Selling Ð - Ecommerce & Omnichannel Consultants · Selling Ð Digital shopping is evolving at...

Selling–

Digital shopping is evolving at lightning speed. Yesterday’s innovative technology is tomorrow’s standard practice. As digital commerce sales continue to grow and take a greater share of overall sales, customer expectations are continuously elevated. To keep pace, retailers must constantly stay on top of customer behaviors and preferences as well as digital commerce technologies.

Selling | 67 © 2019

BURNING QUESTIONS

• What are best-practice features for digital commerce platforms?

• When should I consider re-platforming?

• What features are best practice for my industry?

Retailers should always take time to study best practices and future trends for ecommerce, mobile, and omnichannel to inform technology requirements. Armed with industry insight, they should stay on top of the platforms they leverage to ensure that providers keep pace with industry best practices and are in front of new and innovative functionality.

TOOLS AND TRICKS OF THE TRADE

The platforms used to enable online shopping have undergone one of the most significant technological evolutions in recent times. Starting as basic web catalogs and simple shopping carts, modern platforms and solutions have received a dramatic facelift, and in some cases even a name change.

Many technology providers are shifting the positioning of their solutions away from ecommerce to digital commerce, and rightfully so. Modern platforms power much more than ecommerce (or at least should) including mobile commerce, kiosks, and virtually anything digital. Many platforms also offer capabilities to power omnichannel retail – hence the shift from Ecommerce or Digital Commerce to Omnichannel, Unified Commerce. Or even “No Channel Commerce”.

Technological advances and trends, including omnichannel retail, mobile shopping, and global expansion are dictating changes and prioritizations in the digital selling space, while traditional sales channels such as print catalogs are nearing extinction.

DID YOU KNOW?

Globally digital sales are expected to near 6

trillion by 2022.46

SELLING TOOLS

1. Ecommerce/Digital Commerce Platforms

2. Mobile Commerce

3. Conversational Commerce

4. Cross-Border Commerce

Selling | 68 © 2019

Ecommerce/Digital Commerce Platforms

The ecommerce technology industry started with only a handful of platform providers vying for retailer attention. Today as the industry reinvents itself, the competitive landscape looks very different, with a wide range of platform providers competing on functionality, deployment model, ease of use, specialization, and (of course) price. Many of these platforms started out as consumer retail platforms but have evolved to include core B2B functionality as well. Also emerging are platforms that are specialized by industry, offering functionality to address specific, often complex, industry requirements.

Launching a new ecommerce site or re-platforming an existing site is a strategic business decision with many implications across the entire organization, including Marketing, Ecommerce, Merchandising, IT, Operations, Finance, and others. It is a big commitment, and it is important to get it right and understand when such an implementation is a strategic necessity.

OUR TAKE: Do your homework

Whether launching a new business, re-platforming, or expanding into a new channel or global market, the

options for digital commerce platforms are seemingly endless and potentially overwhelming. Many platforms

look good at first glance. But, once you compare them to your requirements, to each other’s cost, and talk to

their customers, there will always be a top group that should be reviewed further. Eliminate the rest.

THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS SERVE AS A FILTER IN DETERMINING WHEN IT’S TIME TO LAUNCH OR RE-PLATFORM

» Can your commerce site take you where you need to go?

» Are you falling behing the competition?

» Are you missing key benchmarks by not adopting best practices?

» Poor integration between channels – are there too many hurdles to clear?

» Have internal costs become too high, or unsustainable?

» Are you making a strategic change, e.g. new product types, acquisition, expansion into foreign markets?

» Are you experiencing performance or security risks?

» Are you experiencing an uptick in customer issues?

» Is it difficult to pivot and adapt to changing marketing conditions?

Selling | 69 © 2019

OUR TAKE: Validate need. Define requirements.

Validating your need for new technology is the first step. Defining your requirements comes next. Perform

thorough due diligence to understand your immediate functional and long-term business requirements, and

consider which deployment or delivery model is the best fit for your organization. Map all of these business

requirements to an ecommerce technical strategy.

Choosing the Right Deployment Model

Digital commerce platforms can be deployed in a variety of models:

On premise

• Software and hardware are licensed and hosted by the retailer either in their location or a hosting facility. The retailer manages the infrastructure, operations and upgrades and has the responsibility and control of security and privacy.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

• The SaaS platform is a subscription model, hosted either in the cloud or by the ecommerce platform provider inside their hosting environment. The provider manages the hardware and software and is responsible for upgrades.

Private Cloud or Managed Hosted

• Software hosted in the cloud, with cloud environments such as Amazon, Azure, Google, Dimension Data or other hosting facilities. The provider manages the hardware and the software is managed by the retailer, provider or a combination of both.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

• Hosted in the cloud, the provider delivers hardware and software tools allowing retailers to develop, run, and manage applications without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure.

Finding the optimal digital commerce platform is a combination of feature, function, and delivery model. Organizations need to consider and evaluate the various delivery or deployment models available.

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While there is no magic formula to selecting the right model, there are several key considerations, including:

Internal Capacity

• Level of internal capacity for development, maintenance, and support.

Long-term goals, strategic priorities

• The need to ensure the level of commitment required of the platform fits overall strategic priorities.

Potential disruption to the business

• Choice of delivery model and implementation partner will directly affect the level of effort required of the retail team.

Digital Commerce Platform Capabilities

Once basic order-taking platforms with limited functionality, modern digital commerce platforms include functionality that stretches far beyond online catalogs and shopping carts, offering features and functions designed to provide the best customer experience possible and user-friendly tools to easily manage the platform.

With a clear understanding of customer characteristics and a detailed merchandising strategy (what to sell and how to sell it), organizations can start to determine baseline functionality needed and the features that will set their sites apart from the competition.

DIGITAL COMMERCE PLATFORM BEST PRACTICE FUNCTIONALITY

SEO Social Content Blog Personalization

A/B Test Promotions Bundling Catalog Pricing

%

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When evaluating digital commerce platforms, it is essential to understand which features and capabilities are included. Some providers offer a bundling of features and best-of-breed capabilities beyond standard functionality, while others have an ‘à la carte’ approach. In addition to looking at the feature sets, if features are a la carte, the implementation costs can vary.

Beyond standard capabilities, some of the typical best-of-breed features include:

Major Systems

CMS, OMS, PIM, B2B, DAM

Additional Features

Faceted search, dynamic product sorting, segmentation, advanced personalization

Depending on the platform, these added features may be offered as part of the solution or as easy add-ons offered by third-party technology solutions.

In addition, API (Application Interfaces) which make integrating to external support services such as payment gateways and shipping aggregators can make the difference between a low maintenance and a high maintenance platform.

OUR TAKE: Identify your requirements, validate their importance.

The single most important step in selecting a platform for your ecommerce needs is to define all your

detailed requirements and decide what you must have versus what you can live without or add later. It’s

important to identify which requirements will have a significant impact on your business or highest ROI

(return on investment). Having the best new widget is great, but if it is very expensive and only leads to a

small improvement in sales, it may not be worth it. Remember to assess widgets against what is necessary to

support best practices for your industry. Which features are really required?

OUR TAKE: Think ahead

Determining core features, such as navigation, search, recommendations, social, and content management,

are but a handful of the hundreds of decisions you’ll need to make when defining your current requirements.

But you also need to think ahead and determine those innovations that will emerge to become a focal point

for digital commerce tomorrow. Which will become irrelevant next year? How can you keep up with change?

Do your own research and leverage the exposure to technology and service providers during the process as

an education on best practices and future innovations.

Selling | 72 © 2019

Other considerations when selecting a digital commerce platform

Many organizations rely on the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) when selecting a digital commerce platform. However, comparing platforms solely on price, overlooks the comparative value that one platform can deliver over another. It is imperative to include both cost and value throughout the evaluation process to effectively calculate a comprehensive return on investment.

Considerations to determine value:

• Time-to-market

• Scalability and flexibility

• Ease of use

• Efficiency of execution, maintenance, and adoption of new innovation

• Culture

• Community

• Revenue uplift from improved conversion, retargeting and increased sales through omnichannel capabilities

• Integration of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

• Integration of basic merchandising capabilities, including assortment management

DID YOU KNOW?

One of the most important digital iniatives for 2019 is reducing technical debt. Replacing an outdated and

under-performing ecommerce solution can be a critical step towards reducing technical debt.47

OUR TAKE: Integration is no longer an option; it’s a necessity

Make sure your digital commerce platform can integrate with all your business functions, internal systems

and third-party tools. Your systems must be integrated and able to accept orders, confirm them, process

payments, decrement inventory, print shipping labels, create a pick order, generate reports, and update your

financials without manual intervention. Even if long-term, you should always be working toward this goal.

Selling | 73 © 2019

It is important to understand and evaluate all the components of value offered from a variety of technology solutions and how they stack up against each other.

Empowering Internal Teams

The technology and tools used to enable digital commerce should not be limited to technical power users. Advanced platforms empower everyone – even those with creative functions – to use the system without relying on IT. As a result, they can more efficiently and quickly shape the shopping experience. Streamlined, collaborative workflows and automation can greatly extend the work capacity of a lean digital commerce team, making it easy to:

• Collaborate and release all site-related changes in an orchestrated manner

• Enable A/B testing

• Ensure your team can work quickly and track activities individually or as a project

• Enable your teams to re-use content

• Make minor modifications easily

• Know who last worked on an activity or asset

• Communicate asynchronously about all site-related elements

• Notify and alert teams and individuals about site changes or issues (such as missing images for a product being prepared for publication)

• Schedule site changes including pricing, promotions, featured items and other content in advance and preview the site as it will appear on any date

• See data insights in the context of actions and tasks

• Enable intra-day feedback and reporting on site sales

• Full reporting suite or integration with analytics

• Easy integration with CRM solutions or ability to store and use customer information appropriately

Powering Omnichannel Retail

Enabling seamless movement across channels requires a unified view of the customer and coordination across all customer touchpoints. To arrive at this view, organizations need to assimilate all the data they can collect

Selling | 74 © 2019

across channels, including customers’ online behaviors and browsing history, in-store and online purchases, inventory, promotions, social media interactions, and more. To fully embrace an omnichannel retail approach, the digital commerce platform must be fully integrated with all other systems in the technology ecosystem, and it must be able to capture all data and feed it into a centralized database that can be leveraged across the entire organization.

When fully integrated, digital commerce platforms that include omnichannel capabilities can enable services, such as:

• Buy online/pick up in-store (BOPIS)

• Buy online/return in-store (BORIS)

• In-store inventory lookup

• Buy in-store/ship to home

• Cross-channel loyalty programs

• Cross-channel gift card redemption

DID YOU KNOW?

Over 60 percent of shoppers will use Buy online/

pick up in store (BOPIS) in 2019, but this feature

is only adopted by between 27 and 41 percent of

retailers, depending upon vertical.48

Selling | 75 © 2019

Mobile Commerce

Perhaps one of the most significant and fastest-growing advances in ecommerce in recent years is the ability to browse and shop on a mobile device (site or app). Nearly all leading retailers in the US have mobile-optimized sites. Responsive design has become a standard in today’s digital commerce platforms, leaving no excuse for those retailers that are not yet optimized for mobile.

Beyond optimizing the ecommerce site for mobile screen sizes, retailers should ensure that their site is also mobile-user friendly by following best practices, including the following areas:

• Optimized load time

• Simplified navigation

• Mobile-friendly design – less is more

• Saved carts between platforms

• Easy payments

• Visual search

• Speed!

To App or Not to App

Mobile apps are less popular than mobile-optimized sites among retailers – most studies reveal that conversions are higher on mobile sites than on apps. Apps are also more expensive to develop and maintain. While it is recommended that mobile apps leverage the same digital commerce technology and system for ecommerce, most apps require additional mobile commerce solutions or custom development.

DID YOU KNOW?

• In 2022, mobile commerce sales is estimated

to reach $512 billion and take up more than 55

percent of total retail ecommerce sales.49

OUR TAKE: The great connector

‘Mobile sales’ is just one aspect of mobile within retail. The greater power of mobile arises from its influence

on overall shopping – bridging online and offline experiences. Mobile drives traffic to stores and literally puts

product information directly into the hands of the shopper. The shopper’s journey traverses across multiple

mobile and desktop devices on the way to an order.

Selling | 76 © 2019

Conversational/Voice Commerce

By some estimates more than 1.6 billion people will use voice assistants such as Alexa, Google Home and Siri on a regular basis by the end of 2021.50 Still in its infancy, voice commerce, today, is generally best for ordering replenishment items. In fact, Echo owners increased their purchase of replenishment products like diapers by 13.5 percent in 2017. Both Amazon and Google are expanding their fight for industry leadership into smart-TVs. From now until 2024, smart TVs with voice assistants are projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 121.3 percent compared to 41.3 percent for smart-speakers.

As more and more consumers start using voice-activated assistants to find and research products, conversational commerce or voice commerce will eventually influence the entire digital shopping experience. Some organizations are already experimenting with voice commerce, others should start to look at how voice fits into their customer journeys so they are ready for a voice-enabled reality in the not-so-distant future.

Global

One of the unique advantages of digital commerce is the ability to broaden reach without needing to set up shop abroad. Even though it is possible to practically sell everywhere via the online channel, there are certain factors to consider when selecting an ecommerce platform with global capabilities.

Some platforms are better equipped than others for cross-border marketing, merchandising, and shipping. If you’re testing your way into multiple foreign markets, a model that allows you to easily expand your footprint, relatively quickly, versus building individual country or regional sites from scratch, may be desirable. Some platforms now have native functionality to support international digital commerce.

Before expanding globally, organizations should investigate their platform provider’s capabilities, as some platforms do not support global ecommerce. If a solution cannot support international capabilities, third-party providers can run international ecommerce sites and help manage fulfillment and order shipment.

It is also recommended to partner with System Integrators (SI’s) and fulfillment partners with experience dealing with the complexities of global commerce. Taxation, export restrictions, local cultures and privacy regulations such as The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) require careful consideration when contemplating a move to international commerce.

DID YOU KNOW?

Alexa is by far dominating “home voice” in the US,

but Google is aggressively pushing into the market

in partnership with Walmart and Target. With more

than 8 billion devices, Alexa, Google, and others, in

use, voice shopping will continue to grow.

DID YOU KNOW?

Global retail ecommerce sales are forecasted to

surpass $4 trillion by 2020. Equating nearly 15

percent of total worldwide retail sales.51

Selling | 77 © 2019

SPOTLIGHT ON DATA

Selling is essentially all about data. One of the advantages of digital commerce is the ability to easily capture data. Retailers should ensure that the platforms they use are able to capture data, integrate with other platforms in their ecosystem and leverage the data to optimize the customer experience and boost conversions.

Specifically, retailers should support their selling efforts with the data and sources listed below:

• Product data: SKUs, attributes, prices, descriptions

• Forecast data: which products are in demand, demand planning, and assortment planning

• Assortment data: which combination of products creates the best experience for shoppers

• Order data: how many orders, tracking, and monitoring

• ERP, OMS, PIM, WMS data: enabling consistent product and order data to flow through the retail and ecommerce digital pathways seamlessly

• Location data: GEO IP address location information to identify where a shopper is and thereby suggest what types of products they may be interested in

• Shipping data: what percentage of customers leverage same day or next day shipping

• Marketing data: what are the click-through and open rates, attribution data

• Personalization data: necessary to suggest and recommend products or to ensure the customer has a personlized landing page

• Analytics and reporting data: if you care about it; measure it. When product and order data are moved smoothly through ecosystem, reporting on critical business functions becomes possible.

THIS REPORT IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY–

OUR MEDIA SPONSOR–

ChannelAdvisor has been on the front lines of e-commerce since 2001, helping retailers and brands connect with customers, optimize operations and grow sales channels. We’ve grown from a small company in a young industry to an industry leader at the forefront of a global revolution — with thousands of clients and billions of dollars in transactional revenue flowing through our platform every year. For more information, visit channeladvisor.com

Adweek is the leading source of news and insight serving the brand marketing ecosystem. First published in 1979, Adweek’s award-winning coverage reaches an engaged audience of more than 6 million professionals across platforms including print, digital, events, podcasts, newsletters, social media and mobile apps. As a touchstone of the advertising and marketing community, Adweek is an unparalleled resource for leaders across multiple industries who rely on its content to help them do their job better.

Adweek is part of the Beringer Capital portfolio that also includes BrandShop, a leading full-service partner that works with major consumer brands to employ digital commerce to increase sales, gain valuable consumer insight and create the type of end-to-end experiences that build loyalty and keep brands ahead of the competition. Learn more at adweek.com and brandshop.com

http://channeladvisor.com

http://www.adweek.com

http://www.brandshop.com

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FitForCommerce is a leading boutique consultancy that helps hundreds of online and multichannel brands and retailers make informed digital, ecommerce and omnichannel retail investment decisions. Leveraging years of experience, state-of-the-art tools, strategic diligence and tactical planning, FitForCommerce helps brands and retailers define strategies for growth, improve the customer experience, plan and hire the right organization, and find "best fit" technology solutions. | www.fitforcommerce.com

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