Many Italian companies have an e-commerce site where they sell their products and services. But in order to be successful, it is necessary not to make mistakes
Today, more than ever the needs of the company, consumers, market and competition are changing at an extremely fast pace. The world of commerce has changed and companies must change their rules, strategies and digital tools to remain competitive.
An e-commerce site, perhaps created years ago, is not enough to ensure that companies remain competitive over time. A solution that might have been perfect at the beginning, over time, might not be flexible and functional enough to support the growth of online sales and the increasingly pressing needs of consumers. It is therefore necessary to periodically re-evaluate the platform in use to stay ahead of the curve. SAP Hybris has identified five factors to have a successful e-commerce from all points of view: commercial, technical and financial and on all sales channels.
Flexibility
An e-commerce site must grow with the company especially from a financial point of view. Which translated into practice means that the TCO - total cost of ownership - must remain stable even when the business is in a phase of great expansion. If the company remains static, it runs the risk of increasing the supplier's profit margin at the expense of its own.
Integration
An omnichannel e-commerce site must be able to find a valid system to connect and communicate with each other, warehouse systems and order management at a general level throughout the company, both on traditional physical and digital channels. It is therefore necessary to choose a technology partner that is up to the task and that is able to integrate the e-commerce site and the core business processes, without increasing costs by turning to third parties to complete the project.
Customization
The e-commerce platform chosen must be flexible, modular and above all be able to grow with the company. It must be able to support new and important changes at any time. Before choosing the technology partner, the company should ask itself some questions and receive some concrete answers. For example, if online activity increases, can the site support a more complex business than classic retail? Or again, is the site designed to differentiate itself from the competition? Or if the business model were to change from, say, selling products to selling subscriptions or services? This is the kind of customization that allows you to meet the challenges that digital requires to succeed online and offline.
Order Management
An e-commerce site brings with it new professional figures such as, for example, Product Content Management. A shop window is no longer enough to impress consumers who are now "weaned" on digital. A company must be able to manage, as effectively as possible, even the information on products, from description to price, from technical specifications to images and videos up to comments and reviews. Nothing can be left to chance anymore. A customer who makes a purchase expects a satisfactory service and that is why the ecommerce site must, of necessity, rely on an advanced order management system.
Customer management
The ecommerce platform chosen must, finally, be at the forefront also from the point of view of customer service solutions, real-time analytics, marketing/re-marketing and merchandising. Customers should not be taken for granted, they must be analyzed, their needs must be met and, why not, they must be "pampered" and made to feel important. They are no longer the same consumers of yesterday, but demanding people, informed and extremely attentive to everything that moves on the market.