How Do You Know When You ve Outgrown Your ecommerce Platform? An Independent Report by Nadia Castellani

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1 How Do You Know When You ve Outgrown Your ecommerce Platform? An Independent Report by Nadia Castellani

2 How Do You Know When You ve Outgrown Your ecommerce Platform? Is it when performance issues with your website are having a detrimental effect on sales? Is it when development costs are spiralling as your system integrator struggles to fix issues and stabilise the website due to a poor initial build? Is it when hacked source code on an open-source platform gives you a security nightmare? Is it when development costs in your P&L increase to the point where ROI falls considerably as you try to keep your website updated with new functionality in a fast moving ecommerce environment? I hope to answer all these questions and more through the content in this article, Customer Centric Commerce ecommerce moves at lightning speed with new technical innovations continuously being created. Centric to ecommerce these days is providing customers with a smooth, seamless Omni-channel experience covering all touch-points from laptops / computers, tablets to mobile devices, apps and even in-store kiosks. Decisions need to be made on the amount of content, navigation and layout changes required for the optimum user experience especially on mobile devices. Today you need to consider your target market / customer and their shopping behaviour, taking into account customer service and brand experience. It can be hard to get the right balance providing an Omnichannel experience whilst keeping customer, senior management and shareholders all happy. One difficulty is replicating the personal customer service and styling advice received in stores or via sales agents, online. Building close rapports with your customers especially your most important clients is hard to do and requires customer relationship management, which may include account managers, personal stylists, customer service agents all available 24-7 via s, calls and perhaps live chat, which can be costly. We also need to carefully consider marketing both online and offline ensuring there is synergy and the brand voice is strong and consistent across all campaigns. Many brands do fail in providing an ecommerce experience, which is in line with the overall brand strategy and are lagging in realising the power and influence an ecommerce website can have. Often the ecommerce website is the first touch-point a customer will have with a brand yet sometimes the website is the last priority, with the view that it will have a detrimental effect on retail stores, cannibalising their sales. This is when Omni-channel breaks down and fear inhibits change, progression and expansion. If businesses are departmentalised too much the Omnichannel experience can never be attained and the customer experience is never at the forefront, which is frustrating and can limit total sales potential. Business Growth The most important question many companies ask is how they can grow online, what strategy should they employ. There isn t a universal strategy, each business is different and the strategy depends on the goals to be attained but usually the universally important objective is to increase sales. To increase sales you need to assess the business as a whole, analysing all sales channels along with future plans.

3 The first and most important thing is to actually have a documented and coherent strategy rather than just trying things out...remember tactics without a strategy is just noise before failure. Let s look at some tactics that can be employed as part of an ecommerce strategy: Performance of the website responsive templates, speed, functionality, good search facility, quick single page checkout and an expanding choice of payment options, social media share links, shoppable content and personalisation, all increase conversion. Product range - selection, availability and visual merchandising. Optimal imagery good quality, as many views as possible, and it always helps conversion to show fashion on a model, and lifestyle shots. Online and offline integrated marketing plan in a coherent brand voice. High level of customer service ease of contact, product advice, deliver on customer expectations providing customers with a shopping experience they will want to recommend. CRM build customer loyalty and segmentation through data analysis. Customer reviews essentially free PR when receiving good reviews and recommendations. However, it does not suit the luxury end of the market. Fulfilment range of delivery choices including Click and Collect, next day, weekend delivery and even same day where possible. Returns process is also important easy returns across all channels and many customers appreciate a free returns service. Optimise existing site - Before launching multiple international sites, a businesses should maximise sales of their existing site perhaps making it multi-currency. International implement multi-lingual sites only where there is clear ROI remember Google translate is NEVER good enough

4 Online Expansion Trends for 2015 International If international expansion is a priority you will need a platform that can facilitate quick and easy roll outs of new sites. The best strategy, to plan international expansion, is through analysis of your existing customers via Google Analytics; including traffic by region and conversion rate as this will indicate sales potential. A new country might also mean looking at expanding product offering, introducing new categories, which are applicable and perhaps only available to the new market... Can your existing platform support this process? Luxury Within the luxury sector, expanding overseas will usually be a multichannel project including the opening of retail stores. Luxury brands will concentrate on replicating their personal in-store customer service online. Whilst at the same time communicating a true brand experience that could be driven through social media engagement, creating a community that your customers aspire to be part of. Is your current ecommerce platform capable of managing content centrally and deploying to all the web sites and social networks easily? Expanding Product Range Multi-channel businesses expanding their product ranges need to consider the implications of their increasing catalogue size and if their current platform can cope, not only with the number of SKU s, but also the increasing complexity of any integrated thirds party solutions back office, order management, PIM or Content Management. If any fail, your website may go down. Online sales will increase versus in store sales. Click and Collect will increase in popularity, which may create issues due to lack of holding space in stores for orders from the website.

5 So, who out there is doing well and why? Amazon Amazon of course is always considered to be top of the list due to huge volume of choice, great search facility, one click check out, easy re-ordering and multiple delivery options and recommendations. Their Amazon prime delivery option will help sales growth offering customers next day delivery on selected products fulfilled by Amazon s warehouses. Net-a-Porter & Burberry Net-a-porter and Burberry are considered to be leaders in the luxury end of the market offering a more editorial feel with inspirational content, high quality imagery, excellent customer service and fulfilment options. Burberry created a community with the Art of the Trench site, which increased customer engagement and shows the level of global expansion the brand has achieved. Net-a-porter offers one of the best customer experiences in luxury through their customer service, product guidance on size and fit, and styling advisors who can be your own personal shopper assisting you with your purchases. If you live in London their premier service can deliver your order the very same day and everything arrives beautifully wrapped in their gift boxes, which adds that special touch you expect with luxury goods. Blake Envelopes It has to be said that envelopes aren t the most exciting product in the world. However, when it comes to B2B ecommerce sites - Blake Envelopes do a great job of making them desirable. Given that Blake s product range is vast, they ve done a great job at presenting their products in a logical way. Their filtered navigation and site search are well thought-out - You can search by the obvious: colour, range, and style. But they also have a unique search options including: square sizes, imperial sizes, pack sizes, type, sealings, windows, opaques, features and a long list of uses (below). This long list of options makes it easier for their business customers to search in whichever way they choose. Blake present their products very much as a B2C website would, and have an excellent mix of great design and B2C-like functionality.

6 Aldridge Security Aldridge Security is another good B2B ecommerce example. They have a vast range of products and brands with over 18,000 different products in stock from over 290 brands. They provide a wide range of products including Access Control, Ironmongery, Hardware, Key Cutting, Locksmithing Tools & Accessories. In addition, features like same day despatch are crucial when tradesmen have urgent projects on the go. It s more important that the customer can find the right part or tool across all devices quickly and easily. So features including - Quick Order (lists products by code and description) with live stock levels, the ability to create fast, repeat orders, and access to flexible, trade prices are excellent. Masters Golf Read more about Aldridge Security s success online, visit: Masters Golf is another example of a B2B ecommerce site with the right balance of good design and B2B functionality. Masters Golf supplies the golf trade in the UK and Europe including pro shops, distributors and retail stores with everything from packets of tees to full sets of high-end clubs and trolleys. B2B functionality that isn t visible via the B2C (consumer) view of the site include a Quick order page which lists live stock levels by product code and description, a notify me when back in stock button, a data feed so their 3rd party ecommerce sites can use their content and My Account where business customers can see outstanding orders, invoices, and recreate orders easily. This site is used by thousands in the B2B trade, and it has to be reliable and easy to use, while stocking a wide range of products. This means site search has to work well, which it does, key information is clearly presented on product pages, the ability to refine your search by category, brand, feature, finish and size are essential. Their site is easy to navigate and provides a fast and efficient service. What s great is that whilst Masters Golf don t sell to the general consumer directly, there are clear call-to-actions for visitors to find their nearest retailer helping to drive valued customers to 3rd party retailers.

7 Quick wins! And no need to change your ecommerce platform! 1. Product Selection & Availability Ensuring you have the right product selection, which is available in all sizes at the right quantity without being under or over stocked, seems a pretty basic rule. However many business still don t get it quite right. Range planning is one of the most crucial business tools, involving analysis and future forecasting along with market knowledge. If you have country sites you can really make the most out of localisation and make some very basic and easy quick wins by tailoring product and sizing, or perhaps by offering a limited editions and extra colour ways. Having a pre-ordering or me when back in stock can help maximise sales and limit availability issues with the customer. 2. Integrated Marketing Strategies Creating a cohesive integrated marketing strategy guarantees your customer will hear one brand voice and will understand the brand s values and ethos. This should flow across all channels (online and offline) so the customer sees the brand as Omnichannel. After all businesses shouldn t care so much as to which channel the transaction came from but that the transaction was made. Digital strategies should be integrated between , social, affiliates, PR and offline printing so you are actually telling the customer the same relevant story which flows and allows the customer to connect with your brand. 3. Third Party Search Engines and Affiliate Marketing Working with SEO experts to identity the best keywords to build into your site s content and titles to increase natural rankings on third party search engines will help drive more traffic to your site. Ranking on page 1 on Google can be the Holy Grail every business wants to achieve. PPC can also help achieve this but can be expensive and requires close monitoring of the metrics and ROI of campaigns to eliminate underperforming keywords. Another way to drive more traffic and sales is to consider running an affiliate program but it does depend what the business is, as it doesn t suit all markets such as luxury. 4. Payment Options Providing more payment options especially e-wallets such as PayPal can help increase conversion especially with the increased use of mobile devices to make purchases on the go. Many people still think of ebay when they think of PayPal and are worried that taking this method of payment may devalue their brand but there are other e-wallets available and over time retailers will realises they will become an essential payment method. Also if you are trading internationally it makes sense to give customers a choice of local card payments e.g. CartaSi and Carte Bleue and even bank transfers. For information on Digital Marketing Services from Maginus visit:

8 5. Improved User Experience Are you providing your customers with the optimum user experience online? This is a question businesses should ask themselves all the time, constantly reviewing the customer journey on their websites. Ensuring your website loads in under 3 seconds and is scalable to cope with increases in traffic is a pretty basic rule. Images can sometimes be the cause of poor load speed, using content delivery networks can help with this issue along with ensuring images are in the optimum dimensions. Easy and intuitive navigation and menus again are essential but often overlooked and complicated along with search functionality that does actually return relevant results to the customer. It s crucial to understand your primary user s needs, behaviours, goals and motivation for using your website when designing the site layout. Responsive templates are key for Omni-channel retailers especially with the growing trend of mobile devices. Chat widgets can increase user engagement, sales and help improve your customer s experience, especially if they need some advice or help using your website. 6. Redesign Many businesses look to redesign their websites every 3 years to refresh their tired website, sometimes this backfires and businesses do not see improved results if the project hasn t been planned properly. Redesign projects should happen if a website is out-dated. You need to set clear goals when designing that new sleeker interface which might include improved navigation, menus, search function, on site SEO or higher customer engagement. Some business may wish to consider a continuous optimisation project where A/B split testing is carried out, if the level of traffic permits. The changes are made over a period of time with analysis to back up the changes and the gains to be made in conversion. Customer surveys, user testing and mouse tracking are other ways of analysing what needs improving. Interestingly, the Amazon website has evolved over the years but has not changed dramatically in design as they continuously test. 7. Upgrade If you have a hosted rather than SaaS site you will be familiar with upgrade releases issued by the platform provider, which you may choose to deploy to your site to take advantage of new functionalities or bug fixes. As technology changes at a rapid pace upgrades are essential to improving your website and adding much needed integrations such as social media links. Other reasons for upgrades include making a site mobile friendly, making it easier to add content, improving the CMS and even improving SEO and Google rankings. Upgrading your site to the latest release version can be the bridging gap before considering a re-platform project. Upgrades must also be considered to ensure that you implement the very latest security patches just one breach and a subsequent data loss has the potential to break your business.

9 But after all that when do I know I need to change ecommerce platforms? These are common indicators that your ecommerce platform can no longer support your business strategy: 1. Products, Promotions, Delivery & Checkout Speed If your site is slow, visitors will be bouncing away from your homepage or struggling to delve deeper into the site, find products or get through the checkout. Market leading websites aim for a sub second response time for all their pages. Product Information Management The platform may be struggling with the density of products, images and videos, unable to cope with the product catalogue, size or colour option requirements. If your Product Managers are shouting for more functionality and flexibility on the web site you may need to re-platform. Promotions Many retailers these days need a platform that can cope with many different and complex promotions including time based promotions that run at certain times of the day or launches of seasonal sales at a certain time. If you cannot replicate the promotions that you have through other channels consider re-platforming. Delivery Options Delivery options are increasing and customers expect to be able to choose from a range of options you need a solution that can cope with click and collect, time slots and multi delivery addresses if you do not offer these services the customer will find a competitor that does. Checkout Drop off at checkout can effect conversion. Give customers the choice to check out as a guest with the option of becoming a registered user at the end of the transaction by entering a password. This seems simple enough, however some platforms do not have this functionality. User Experience Customers wish to have a slick experience when paying for their orders preferring single page and one click checkouts can you compete with Amazon s offering? 2. International International expansion can be a key part of a growth strategy but some platforms cannot cope very well with the demands of multi-currency and multi-lingual sites. Having one CMS and one product catalogue is essential to running multiple sites effectively and profitably. As international expansion increases more customers will expect their orders to be delivered duty paid so they know exactly how much duty and tax they need to pay at the checkout. It will also cut down on the international shipments refused by customers, not prepared to pay the extra duties and taxes when their ordered is delivered duty unpaid. Does your solution calculate tax and duties accurately or does it integrate with Avalara?

10 3. CMS When your platform doesn t have a CMS (content management system) you will spend a huge amount of time (sometimes paying an agency) uploading and manipulating content. 4. Order Management Software (OMS) Many businesses take orders over the phone as well as via a website, smaller businesses manage this customer service function in house on disparate unconnected systems, but as you grow there will be a need for a fullyfunctioning call centre capability. If this is not an integrated function within your ecommerce platform, the customer service you offer will suffer. For many businesses it is crucial to have an integrated OMS (order management system) to completely handle the order process from managing the inventory across channels to order fulfillment. Modern ecommerce platforms are agile with intuitive CMS with the flexibility to make changes as and when you want. The ability to upload content to the website by someone non-technical using a drag and drop interface is becoming a must have to serve the needs of content hungry consumers. An OMS must integrate with back end systems such as accounting, invoicing, payments, fulfillment, warehouses and customer service. It must be able to support your business now but also meet any future needs - drop ship vendors, multiple warehouses and Omni-channel fulfillment such as click and collect, and in-store ordering. This helps businesses to give their customers the best Omni-channel experience allowing shoppers to buy anywhere, have their orders fulfilled by a variety of options and allow multi-channel returns. As a business grows, an integrated OMS will be needed to efficiently manage accurate inventory, process orders, reduce costs, increase customer engagement and eliminate the need for multiple systems and integrations. For more information on Maginus OMS (Order Management Software) visit 5. Supporting the Business Strategy Consider a new platform if: You cannot control when and how your website updates. Your development costs are increasing, not decreasing. If your platform won t allow you to expand in to different markets or add essential functionality to allow your business to run efficiently and effectively, you need to consider re-platforming. You need technical help to do anything on the site. Find an ecommerce platform that puts the functionality in the hands of the marketers. For more information on EPiServer from Maginus visit:

11 Conclusion The main indicators that you ve outgrown your ecommerce platform are usually quite evident: 1. Sales will have plateaued or even reduced as customers are not receiving the online experience they demand 2. Your team is struggling with (and complaining about) a huge workload, especially if you are running many different country sites that require a lot of admin time. 3. Your development costs are spiraling as you try to keep up with changes in technology, often in an attempt to deliver a solution across multiple, and an ever expanding number of, mobile devices. 4. You cannot deliver a customer centric, omni-channel experience that your board of directors now demands. 5. The CapEx for a redesign and upgrade is more than the cost of a new modern ecommerce platform. 6. Your IT Director is nervous about security and data loss through the site. AND the Number 1 Indicator: Your competitors are better and more successful online than you! About the Author: Nadia Castellani Nadia Castellani has over 15 years experience successfully implementing ecommerce and Digital Marketing strategies within a number of luxury online brands and is currently working as a strategic ecommerce and Multichannel Consultant. Nadia has an exceptional track-record in a number of senior roles within the luxury and fashion sector these include: ecommerce Director at Charlotte Olympia, ecommerce Consultant at McLaren, Head of ecommerce at Myla, ecommerce Manager at Dorothy Perkins (Arcadia Group) and Senior Merchandiser at Asprey & Garrard.

12 ABOUT US Founded in 1992, Maginus has built a solid reputation as a trusted partner for leading multichannel retail, distribution, and ecommerce businesses based upon a successful track record of delivering innovative, technology solutions and providing high quality support, advice and customer service. WHY MAGINUS? We believe that Maginus is the only UK organisation able to deliver Enterprise-Level Omnichannel Solutions from a single team of people. Built up over 20 years, our skills and capabilities stretch from ecommerce, Order Management, Back Office, Call Centre, POS, Hosting to Digital Marketing Services. Our track record in delivering end-to-end solutions within a Business Continuity Framework cannot, and is not, rivalled. Each and every Maginus colleague is actively encouraged to promote our company values in all their interactions with our customers, partners and with each other. These include: Integrity, Partnership, Long Term Thinking, Focus and to speak and write in the language of the customer. WE DELIVER THREE CORE SOLUTIONS: Microsoft Dynamics AX is our solution for Premium Brand Retailers with complex and multiple sales channels and logistic operations. Maginus OMS (Order Management Software) for organisations in Wholesale and Distribution or those dependant upon Direct Commerce techniques (Call Centre, Catalogue, and Online). EPiServer Ecommerce for online mid market enterprises seeking a solution for Content Led Commerce or as an integrated component to a Maginus OMS or a Microsoft Dynamics AX implementation. WE COMPLEMENT OUR CORE SOLUTIONS WITH: Digital Marketing Expertise and Creative Services from Maginus D&W. Maginus Managed Services to provide business continuity for all our implementations including hosted, SaaS and on-premise models. The icore Integration Suite as the software foundation for all our complex integration requirements. ZAP Business Intelligence suite for decision support solutions.