e-Commerce
If you are thinking about setting up an eCommerce store in the UK, there are a number of things you need to take into consideration.
New Online Business without an Existing Bricks and Mortar Establishment
If you are setting up a brand new online business – i.e. without a bricks and mortar version – then the most crucial step is identifying your market demand for the products or services you will be selling online. Just having the idea isn’t good enough. You have to either conduct market research or set up a solution to test the market. You can do this by setting up a simple shopping cart, running a pay per click campaign and assessing the response.
The advantage of this approach is that the investment is low. For only a few thousand pounds you can test the market. If it doesn’t work, then you haven’t lost tens of thousands of pounds.
We helped a client do just that. We set up a test shopping cart for them to sell downloadable products. We set up a Google Adwords campaign and found that people were not only clicking on the ad, but they were then buying the products. This proved to our client, at low cost, that their idea was a good one. We then worked with the client to establish a full blown e-commerce solution that has gone from strength to strength.
We can do this for you too. Contact us today!
Once you have reached this point you will have to consider the e-commerce requirements outlined below.
Existing business seeking to sell products online
If you already have a bricks and mortar business, you are likely to know the demand in your marketplace for your products, but you will need to establish what your online demand is for your products and/or services.
What you need to think about for your e-commerce solution
- E-commerce is a global phenomenon. Will you be limiting your market to the UK?
- If you are selling outside the UK, do you want to sell in sterling (£) or other currencies as well? Do you want the site available in different languages?
- What are the VAT requirements for the products you will be selling online?
- How will you manage order fulfilment? You need to consider internal administration and how you will actually ship the goods.
- How will you process online payments? Do you already have a merchant account? Which payment processor will you use? Is the software you will be using and the payment processing and hosting PCI compliant?
- How complex is your product range – for example do you need to sell products by colour and size?
- Do you need to track inventory? Do you want to indicate whether a product is in stock or not on your website?
- Will you be selling downloadable products?
- How are you going to market your new online business?
- Is the software SEO enabled?
Call us today and we can help you deal with all these issues.
Admin and security
- Is the software solution reliable, robust and secure?
- Does the admin allow you to update products easily?
- Can you do bulk product updates?
You may also want to consider specific features
- Featured products
- Highlighting new products
- Related products
- Providing your customers with the ability to add products to their wish list
- Offering gift certificates
- Offering gift wrapping as an option
- Allowing your customers to login to their account and view their orders
- Allowing customers to write reviews
- Search facility
Contact us to talk about your needs. Our experience enables us to help you deal with all these issues.
Marketing
The success of your e-commerce site will depend on how well it is marketed. Your marketing strategy should include:
- the design
- the layout of the pages
- the copy - the actual content of the pages
- and the number and types of marketing campaigns that you run
Please see our eMarketing section.
Web analytics
Unlike in a bricks and mortar shop where you can see your customers, with a website you cannot learn by watching your customers. BUT there is a wealth of data available to you which you can analyse to understand the behaviour of your customers.
The right web analytics tools help you understand the behaviour of your customers. They also help you monitor your marketing campaigns and allow you to continuously improve the performance of your site.
Google Analytics is one of the most useful analytics tools. We will help you apply the freely available Google analytics tool to your e-commerce site.
We helped a client to improve their conversions by using the Google site overlay tool to demonstrate the need for an improved layout of content on the page. This resulted in sales increasing by 20%.
There are more advanced tools available. Clicktracks is one of the well known advanced analytics tools. This offers even more sophisticated analytical information enabling you to customise what you want to measure.
Contact us. We can help you leverage your web traffic for maximum profit.
Some of our eCommerce clients:
IT Governance
Angelbake
Europa Bioproducts
ISC Medical
Woolies Trim
Bargain Plumbing Shop
