Unlock the Full Potential of Your E-Commerce Strategy

An effective e-commerce strategy and its successful execution depend upon clear goals and stakeholder alignment within your organization. If you were to ask five of your colleagues what the purpose of your e-commerce business is, would you get five variations on a common theme or five starkly different responses?

As you define the purpose of your e-commerce channel, you might consider factors such as:

• Cost to serve – E-commerce affords your business the opportunity to match the level of service you provide to the value a client offers your organization; lower-volume or more transactional clients can utilize the self-service e-commerce model, and your internal salespeople can focus their efforts on your high-touch, high-value accounts.
• Customer needs – Think about the customers you’re trying to reach via e-commerce and what problem you’re trying to solve for them – is it the added convenience, the ability to gather detailed information, reducing the time and effort required of them to do business with your organization?
• Product portfolio – How are you determining which of your products to offer via e-commerce and to what extent your online prices differ from those offered via other channels? Are your current product and pricing strategies inadvertently creating omni-channel conflict and price wars within your business?

Setting a sound e-commerce strategy is just the first step – examining the online sales data available and asking the right questions of it will allow you to refine the execution of your e-commerce channel for maximum profitability. Digging into the data can yield rich insights into:

• Price elasticity – identifying to what extent certain customers or products are price-insensitive
• Consumer preferences and pain points – understanding what delights and frustrates your customers based upon their online product reviews
• Promotional effectiveness – assessing whether your promotions are driving or eroding margin
• Product positioning – analyzing what role your products play both within your own portfolio and relative to your competitors’ offerings
  Do you have the internal capabilities in place – the right people, tools and processes – to leverage online sales data to its full potential? Being able to translate data points into actionable insights is the key to implementing an e-commerce strategy and execution plan that maximize your organization’s profitability.