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16 tips for building an engaging ecommerce experience

First things to keep in mind

As you start to strategize and plan for your new or re-platformed ecommerce website, you will no doubt want to keep these more obvious requirements top of mind. Consider this checklist #1.

Brand your site – How do you want to represent your company’s brand online? Is yours a playful brand? Or a more serious one? Are you an emerging brand or one with an established retail store? Remember customers expect their online shopping experience to mirror their in-store experience. Therefore every aspect of your ecommerce website – from graphics to navigation – should align with your brand and support a consistent, cohesive message and shopping experience. After all, shoppers will connect their experience with your brand, not your website.

Know your audience – This goes hand-in-hand with branding. You want to define your audience and understand its buying behavior. Then make sure your webstore relates to how your target audience prefers to interact with ecommerce sites. For instance, some shoppers prefer 3D models that help them virtually try on clothing or footwear. Others demand 360-degree views of products. Some shoppers favor personalized buying guides based on past purchases. And some will want to pick up their web orders in your retail store.

Know your competition – Conducting competitive analysis enables you to better understand the current online marketplace and your place in it. No doubt you are already using Google Alerts to monitor web mentions of your competitors. Be sure to also check out competitors’ Facebook pages and Twitter feeds to see what is being said about them.

Decide how customized you want to go – As you look for ecommerce solution partners, look at the full range of offerings available to you – from out-of-the-box-and-ready-to-go packages to highly customized options. As a general rule of thumb, the more customized your ecommerce solutions, the higher the cost and the longer the development time.

Build a great user experience – Use proven best practices where possible to create a friendly, intuitive and easily navigable online experience for your customers. Careful thought and planning is required here because providing an exceptional customer experience also requires integrating your back-office applications and databases with your web store so you can streamline order management, simplify payment processing, expedite shipping and enhance personalized service.

Factor in basic operations – How you approach operations for your ecommerce site depends on how your company is set up and if yours is a new or re-platformed site. If you are re-platforming, you no doubt have already staffed up or outsourced certain tasks. If this is your first venture into ecommerce, make sure you have sufficient support lined up for every aspect of operations. You might find that existing staff members have very adaptable skillsets. For example, people on your buying staff might be good candidates for taking on additional ecommerce support responsibilities. Other key operations areas: Do you keep shipping in house or outsource it? And what about web developers? Do you want to keep that task in house? Or outsource to a partner, agency or freelancers?

Find the right ecommerce solution partner – Your business is more than an amalgamation of ecommerce applications. It is a complex network of systems, applications, middleware and databases. It requires detailed workflow analysis, a thoughtful plan and levels of customization. Your chosen service provider should demonstrate more than an understanding of ecommerce technologies. The right partner will also offer expertise in back-office systems, legacy applications, database development, data conversions and process chains, as well as information exchange between disparate systems and trading partners. So research your options thoroughly. Talk with peers at similar-sized companies. When you have narrowed down your partner candidates, ask the tough questions so that you have a clear idea of what to expect when it comes to the scope of solution delivery, price, structure and timeframes.

Set clear expectations for ROI – Have a clear idea of when you expect to see a return on your investment in a new or re-platformed ecommerce solution. And keep in mind, ecommerce platforms have a relatively low cost but high ROI in the spectrum of enterprise IT projects – and they support a new or maturing revenue stream that meets the needs of a changing consumer. The most conservative of replatforming pitches can be attractive even – or even more so – in tough economic times.¹

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