5 tips to grow your e-commerce

1: Not sure if it's time to (re)invest in e-commerce?

If you can answer yes to one or more of these questions, there's a good case for investing in e-commerce:

• Are you holding back on realising new business ideas because it's cumbersome in your current solution?
• Are you too busy performing manual processes rather than automating and developing your digital business
• Are you spending more money on operations and maintenance than you want to?
• Have you lost track of product data?
• Is your conversion rate or customer lifetime value too low?
• Are you being overtaken by one or more competitors, for example in personalisation, click&collect or instore solutions?

2: Choose technology that supports your business now and in the future

Investing in technology can be expensive and time-consuming. That's why it's important to choose technology that supports your business now and can carry your business towards your strategic e-commerce ambitions. Conversely, you also need to be able to limit yourself so that you avoid costly investments in unnecessary complexity and features. So before you start, it's important to have a clear plan about the purpose of e-commerce and your company's ambitions for the future.

3: Ensure consistency of customer experience

When your customers visit your webshop, you should treat it as if they are walking into a physical store. The promises you make to customers must be fulfilled and the information customers expect offline must also be present online e.g. stock status, delivery, complaints, returns and rich product information. The customer experience must be consistent across channels, and the same service and advice must be available whether you meet customers online or offline. Remember that customers see all parts of your business as one business. And they expect it to be cohesive.

4: Think about work processes

Imagine your business growing at triple the revenue. Can your business handle this growth with the current work processes? Or will there be a need to streamline? This could be product data maintenance and creation, order management, complaints, product launches, etc. We recommend that you think about work processes from the start of an e-commerce project and ensure that the organisation is well represented in the project steering group. This will give you a strong foundation to make your e-commerce an internal success as well.

5: Get your marketing strategy right

Investing in e-commerce also requires investment in marketing strategy if you want to be seen, found and for customers to buy your goods. So remember to:

• Draw up a marketing plan for activities and campaigns throughout the year. Remember that the plan should include online and offline activities and create coherence between them
• Spend time on content and make sure it is relevant and lively
• Use targeted social media and SEO campaigns
• Use retargeting and marketing automation on existing leads
• Collect data and use it actively to improve conversion, customer experience and customer loyalty
• Continuously measure customer satisfaction
• Constantly think about how you are creating value for the customer.