The pandemic has caused all of us to reevaluate our practices and methods for conducting business. An eCommerce strategy is more than necessary, it can be a business-saving strategy. These tips have been collected to help you better understand how eCommerce is right for your business model.
Automation Opportunities
The coming years will bring a greater focus on the effort to organize efficiently and effectively. Automation will become a key aspect of all business operations. The pandemic brought to light many legacy business practices and systems that are not up to the task with modern issues. Resources were not placed correctly and were wasted or inefficient. Traditional approaches need to be replaced with digital alternatives.
Modern technology can learn and improve the businesses processes that have been completed manually. Employees were initially hesitant about doing automation, but they now say that they feel the automation makes them more productive. Automation can complete simple tasks and it has the potential to streamline operations. This could include producing new products for the eCommerce website, assigning items to the right categories, product positioning, and presentation. The whole sales process can be continually monitored and reviewed in real-time.
Operational Benefits
Sales, customer behavior, stock quantity, and trends all need to be monitored to anticipate and respond to customer demands. Understanding sales figures to see the implications, restocking accurately, and introducing new products are all skilled and time-consuming activities that can be supported with eCommerce analytics. Having the right product at the right price is what each customer is looking for. The operational benefit of the eCommerce site is that the customer behavior on the site can guide your company’s goals and procedures in the execution of your operations.
Advanced Analytics
Ecommerce platforms provide you with the ability to examine real-time data. Analyzing this data and converting it into usable insights will have a direct result on the sales figures. You can exchange your month-old reports with a single, clear view of your business.
Integrating your systems with your eCommerce platform and adding advanced analytics will give you the tools you need to continuously improve your business. Accessing real-world information about user behavior will help you to align your operations with your long-term strategic plans.
Customer Experiences
Streamlining the customers’ buying journey is important in eCommerce. More purchasers and retail shoppers are embracing around-the-clock self-service online shopping. The experience is the differentiating factor.
Chatbots can automatically answer many common questions immediately. This can free your customer service or sales team to deliver more value-added services. If the chatbot can’t do it, the inquiry can be seamlessly passed to a team member to resolve the issue or direct the inquiry to the correct team. This can effectively extend your operating hours without expanding your team.
Personalization
An eCommerce platform does open your company up to the world of the Internet, but personalizing your site will help to create a lifetime partnership with your customers. You can respond to your customers’ needs. Creating specific dashboards or catalog segments to help them find the repeat-purchase products more quickly and even suggest new products based on their past buying history.
Want to see how IBT is streamlining eCommerce?
IBT is updating our eCommerce experience. Contact your local IBT rep to learn more about ShopIBT.