you’re making, is that you’re in control and can make a real impact on delivering more, and better customer interactions. It’s not (necessarily) about creating the highly-customised user experience found on the Nike website. Your opportunity may be more logistical – to increase delivery speeds (and cost savings), for example.

Ultimately, your ecommerce platform and strategy is where you deliver greater value back to your business, and everyone connected to it, in a variety of different ways.

Building an ‘ecommunity’ as well as ecommerce.

‘Getting it right’ will enable you to do more than turbocharge your ecommerce, as critical as that is. With more of our lives moving online in 2020 and throughout 2021, there’s a far greater desire among customers to understand the ‘why’ behind your business alongside the ‘what’ and ‘how’. So expect increased scrutiny around your ethics, security, CSR and inclusion – and use this as an opportunity to build a community around your business.

It’s easy to forget that the central premise for all technology is to make things more convenient, efficient and frictionless. This is key to the Box UK approach – remembering that technology and the outcomes it delivers are in the hands of humans. That’s why we hope to see you at our event later this month, or hear from you at [email protected] with any questions you may have.

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Established in 1998, Box UK’s track record of success spans hundreds of high-priority and mission-critical software projects, delivered over more than twenty years.

A focus on heavy-use, multi-user platforms has given us deep experience in creating scalable, resilient and high-transaction systems for clients across the globe.

With an enterprise pedigree and a passion for technology, Box UK offers an unrivalled depth and breadth of experience in the development of scalable and resilient software systems – managing these full-lifecycle projects right the way through from planning to post-launch platform management.

Working with local, national and international organisations across a broad range of industries, our team of developers, solution architects, UX consultants, system engineers and product owners has built up an impressive portfolio of successful and award-winning projects.

We also excel in rescuing legacy projects, developing proofs-of-concept, embedding cultural and behavioural change via the implementation of agile, and conducting strategic analysis of your existing technology (or marketplace) to enable future decision-making.

 

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