|
Our Experience Is Your Solution!
Over the past decade, as the internet has grown exponentially, companies have increasingly used it to sell their products and services online and there are many large companies, such as Amazon and eBay, who successfully conduct all their business on the Web. Of course, selling online has a number of advantages compared with more traditional methods. The Internet is a world marketplace, so an online shop has the possible to reach a worldwide audience.
Your business can be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, accepting and processing orders throughout the night without your intervention. And the lack of supervision allows you to cut costs, which can change into savings for your customers, giving your business a competitive edge. Finally, because you can store the goods in a large warehouse away from the city centre, you will be able to keep your stock up to date and in greater quantities, so that any orders can be shipped without delay. Your ecommerce wing will only be successful if it is managed effectively, however.
If your operation is a large one and has its own IT and marketing teams you must be able to set up an online commercial wing without difficulty. Building your own ecommerce operation allows you to maintain close links with your existing ordering and inventory systems and allows a greater level of customization both in terms of the characters and look of the store and the back-end interface. However ecommerce is quite a specialized field requiring a level of expertise and can take a considerable amount of time to implement properly. The level of ongoing maintenance that is required can also be a drain on your internal resources. An alternative might be to have your ecommerce software hosted by an external company, although this might result in your site having a general look and there being restrictions about how much you can change it.
A better way of launching an ecommerce service is to employ a consultant to give you advice and assistance regarding the implementation and day to day running of the site so it can be easily maintained without any special skills being required. But which consultant to choose? Well, perhaps the best way of choosing a consultant to suit your needs is to run through a checklist of the different services they offer and establish what is comprised in the standard consultancy fee.
At the very least, an ecommerce consultancy must offer the following:
- Advice about the software necessary to build the site you want and whether you will be able to manage and update it on your own once the software is implemented. It is no good if, having thin a consultant to do a particular job; you feel the require to contact them every time something goes wrong. A consultant’s job must also engage giving your employees the proper training so that they will be able to handle problems as and when they arise.
- An overview of the different characters your site must have in order to put the customer at ease and encourage them to buy as many of your goods as possible. Have a look at the way Amazon works, giving you recommendations based on goods you have bought or previously looked at, offering quick and advanced search capabilities and suggesting that if you buy goods over a certain value you will be eligible for free shipping. Other characters you must ask about comprise the provision or a help desk, the management of items that can be pre-ordered and saved for later and a gift wrapping service.
- Consumer concern about internet security is considerable and the ecommerce consultancy must have a way of making users feel comfortable about submitting personal details and sending funds online. Equally it must have a failsafe method of saving payment details in a secure facility to ensure the minimum amount of user input is needed for returning customers.
- The option must be available to change multiple goods prices simultaneously and enable integration with third party databases so that goods details and prices can be automatically updated.
- Check that the sales activity is given online and in full. Characters such as overall sales, sales per category and sales per goods over defined periods can help give direction to your marketing campaign. In addition, the ecommerce consultant must be able to optimize your product pages for search engines, so that your site is just a click away from a prospective customer.
It is also worth looking at the following issues to decide whether the ecommerce consultancy has the necessary amount of experience:
- Does it understand what your needs are, what your company offers and what your customer's needs are? The consultancy will only help you build the site you want if they understand exactly what it is you do want.
- Look into the length of time they have been in business and their track and solvency record. Ask them to give some sample sites to look at and request a copy their consumers list is, so you can conduct your own research.
- Assess whether their level of clients support is sufficient. For example, do they have a twenty four hour help desk that gives assistance by email and over the telephone? Find out about the tariff for this service and the average resolution time.
|
Creative Web Mall (India) Pvt. Ltd.