A Brilliant Guide to eCommerce Success
A Brilliant Guide to eCommerce Success
Even before the pandemic lockdowns, eCommerce has been one of the elusive topics that business owners put aside for later. It wasn’t such a pressing issue until the recent limitations to trading solely from your brick and mortar establishment. eCommerce is big business and every day more retailers, distributors, and manufacturers are joining the fray, making the competition cut-throat. Here is a Brilliant guide to eCommerce Success in South Africa.
The Benefits of Selling Online
– A 24/7 presence in the global marketplace
– Bring new products to market faster or remove slow-moving items by merely making a few edits to a website
– Tools to take and fulfill orders in the fastest, most economical way possible
– Offer your customers self-service options, like order tracking and order history, that have a minimal cost yet can significantly improve customer satisfaction
– Create and retain customers who prefer an online shopping experience
– Instantly pivot to online sales if you are unable to conduct business at your brick-and-mortar store
An eCommerce store is no longer just nice to have. In the recent economic landscape, it’s mandatory. Many business owners were deterred by the complexity of starting an eCommerce store. The good news is that there are many eCommerce options available today that will fit nearly any business’s needs and budget.
To avoid the challenges that come with manually managing your eCommerce accounting, you should consider integrating your eCommerce platform with your company’s back-office business applications.
Understanding the type of seller you are
As you begin evaluating the types of eCommerce solutions for your business, you will want to consider some essential elements about the kinds of products you sell, how you sell your products and the customers who usually buy your products:
– Do you sell many products (SKUs) or only a few?
– Do your products come in one size and color or many?
– How do you handle products with variants (for example, a single t-shirt design that comes in multiple sizes and colors) in your accounting?
– Do you sell primarily to consumers or other businesses?
– What volume of sales (in both number and dollar amount) do you expect per month?
– Do you manage multiple warehouses?
– Do you sell internationally? Will you require currency conversion capabilities or multiple languages on your eCommerce site?
– Do you have any inventory you do not wish to sell online?
– How will you manage the fulfillment of online orders?
– How often do you expect returns?
Knowing the answer to questions like these will help you find the best eCommerce solution that fits your company.
What Features Do You Want from Your eCommerce System?
There are many solutions available, but not all eCommerce systems are equal. Businesses that sell primarily to consumers (business-to-consumer, or B2C) have different requirements for their eCommerce sites than companies that sell to other businesses (business-to-business, or B2B).
Your choice of eCommerce solution must include the features you need to sell to your primary market.
Examples of features that are important to B2C sellers include:
– Discounts and coupons
– User reviews
– Product photos and descriptions
– Guest purchase options (no requirement to establish an account)
– Sales tax calculations
– Loyalty programs
– Social media engagement
In contrast to consumers, businesses tend to purchase in large quantities on credit and involve more stakeholders in the purchase decision. As a result, B2B eCommerce sites require a different set of features to facilitate selling your products online.
Examples of features that are important to B2B sellers are:
– Customer-specific pricing
– Multiple payment options
– Multiple account addresses
– Invoice history for online and offline orders
– Inventory availability
– Credit terms using a purchase order or line of credit
Make sure the eCommerce solution you choose can support your company’s unique requirements and workflows.
Although selling online has been around for several decades, it has mostly been a B2C game. But that’s no longer the case. The convenience of researching and buying products online is now commonplace in the B2B world. People in purchasing and procurement buy items online, too.
